Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal

25 July 2012 6:11 PM

There is a degree of panic, and rightly so, over whether the Syrian tyrant Basher al Assad will use chemical weapons against either his own people or foreign attackers. His regime has this week threatened to do the latter, thus finally confirming what was long suspected but never openly admitted, that Syria possesses chemical weapons. It is believed to have mustard gas as well as nerve agents such as tabun, sarin and VX. The fear is either that the Assad regime uses them or that they fall into the hands of Hezbollah, al Qaeda or other Islamic terrorist groups. Either prospect is utterly nightmarish. Even Russia says it has told Syria it is unacceptable to threaten to use them.

In the last few days, this has been much discussed. What has not been raised, however, is the question of how Syria managed to develop such a chemical weapons stockpile in the first place. No-one in the western media seems remotely curious about how Syria has managed to arm itself to the teeth with them beneath the radar of international scrutiny.

Dr Danny Shoham, at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is an expert in chemical and biological warfare. In a Middle East Quarterly article in 2002, Guile, Gas and Germs: Syria’s Ultimate Weapons, he set out the extraordinary history of Syria’s chemical weapons programme.

Navy: Nuclear Sub Worker Set Fire So He Could Leave Early

 

Hospital Worker Accused of Using Dead Patient’s Credit Cards

 

By CLARKE CANFIELD Associated Press

PORTLAND, Maine July 24, 2012 (AP)

Navy investigators have determined that a civilian laborer set a fire that caused $400 million in damage to a nuclear-powered submarine because he had anxiety and wanted to get out of work early.

Casey James Fury of Portsmouth, N.H., faces up to life in prison if convicted of two counts of arson in the fire aboard the USS Miami attack submarine while it was in dry dock May 23 and a second blaze outside the sub on June 16.

The 24-year-old Casey was taking medications for anxiety and depression and told investigators he set the fires so he could get out of work, according a seven-page affidavit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland.

Fury made his first court appearance Monday afternoon but did not enter a plea.

Magistrate Judge John Rich III scheduled a combined detention and probable cause hearing for next month. The U.S. attorney’s office has filed a motion asking that Fury be held without bail.

Fury’s federal public defender, David Beneman, did not speak in court and earlier in the day declined to comment to The Associated Press.

U.S. Justice Depatment Sues To Force Action On Tennessee Mosque

English: The US Department of Justice (DoJ), Washington DC (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

U.S. media is reporting that the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit seeking to force a Tennessee county to act promptly on a controversial mosque’s application for an occupancy permit. According to a UPI report:

NASHVILLE, July 18 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to force a Tennessee county to act promptly on a new mosque’s application for an occupancy permit. Rutherford County refused to process or issue a certificate of occupancy as a result of a state chancery court order last month in response to a motion brought by opponents of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, the Justice Department said in a news release. The opponents had challenged whether Islam is a religion and made ‘unfounded allegations accusing the Islamic Center of being connected to a terrorist organization,’ a Justice Department memo stated. In the suit, the federal government alleges Rutherford County violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. The Justice Department complaint states a certificate of occupancy is needed immediately so the Islamic Center can hold worship services at the facility during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins at sundown Thursday. ’Our nation was founded on bedrock principles of religious liberty. The Department of Justice will continue to vigorously enforce civil rights laws that protect religious freedom,’ Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the release. ‘When a faith community follows the rules, as the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has done in seeking to construct its place of worship, it is impermissible to change the rules in a discriminatory way that prevents people of faith from exercising their fundamental right to worship.’ ’The United States Attorney’s Office will zealously protect every citizen’s right to worship and assemble,’ Jerry E. Martin, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in the release. ‘If we do not protect the rights of these congregants in Rutherford County, then the rights of all people are endangered and diminished.’

Is North Korea Making EMP Weapons?

Electromagnetic Pulse (Photo credit: arbyreed)

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InnovationNewsDaily Staff

North Korea may be developing electromagnetic pulse weapons or bombs that could take out power grids — not to mention military and civilian electronics.

