The European Union Times |
- Syrian FM: We are ready to sign Chemical Weapons Convention
- China supports Russian proposal about Syria chemical weapons
- “Highly Redacted” Documents Confirm Michael Hastings Under FBI Investigation
- UN Human Rights Council says Syria gas attack videos, photos fake
- Declassified files detail blatant violations, abuse of NSA domestic spying program
Posted: 10 Sep 2013 03:58 PM PDT  Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem “We fully support Russia’s initiative concerning chemical weapons in Syria, and we are ready to cooperate. As a part of the plan, we intend to join the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in an interview with Lebanon-based Al-Maydeen TV. “We are ready to fulfill our obligations in compliance with this treaty, including through the provision of information about our chemical weapons. We will open our storage sites, and cease production. We are ready to open these facilities to Russia, other countries and the United Nations.” He added: “We intend to give up chemical weapons altogether.” The statement comes less than 24 hours after Moscow called for Damascus to hand over control over its chemical arsenal to the international community to avert a retaliatory strike by the US. Washington claims that the Assad government used chemical weapons against civilians in a Damascus suburb on August 21, killing more than 1,400 people. President Assad denies the allegation. On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that direct action could be avoided if the Syrian government handed over “every single bit” of his chemical weapon stock within a week. Shortly afterward, Russia made a formal proposal to Damascus. Vladimir Putin has said that he first discussed the idea with Barack Obama during the G20 meeting of the world’s biggest economies last week. In a series of TV interviews of US networks, Obama welcomed the proposal as a “possible breakthrough”, but US officials say it must not be used as a “stalling tactic” by the Assad regime. As part of that plan, Syria would have to become a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Damascus had already agreed to Moscow’s proposal in principle earlier on Tuesday. Alongside North Korea, Egypt and Israel, Syria is one of only seven countries not to have joined the treaty, adopted in 1993. Since then more than half of the world’s chemical weapons stockpile has been destroyed under the terms of the treaty by over 180 countries. The UN Security Council will convene to discuss a statement based on Moscow’s plan in the near future. While all members of the Council are likely to support the chemical weapons handover, there are likely to be crucial disagreements on whether the final document will assign blame for the August 21 chemical incident on Assad’s forces, and whether the door will still be open to future military intervention against his government. Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov have also scheduled a meeting to discuss the chemical disarmament. Source Related Posts: |
Posted: 10 Sep 2013 03:49 PM PDT  China has supported the Russian proposal to Syria to put its chemical weapons stockpile under the control of the United Nations. “We welcome and support the Russian side’s suggestion,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Tuesday in his regular briefing. “As long as the suggestion is conducive to easing the current tension in Syria, solving the Syria issue politically and safeguarding peace and stability of Syria and the region, the international community should give positive consideration to it,” he said. The proposal, which has been “welcomed” by Damascus, was made during a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem in Moscow on Monday. The Russian initiative came shortly after US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in London that the only way for Syria to avert US military action is to hand over its entire stockpile of chemical weapons. The US has based its recent threat of striking Syria on the unsubstantiated accusation that the Syrian government was behind a chemical attack in Damascus on August 21. The Syrian government has categorically rejected the allegation. The UN and a number of European countries have already welcomed the Russian proposal. However, the Syrian foreign-backed opposition has slammed the plan as a “political maneuver” and part of “useless procrastination.” It has renewed calls for a US-led military action against the country. Source Related Posts: |
Posted: 10 Sep 2013 03:44 PM PDT  FBI maintains files to “memorialize controversial reporting”. Despite the FBI’s denial they were investigating Michael Hastings, newly released “heavily redacted” documents on the journalist prove otherwise. Al-Jazeera and FOIA research specialist, Ryan Shapiro, acquired the documents after he and journalist Jason Leopold filed a lawsuit against the FBI for neglecting to respond to their FOIA requests within the required 20 work day period. Hastings suspiciously died when his Mercedes C250 Coupe reportedly crashed into a palm tree traveling 75 mph in Los Angeles last June. Just fifteen hours before his death, the 33-year old sent an email to a handful of close friends revealing he believed the FBI was after him for a story he was working on. A few days after his death, WikiLeaks tweeted that Hastings contacted WikiLeaks’ lawyer Jennifer Robinson claiming the FBI was investigating him. Prior to his death, Hastings was investigating CIA Director John Brennan and was set to release his report in Rolling Stone magazine in the following weeks. Infowars picked up a report from San Diego 6 News that cited a Stratfor email hacked by Wikileaks which described Brennan as being “behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.” The FBI’s investigation is so secret, even the title of the case file was withheld from the FOIA request. FBI documents reveal the agency considers Hastings’ work to be “highly sensitive.” The FBI operated under exemptions when it redacted entire parts of the file, claiming it necessary to “protect national security.” The agency reportedly marked parts with “S” for secret and “Per Army” to conceal components of the file. The documents also reveal the FBI opened a file that contained “unclassified media articles” in June 2012 in order to “memorialize controversial reporting by Rolling Stone magazine on June 7, 2012.” Articles in the file included Hastings’ report entitled “America’s Last Prisoner of War,” a story about a 27-year old US soldier who was captured by the Taliban in 2009 while on deployment in Afghanistan. The soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, is still believed to be in captivity, according to Al-Jazeera. The documents prompted a response from Rolling Stone’s managing editor, Will Dana, who admits he’s “concerned” and doesn’t understand the FBI’s interest in Hastings’ report. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said on June 21, “At no time was Michael Hastings under investigation by the FBI.” She stands by her statement claiming just because Hastings was referenced in an FBI file, does not mean he was the “subject” of an investigation. A letter sent with the redacted documents said: “A search of the FBI Headquarters electronic surveillance indices has been conducted, and no responsive record which indicates that Michael Hastings has ever been the target of electronic surveillance was located.” Source Related Posts: |
