Indonesia: Fuel leak, not terror plot likely cause of Bali boat tragedy

Police investigators examine the Gili Cat 2 boat following an explosion while it was enroute to Lombok, at Padangbai Port in Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia. Pic: AP.

17th September 2016

INDONESIAN police say there is no indication that a terror attack was the cause of a tourist boat explosion in Bali that killed two people.

Karangasem district police chief Sugeng Sudarso said Friday that investigators believe a fuel leak below deck caused a buildup of fumes that ignited, though the finding is provisional.

Sudarso said there was no indication of terrorism and the bomb squad did not find any explosive materials.

Bali police had earlier given conflicting accounts of the nationalities of the two women killed in Thursday’s explosion but now say one was from Austria and the other from Spain.

Sanglah Hospital gave the same information for the nationalities and said the Austrian woman was 28.

SEE ALSO: Indonesia: Speed boat explosion kills 2, injures 20 in Bali

During the incident, two people were killed and over 20 others injured following an explosion on a boat that was heading to Lombok.

According to Sugeng on Thursday, the “Gili Cat 2” fast boat had more than 40 people including crew on board.

He said the explosion occurred about 200 meters (220 yards) from the port of departure and was preceded by smoke billowing from the engine.

“The explosion happened five minutes after the boat departed,” Sugeng said.

SEE ALSO: 7 killed, 13 missing as boat sinks in Indonesia

The passengers included foreign tourists from Australia, Britain, France, Netherlands and South Korea.

Police initially said that they were not discounting the discounting the possibility of ill intent or negligence in the incident.

Bali saw its deadliest terror attack in 2002, involving a nightclub bombing that killed over 200 people, mostly Australians, who throng to the island in droves. The attack was later found to have been perpetrated by local radical militants.

SEE ALSO: Indonesia: Authorities beef up security in Bali after arrested militant reveals ‘plans to attack’

Indonesian police last month said they were increasing security in Bali after it was discovered during interrogation that a terrorist nabbed earlier in the month may have been planning an attack on the island.

The man with alleged ties to the Islamic State terror network had been arrested on Aug 15 in connection with the suicide bomb attack at Surakarta police station in July.

Additional reporting from the Associated Press

One in three Saudi air raids on Yemen hit civilian sites, data shows

Exclusive: Pressure on UK and US roles in war set to increase as survey shows school buildings and hospitals among targets

 Aftermath of Yemen hospital following airstrike that killed at least 11 people in August

Ewen MacAskill and Paul Torpey-Friday 16 September 2016

More than one-third of all Saudi-led air raids on Yemen have hit civilian sites, such as school buildings, hospitals, markets, mosques and economic infrastructure, according to the most comprehensive survey of the conflict.

The findings, revealed by the Guardian on Friday, contrast with claims by the Saudi government, backed by its US and British allies, that Riyadh is seeking to minimise civilian casualties.

 A boy walks through ruins of a school and bowling club hit by a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Sana’a. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

 The damage inside a school building in Sana’a. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

The survey, conducted by the Yemen Data Project, a group of academics, human rights organisers and activists, will add to mounting pressure in the UK and the US on the Saudi-led coalition, which is facing accusations of breaching international humanitarian law.

It will refocus attention on UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, worth more than £3.3bn since the air campaign began, and the role of British military personnel attached to the Saudi command and control centre, from which air operations are being mounted. Two British parliamentary committees have called for the suspension of such sales until a credible and independent inquiry has been conducted.

Saudi Arabia disputed the Yemen Data Project figures, describing them as “vastly exaggerated”, and challenged the accuracy of the methodology, saying somewhere such as a school building might have been a school a year ago, but was now being used by rebel fighters.

The independent and non-partisan survey, based on open-source data, including research on the ground, records more than 8,600 air attacks between March 2015, when the Saudi-led campaign began, and the end of August this year. Of these, 3,577 were listed as having hit military sites and 3,158 struck non-military sites.

Where it could not be established whether a location attacked was civilian or military, the strikes were classified as unknown, of which there are 1,882 incidents.

Saudi Arabia intervened in March 2015 to support the Yemeni government against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in control of the capital, Sana’a. The UN has put the death toll of the 18-month war at more than 10,000, with 3,799 of them being civilians.