Such speculation comes from a Chinese military analyst’s article in the journal Bauhinia, according to the Washington Times. The Chinese military pointed out that North Korea has always planned to develop small nuclear weapons capable of creating such electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) — likely targeted at South Korean and U.S. military forces based in the southern half of the Korean peninsula.

The possibility of using EMPs as a weapon arose during early days of U.S. and Soviet nuclear testing during the Cold War. Nuclear blasts from those tests created EMPs as a secondary effect that led to some unexpected damage for civilian power grids and facilities.

Several countries, such as the U.S., have also investigated the possibility of making EMP weapons that don’t require nuclear blasts. But North Korea’s weapon-making efforts have recently focused upon expanding its nuclear arsenal.

9/11 Flashback: US Flight Schools Still Unknowingly Training Terrorists?

Pilots do a pre-flight check in the cockpit of a commercial airliner. (Digital Vision/Getty Images) 

By LEE FERRAN and JASON RYAN (@JasonRyanABC)

July 18, 2012

More than a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans, some foreign flight students are still not subject to terror database screening until after they’ve completed pilot training, according to a new report from the government’s watchdog.

“Thus, foreign nationals obtaining flight training with the intent to do harm, such as three of the pilots and leaders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, could have already obtained the training needed to operate an aircraft before they received any type of vetting,” says report, published today by the Government Accountability Office.

In the Sept. 11 attacks, 19 foreign nationals hijacked four commercial airliners and used the planes as weapons to hit the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in the nation’s capital. Several of the hijackers attended more than a dozen American flight schools in the weeks before the attacks to learn how to fly the jets.

After the attacks, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) established the Alien Flight Student Program (AFSP), which is designed to prevent flight schools regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration from “providing flight training to a foreign student unless the Secretary of Homeland Security first determines that the student does not pose a threat to aviation or national security.”

But the new GAO report says that the AFSP database is woefully behind and some of the more than 25,000 foreign nationals who were in the FAA airmen registry were not found in the AFSP database, “indicating that these individuals had not applied to the AFSP or been vetted by the TSA before taking flight training and receiving an FAA airman certificate.”

“It is disturbing to learn we could still be vulnerable to the same actions the 9/11 hijackers took over a decade ago,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R.-Alabama), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Transportation Security.

DOWNLOAD: GAO Report on Foreign Flight Student Screening (PDF)

Convicted al Qaida operative released from Guantánamo, repatriated to Sudan in plea deal

English: Frame grab from the Osama bin Laden videotape released by the Department of Defense on Dec. 13, 2001. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The United States sent home to Sudan on Tuesday one of Guantánamo’s longest-held prisoners, a 52-year-old confessed al Qaida foot soldier and sometime driver for Osama bin Laden whose release was seen as a crucial test case of the Barack Obama-era war court.

Ibrahim al Qosi pleaded guilty to terror charges in July 2010 in exchange for the possibility of release after serving a two-year sentence.

U.S. troops spirited him from the remote base days after his war crimes sentence ran out and dropped him off in the capital city Khartoum about 8 p.m. Miami time Tuesday night, Wednesday in Sudan, U.S. government sources said.

The Pentagon has not yet disclosed the transfer — which reduced the number of foreign prisoners at the Navy base in Cuba to 168 — to give Sudanese officials time to put the returnee in a rehabilitation program in the Horn of Africa nation. But the repatriation demonstrated that the Obama administration is still in the business of deal-making and downsizing the prison camps even as the Defense Department is planning to spend $40 million on an undersea telecommunications cable to the base in southeast Cuba.

Now-grown “child soldier” Omar Khadr could go next, to a lock-up in his native Canada. The White House is also reportedly considering transferring some Taliban captives at Guantánamo to Afghanistan as part of a regional peace accord there.

The release of Qosi was the first of a convicted war criminal since the Bush administration sent home Yemeni Salim Hamdan in 2008. Qosi’s attorney argued the U.S. had no reason to fear the Sudanese man.