Posted: 10 Sep 2013 03:31 PM PDT  Russia says the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has confirmed that the videos and photos purporting to show the victims of a chemical attack near the Syrian capital, Damascus, were fabricated. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a Tuesday statement that international experts as well as Syrian public and religious leaders presented their evidence to the 24th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on September 9. It also said evidence provided by numerous witnesses confirms that militants fighting against the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of western Ghouta last month. The participants in the UN Human Rights Council session warned of the consequences of a military strike against Syria, noting that such an attack would constitute a crude violation of international law. The US administration has been using the footage and the photos in question to lobby for a military strike on Syria. The recent war rhetoric against Syria first gained momentum on August 21, when the militants operating inside the Middle Eastern country and the country’s foreign-backed opposition claimed that over a thousand people had been killed in a government chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus. The Syrian government categorically rejected the accusation. Nevertheless, a number of Western countries, with the US being at the forefront, quickly started campaigning for war. On August 31, US President Barack Obama said he would seek Congress authorization before the possible strikes on Syria. However, reports indicate a majority of Congress members are either against the planned strikes on Syria or are yet undecided. The Senate has meanwhile postponed a vote on the US administration-proposed resolution to attack Syria. Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. The United Nations has reported that more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions displaced due to the violence. Source Related Posts: |
Posted: 10 Sep 2013 03:26 PM PDT  For years the National Security Agency has been violating restrictions and misusing the US domestic spying program that collected private data from US citizens, newly released declassified documents show. The new information from Intelligence Community Documents Regarding Collection under Section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) shows that the government on a daily basis spied on Americans’ telephone numbers, calling patterns as well as users IP addresses during the surveillance of foreign terror suspects. The documents show that between 2006 and 2009 the NSA violated the court restrictions by spying on telephone calls and lying to judges about how the data was deployed. The spying agency crossed referenced a selected list of some 16,000 phone numbers against databases which contained millions of records, thus violating the law, two senior intelligence officials told Bloomberg. The metadata program which started in 2006 enabled the NSA to gather more information about a specific number that the agency claimed could be linked to terrorist activity. The agency also kept an alert list that was cross-referenced with new numbers to consider whether they should be added to a list of “reasonable articulable suspicion.” The NSA gathered the bulk phone records under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which requires private companies to turn over evidence that is relevant to a terrorism investigation. However, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the NSA must have “reasonable, articulable suspicion” to run that number against a larger database. Only about 2,000 numbers on the list in 2009 met that legal condition, according to sources. The released documents according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper relate to “compliance incidents that were discovered by the NSA, reported to the FISC and the Congress, and resolved four years ago.” According to the documents, the US District Judge Reggie Walton who oversaw a secret US spy court wrote he was “deeply troubled” in March 2009 after discovering government officials had been accessing domestic phone records without “articulable suspicion.” In some cases the NSA was distributing the sensitive phone records by email to as many as 189 analysts, while only 53 were approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to see them, a Justice Department lawyer reported later in 2009. The NSA notified the court of the violations only in January 2009, the documents show. In turn, the court asked the spying agency to seek approval for each case before running the query on an individual number. In September 2009 these procedures were revised and the court allowed the surveillance program to remain. “Upon discovery of these incidents, which were promptly reported to the FISC, the Court, in 2009, issued an order requiring the NSA to seek court approval to query the telephony metadata on a case-by-case basis, except when necessary to protect against an imminent threat to human life,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a statement. The magnitude of the metadata collection program was first revealed in June by Edward Snowden, when he leaked documents from Verizon Communications Inc. which showed that the company shared its data with the NSA. In August, the Obama administration acknowledged the phone metadata program. Tuesday’s disclosures were released in response to a court case in which the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Justice Department in 2011 for records of data collection under the USA Patriot Act. “The documents released today are a testament to the Government’s strong commitment to detecting, correcting, and reporting mistakes that occur in implementing technologically complex intelligence collection activities, and to continually improving its oversight and compliance processes,” Clapper said. Source Related Posts: |