Hunger Strike At Guantanamo

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Photo Credit: Pakistan Today

Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp have launched a hunger strike to protest interference with their personal effects, including Qurans, their lawyers and prison officials, said on Monday.

“My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a New York lawyer, representing Ghaleb Al-Bihani, a Yemeni detainee.

Camp 6 houses the majority of the 166 detainees still incarcerated at Guantanamo — estimated at about 130 men — who usually don’t pose any disciplinary problems and are not regarded as a particular risk.

High-profile detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, are held in a different part of the camp.

Interviewed by AFP, Robert Durand, director of public affairs for the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said nine detainees were engaged in hunger strikes, five of whom were being fed through tubes inserted into their stomachs. However, he indicated that “refusing delivered food does not make a detainee a hunger striker, not eating does.”

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Obama Rejected Tough Options For Countering Chinese Cyber Attacks Two Years Ago

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Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak

President Obama two years ago rejected a series of tough actions against China, including counter-cyber attacks and economic sanctions, for Beijing’s aggressive campaign of cyber espionage against the U.S. government and private businesses networks, according to administration officials.

Meanwhile, China recently issued a veiled threat to the United States about U.S. accusations of Chinese military cyber espionage. China told U.S. officials that continued U.S. public accusations of cyber espionage would render future bilateral discussions unproductive during recent U.S.-China talks following the release of a security firm’s report linking the Chinese military to cyber spying.

On plans to deter Chinese cyber attacks, senior administration officials turned down a series of tough options designed to dissuade China from further attacks that were developed over a three-month period beginning in August 2011.
According to administration officials familiar with internal discussions, the options were dismissed as too disruptive of U.S.-China relations.

The president’s closest advisers feared that taking action would potentially undermine U.S. relations with China, a major economic trading partner that currently has holdings of $1.2 trillion in Treasury debt, the officials told the Free Beacon. Government security and military officials under the White House Interagency Policy Committee, a working group directly supporting the National Security Council, developed the options.

The committee is made up of representatives from the Pentagon, intelligence community, law enforcement, homeland security, and foreign affairs agencies.

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On The Anniversary Of The Nazi Invasion, This Is What Austrians Are Saying About Hitler

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Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Seventy-five years after the Nazi invasion and occupation of Austria, a newspaper in country has asked citizens about their opinion of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi annexation during World War II. Jewish leaders who have been raising the alarm about anti-Semitism in Austria say the results were not surprising.

Forty-two percent said life was not all bad under Hitler, while 61 percent said they would be interested in a strong-armed leader who did not have to deal with democratic challenges like political opponents and elections. The survey, published this weekend, is getting prominent play in the media in Israel, which is home to some 250,000 Holocaust survivors. That’s half the number of survivors who arrived in the country since Israel was founded in 1948.

Reuters reports:

Timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary next week of Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany, the Market Institut poll for newspaper Der Standard found 61 per cent of respondents, mostly the elderly, liked the idea of a strong man as leader.

Many Austrians wanted a union, or Anschluss , with Germany in 1938. A few Austrians put up resistance that grew over time. In the latest poll, 53 per cent thought the Anschluss was voluntary and 46 per cent saw Austria as a victim. Forty-two per cent said “not everything was bad under Hitler” while 57 per cent saw no good aspects to the Hitler era.

Additionally, 54 percent said they believed neo-Nazi groups would succeed in Austrian elections this September if they were not banned there.

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Afghan President Alleges US Conspiracy with Taliban to Keep International Forces in Afghanistan

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Photo Credit: AP

A series of security problems and fractured relations with Afghan leaders plagued Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s first trip here as Pentagon chief, including the Afghan president’s accusations that the U.S. and the Taliban are working in concert to show that violence in the country will worsen if most coalition troops leave.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph Dunford, quickly rejected the charges President Hamid Karzai made Sunday as “categorically false.” But the accusations were just the latest in a series of disputes that have frayed relations between the two nations as the U.S. works to wind down the war and turn the country’s security over to the Afghans.

Speaking to reporters shortly after Karzai made the comments, Dunford said the Afghan leader has never expressed such views to him but said it was understandable that tensions would arise as the coalition balances the need to complete its mission with the Afghans’ move to exercise more sovereignty.

“We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the past 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage,” said Dunford.

Dunford’s comments came, however, soon after U.S. officials cancelled a news conference with Hagel and Karzai because of a security threat – just a day after a suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defense Ministry, killing nine Afghan civilians and wounding 14 others. Hagel heard the explosion from the safe location where he was meeting with Afghan officials but was never in danger.

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Afghan Leader Accuses US, Taliban of Collusion

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KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused the Taliban and the U.S. of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave as planned by the end of next year.

Karzai said two suicide bombings that killed 19 people on Saturday — one outside the Afghan Defense Ministry and the other near a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province — show the insurgent group is conducting attacks to help show that international forces will still be needed to keep the peace after their current combat mission ends in 2014.

“The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents,” he said during a nationally televised speech about the state of Afghan women.

There was no immediate response from the U.S.-led military coalition, which is gradually handing over responsibility for securing the country to Afghan forces.