“He is now in his 50s, eager only to spend his life at home with his family in Sudan — his mother and father, his wife and two teenage daughters, and his brothers and their families — and live among them in peace, quiet and freedom,” said Washington, D.C., attorney Paul Reichler, who defended Qosi without charge for seven years.

Containing the Islamist Revolution

When politicians are in election mode, they can see nothing but victory. All decisions, all considerations, are subservient to one question: how they can convince voters to check their name at the ballot box. As someone who ran for office nine times, I know what I am talking about. But for the candidate who wins the election, and for the voters, there is always the day after.

The rise of anti-Western Islamist movements — exemplified this week by the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in Egypt’s presidential election — represents a grave threat to U.S. interests and values in the Middle East. The next president of the United States, on the day after the election in November, will have to cope with this new reality. If he is to be successful, he must develop a strategy that takes into account the new state of affairs in this region and develop a long-term strategy to unite America’s friends and confront its enemies.

Unfortunately, the new reality in the greater Middle East is bad for the United States and its allies, including my country. Most importantly, the president should recognize that Islamist forces are on the move: They have seized control from Waziristan to the Atlantic Ocean in almost uninterrupted territorial contiguity. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya are at the midst of a brutal and destructive battle for their identity. Their future territorial integrity is in doubt. In these five countries, and now in Egypt, the Islamist and extremist forces have the upper hand. The media has already replaced the term “Arab Spring” with “Arab Awakening.” Sooner rather than later, it will be replaced again by “Islamist takeover.”

In no country are these Islamist forces friends of the United States. The extremists among them despise its culture and way of life. They deplore its status as a global superpower. The pragmatists are ready to receive U.S. financial and military aid, but will not heed U.S. advice on foreign and domestic policy.

As Islamist movements gain strength, America’s traditional allies are wavering about how to confront this new threat. They doubt the loyalty of the United States, and wonder if they will enjoy American backing and support when they need it most. They are exploring other options to protect their interests.

Nor are there any glimmers of progress when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The Israeli government continues to expand and foster settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinians — to whom everybody, including their Arab brothers, have given a cold shoulder — are swept into a dangerous despair and growing radicalization. The lack of a serious Israeli-Palestinian dialogue is leading to a binational state, which would signal the end of the Jewish national dream and the Palestinian one.

The complete international illegitimacy of the settlement project and of the occupation aimed to protect it — combined with the combustibility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — is a liability for U.S. foreign policy. It will remain so even if other parts of the world become a higher priority to the United States than the Middle East.

Both U.S. presidential candidates and their advisors need to begin thinking about the day after the election, and how the next American president will deal with this complex reality. As one who lives in the midst of it, here is my advice.

The Failure of the Moscow Talks – What’s Next?

 

Cascades of gas centrifuges are used to enrich uranium ore to concentrate its fissionable isotopes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

INSS Insight – Asculai, Ephraim: The Istanbul-Baghdad-Moscow talks on Iran’s nuclear program are over. As expected, they did not achieve anything of significance, besides deciding on further, lower level talks. Indeed, the P5 1 and the Iranian delegations shared one objective: they did not want the process to end, thereby necessitating a decision on different tracks. The Iranians are successfully playing for time, as they have done for so many years, and the members of the P5 1 group are also trying to delay any inconvenient decisions, each group member for its own reasons. Most noticeably, the US delegation would like to postpone any major decision until after the November 2012 presidential elections. For their part, the Iranians need time to advance their nuclear program and produce as much enriched uranium as possible. Although according to many reports the sanctions are hurting Iran, they are still not hurting Iran badly enough, and the Iranians are able to bear them.