Human rights organisations in Yemen have documented repeated violations by the Houthis, including the use of landmines and indiscriminate shelling. Human Rights Watch noted this year that Yemeni civilians had “suffered serious laws of war violations by all sides”.

The Yemen Data Project has chosen to focus exclusively on the impact of the air campaign, rather than fighting on the ground, citing the difficulty of gaining access to frontline fighting and impartial information.

One of the most problematic findings of the survey for Saudi Arabia is the number of reported repeat attacks. While some attacks on civilian sites can be explained away as mistakes or being the location of military camps in densely populated areas such as Sana’a, repeated strikes on school buildings and hospitals will add to demands for an independent investigation.

One school building in Dhubab, Taiz governorate, has been hit nine times, according to the data. A market in Sirwah, Marib governorate, has been struck 24 times.

The UK’s shadow defence secretary, Clive Lewis, said of the survey: “It’s sickening to think of British-built weapons being used against civilians and the government has an absolute responsibility to do everything in its power to stop that from happening. But as ministers turn a blind eye to the conflict in Yemen, evidence that humanitarian law has been violated is becoming harder to ignore by the day.”

The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Tom Brake, said the data added more weight to calls for the suspension of arms sales. “Despite consistent evidence showing targeting of civilians, first Cameron and now May’s governments have continued their hypocritical defence of Saudi Arabia’s brutal campaign in Yemen,” he said.

Sixty-four members of the US Congress, from the Democratic and Republican parties, sent a letter to Barack Obama last month urging the president to postpone sales of new arms to Saudi Arabia. The US also provides the Saudis with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and logistical support.

The Democratic congressman Ted Lieu, who organised the letter and is a colonel in the US air force reserve, said: “The actions of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen are as reprehensible as they are illegal. The multiple, repeated airstrikes on civilians look like war crimes.”

Campaigners are calling for an independent inquiry to establish whether attacks on civilian targets are because of poor intelligence, lack of precision on the part of the Saudi-led coalition planes, or a high degree of disregard for civilian lives.

Staff at the Yemen Data Project said they adopted rigorous standards, using news reports aligned with both sides in the conflict and crosschecked against other sources, such as social media, non-governmental organisations and evidence on the ground.

According to the project, the Saudi-led coalition hit more non-military sites than military in five of the past 18 months. In October 2015, the figures were 291, compared with 208; in November, 126 against 34; December, 137 compared with 62; February 2016, 292 to 139, and March, 122 compared with 80.

Despite a ceasefire announced in April, air raids have continued.

Over the course of the war, the survey lists 942 attacks on residential areas, 114 on markets, 34 on mosques, 147 on school buildings, 26 on universities and 378 on transport.

Asked by the Guardian about the figures during a visit to London, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir, portrayed the Saudi air force as professional and armed with precision weapons.

He said the Houthis had “turned schools and hospitals and mosques into command and control centres. They have turned them into weapons depots in a way that they are no longer civilian targets. They are military targets. They might have been a school a year ago. But they were not a school when they were bombed”.

The attachment of British military staff at the Saudi command centre has become increasingly controversial.

A UK Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “The United Kingdom is not a member of the Saudi-led coalition and UK personnel are not involved in directing or conducting operations in Yemen, or in the target selection process.

“The MoD does provide training and shares best practice to the Royal Saudi air force, including training on targeting. We also provided guidance and advice to support continued compliance with international humanitarian law.”

The Yemen Data Project was set up this year in response to a lack of reliable official military figures. It says the project brings together figures from backgrounds in security, academia, human rights and humanitarian issues, and describes it as “independently funded to avoid any partisan affiliation”.

“Where independent reporting is not available, the data has been cross-referenced with sources from opposing sides to the conflict to ensure the reporting is as accurate and impartial as possible,” the project said.

Given the general lack of transparency from parties to the conflict and a paucity of independent reporting on the ground, the data had been verified and cross-referenced to the greatest extent possible, it added.

The number of civilian casualties is not included, because much of this area is highly politicised and it has not been possible to independently verify claims.

US Media Ignores CIA Cover-up on Torture

( September 18, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) A group of U.S. intelligence veterans chastises the mainstream U.S. media for virtually ignoring a British newspaper’s account of the gripping inside story on how the CIA tried to block the U.S. Senate’s torture investigation.