Karzai is known for making incendiary comments in his public speeches, a move that is often attributed to him trying to appeal to those who sympathize with the Taliban or as a way to gain leverage when he feels his international allies are ignoring his country’s sovereignty. In previous speeches he has threatened to join the Taliban and called his NATO allies occupiers who want to plunder Afghanistan’s resources.

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Hundreds Of Palestinians Riot On Temple Mount, As Talk Of ‘Third Intifada’ Grows

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Photo Credit: Muhammed MuheisenIsraeli police used stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Palestinians who rioted on the Temple Mount following Friday prayers.
Rioters threw rocks and at least two Molotov cocktails at police, injuring nine, The Times of Israel reported. Four Palestinians were arrested, and dozens complained of injuries, a police spokesman said.

The Temple Mount is one of the most contested holy sites in the region. Beneath the al Aqsa Mosque are the ruins of the biblically-based Jewish Temple, and riots over ownership of the area are common.

But in recent weeks, tensions between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank have been especially hot. Talk of a mass uprising — a “Third Intifada” — has been growing louder, The Times of Israel reports.

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European Parliament To Vote On EU ‘Ban On All Forms Of Pornography’

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Photo Credit: ALAMYControversy has erupted over next Tuesday’s European Parliament resolution “on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU”, meant to mark international women’s day, after libertarian Swedish MEPs from the Pirate Party spotted the call for a ban in the small print.
While not legally binding, the vote could be the first step towards European legislation as the EU’s assembly increasingly flexes its political muscle within Europe’s institutions.

The proposal “calls on the EU and its member states to take concrete action on discrimination against women in advertising… [with] a ban on all forms of pornography in the media”.

Kartika Liotard, a Dutch left-wing feminist MEP, is seeking “statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism”, including measures in the “digital field”.

The MEPs are also demanding the establishment of state sex censors with “a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls”.

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party which campaigns for internet freedom and has MEPs, warned that there is “a clear majority in favour of this report, much because of its title and a belief that there’s nothing odd about it”.

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Marine Corps Rapid-Response Team Ordered To Africa To Thwart Another Benghazi Attack

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U.S. Marine CorpsU.S. Africa Command will get a new Marine Corps rapid response force as part of a plan to beef up its crisis response capabilities.

More Leathernecks will be at the ready after the military was unable to get timely aid to Benghazi, Libya last year, during a terror attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and members of his security detail.

Gen. Carter Ham, Africom’s commander, told Congress this week about the planned new force, Stars and Stripes reported Friday.

“The Marine Corps have proposed a new … Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force specifically tailored for crisis response in Africa,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The force had not yet been formally approved, he said, but added, “we think that that will be available in the relatively near future.”

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Countdown To Launch Former Iranian Official Launches ‘Countdown To An Attack On Israel’

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Photo Credit: Free BeaconAn ally of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has launched a “countdown to an attack on Israel” following the Jewish state’s launching of an operation to destroy weapons in Syria last month.

Alireza Forghani, a Khamenei confidant and former governor of Iran’s Kish province, published an article arguing that Tehran and Syria should launch a tag-team attack aimed at the total “eradication [of] Israel from the planet.”

“There remains no excuse for not [waging] a total multipartite attack on Israeli soil, with hopes of completely eradicating Israel from the planet (Allah willing),” Forghani wrote, according to a new translation of his Jan. 29 essay by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“Attacking and completely eradicating Israel from the planet is the only solution to this problem,” Forghani wrote. “If this problem isn’t resolved with this golden opportunity, it is not known when there may be another.”

Iran has provided logistical support for embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he battles rebel forces and is well positioned to provide more assistance.

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Iran Was Holding Bin Laden Son-In-Law Abu Ghaith, US Officials Say

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesU.S. officials say Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, captured last month in Turkey and now in New York, has spent most of the last decade in Iran, in some sort of confinement.

Back in late 2001, as U.S. troops and Afghan tribal forces were dismantling the Taliban control of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden made a decision.

He sent his operators, people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Abu Zubaydah to the cities of Pakistan where they were to hide out and plan further attacks against the US. All of the key players were captured or killed, with the exception of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s No. 2 who remains at large, having survived at least three Predator attacks.

At the same time, bin Laden sent his top managers, al-Qaida’s Management Council, to Iran, arming them with money to bribe their way across the border, according to multiple US and Iranian officials. Bin Laden apparently hoped that the Iranians would see the group not as Sunni terrorists but as “an enemy of my enemy,” as one senior U.S. official put it.

Among those who made their way into Iran were Saif al-Adel, al-Qaida’s military director; bin Laden’s son Saad; and Abu Ghaith, the group’s communications director … and also bin Laden’s son-in-law. At one point not long after its arrival, this group, numbering in the hundreds with family members and bodyguards, was captured by Iranian authorities. Although senior U.S. officials have told NBC News they did not know the conditions of their confinement — “it was the blackest of black boxes,” one former senior U.S. official told NBC News — Iranian officials said the group was “in jail.”

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