The ultimate aims of both sides are, of course, diametrically opposite. The Iranians want to retain the capability to enrich uranium to military-grade levels and to gain the ability to produce several nuclear weapons in short order, should the Islamic Republic’s authorities so decide. The Iranian strategy is very simple: they want the world to recognize the legitimacy of the Iranian uranium enrichment program. Even under limited conditions, such recognition would enable Iran to retain its technical capabilities, to perfect the enrichment process, and to leave them a potential for a breakout (defined as the start of the process to produce military-grade enriched uranium), whenever they decide to do so. In addition, the Iranians could well construct concealed facilities and secretly produce enriched uranium to whatever levels they choose to achieve.

The P5 1 want to prevent this possibility, but their remaining options are few. It is nearly impossible to envision the Security Council taking any further action against Iran, because Russia and China would likely vote against it. The first and most probable option for the West (the P5 1 minus Russia and China) is to impose the July sanctions on oil and hope for the best. The next option is to increase the sanctions considerably and wait for the Iranians to blink. The third option is military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

What would the Iranians do? Although the present sanctions have hurt Iran considerably, there are those who think that Iran can shoulder them indefinitely and will therefore continue with its present tactics of preventing a showdown while enriching uranium.

Somalis Say US Rewards Will Help End ‘Reign of Terror’ By Al Qaeda Offshoot

 

The U.S. government is offering $33 million for information leading to the capture of seven of Somali al Qaeda affiliate al Shabaab‘s top leaders, including $7 million for founder Ahmed Abdi aw-Mohamed, also known as Abu Zubeir or Godane, and $5 million apiece for Mukhtar Robow (left) and Mohamed Khalaf. (Rewards for Justice)

By MOHAMED IBRAHIM

June 9, 2012

The Somali government and Somali observers say the new $33 million U.S. bounty on the heads of seven al Shabaab leaders may be just what is needed to help crush the al Qaeda affiliate, which is already reeling from military assaults on all sides and from the air.

“The announcement from the U.S. government . . . will certainly help the Somali government’s efforts to end al Qaeda’s reign of terror in Somalia,” said Somalia’s transitional government in a statement Thursday. “This is an important juncture in Somali history, where the possibility of full recovery from years of chaos is within reach.”

Through its Rewards for Justice program, the State Department this week offered $7 million for information leading to the capture of al-Shabaab founder and commander Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, AKA Godane or Mukhtar Abu Zubeir, $5 million apiece for four other Shabaab leaders and $3 million a head for two more. By comparison, the U.S. had offered only $1 million for Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was killed in a U.S. strike in Pakistan on Monday and was described by U.S. officials as a bin Laden confidante al Qaeda’s second-in-command.

Officials Watch for Body Bombs on Planes Watch Video

Germany reveals secret techie soldier unit, new cyberweapons

Main building of the University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have ways of making you pwned

By John Leyden • Get more from this author  8th June 2012 11:29 GMT

CyCon 2012 Germany has confirmed that its military maintains an operational cyberwarfare unit with offensive capabilities.

The admission, which appeared in parliamentary documents published on Tuesday, gave no details of the size of the unit much less any operations that it might have run. However documents delivered to the German federal defence committee did reveal that the unit has been operating for six years since 2006, a year before the cyber-attack on Estonia and four years before the discovery of the infamous Stuxnet worm.

http://ds.serving-sys.com/BurstingRes/Site-27237/Type-2/e53ce8c1-9790-4f5e-b89e-03b2539b45a7.swf“The initial capacity to operate in hostile networks has been achieved,” the papers explain, adding that the Computer Network Operations Unit had carried out “simulations” of attacks in a “closed laboratory environment”, German press agency DPA reports.

The unit reports to the joint forces strategic intelligence command. Legislators reportedly expressed surprise at the existence of the unit and questioned whether military commanders had the legal authority to launch attacks on foreign networks.

Prof Dr Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, a professor of law at European University Viadrina Frankfurt in Germany, told El Reg that the armed forces of many nations are probably building up an offensive cyber capability. The only difference is that Germany and (also recently) the Obama administration is the US are publicly talking about it.

“The German MoD see a potential in having an offensive cyber-op capability as well as an ability to defend critical infrastructures”, most notably military systems, Dr Heintschel von Heinegg explained.