MEMORANDUM FOR: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: U.S. Media Mum On How Your Committee Faced Down Both CIA and Obama

We write to thank you for your unwavering support for your extraordinarily courageous and tenacious staff in (1) investigating CIA torture under the Bush/Cheney administration and (2) resisting CIA/White House attempts under the Obama administration to cover up heinous torture crimes like waterboarding.

We confess to having been shocked at the torture detailed in the version of the executive summary your Committee released on December 9, 2014.  We found ourselves wondering what additional behavior could have been deemed so repugnant that the White House and CIA insisted it be redacted; and if the entire 6,700-page investigation – with whatever redaction might be truly necessary – would ever see the light of day. We think you could take steps now to make it less likely that the full report be deep-sixed, and we will make some suggestions below toward that end.

With well over 400 years of intelligence experience under our collective belt, we wondered how you managed to get the investigation finished and the executive summary up and out (though redacted). We now know the backstory – thanks to the unstinting courage of the committee’s principal investigator Daniel Jones, who has been interviewed by Spencer Ackerman, an investigative reporter for The (UK) Guardian newspaper. The titanic struggle depicted by Ackerman reads like a crime novel; sadly, the four-part series is nonfiction:

1. I. “Senate investigator breaks silence about CIA’s ‘failed coverup’ of torture report”
2. “Inside the fight to reveal the CIA’s torture secrets”

III. ” ‘A constitutional crisis’: the CIA turns on the Senate”

1. “No looking back:  the CIA torture report’s aftermath“

Ackerman’s reporting on Jones’s tenacity in facing down the gorilla CIA makes abundantly clear how richly deserved was the encomium you gave Jones when he left the committee staff in December 2015.

You noted, “Without his indefatigable work on the Intelligence Committee staff, the Senate report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program would not have been completed, nor would its 525-page executive summary have been released to the public.”

It seems equal praise might well be due to any Snowden-like patriot/whistleblower who “inadvertently” included the “Panetta Review” in the reams of material given your committee by the CIA.

Remarkably, a full week after The Guardian carried Ackerman’s revelations, none has been picked up by U.S. “mainstream” newspapers. Not the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post – not even The Hill.

(As for alternative media, Charles P. Pierce’s timely piece for Esquire whetted his readers’ appetite for the gripping detail of the Guardian series, explaining that it would be “unfair both to Ackerman’s diligence and Jones’s courage” to try to summarize even just the first installment. “Read the whole damn thing,” Pierce advises.)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California.

And so, the culprits who should be hanging their heads in shame are out and about, with some still collecting book royalties and some blithely working for this or that candidate for president. As if nothing happened. Sadly, given the soporific state of our mainstream media – particularly on sensitive issues like these – their silence is nothing new, although it does seem to have gotten even worse in recent years.

The late William Colby, CIA director from 1973 to 1976, has been quoted as saying: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” Whether or not Colby was quoted correctly, the experience of the past several decades suggests it is largely true. Better sourced is a quote from William Casey, CIA director from 1981 to 1987: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

In these circumstances, we know from sad experience that there is no way any of us can get on any of the Sunday talk shows, for example – despite our enviable record for getting it right. Nor does it seem likely that any of the “mainstream” media will invite you to discuss the highly instructive revelations in The Guardian. We respectfully suggest that you take the initiative to obtain media exposure for this very important story.

One additional request: As you and your investigators know better than anyone, it is essential to safeguard the integrity not only of the unredacted executive summary but also of the entire 6,700-page committee report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.

And, again, you are aware that as soon as Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, took the gavel from you, he took steps seemingly aimed at ensuring that the full report never sees the light of day. Could you ask him why, as soon as he became chair, he asked the executive branch to transfer their copies to the Senate Intelligence Committee?

Many interpreted that as an ill-disguised attempt to thwart holding accountable those responsible for the abuses. Moreover, if the report cannot be reviewed by those who might be asked to participate in activities like torture in the future, how is it even possible for anyone to learn from the prior unfortunate experience?

The public is entitled to the entire story about the CIA torture program and its lies to Congress, the White House, and to us. Any attempt to bury the fullest investigation of the torture program – an investigation that provides an example of Congressional oversight at its best – would undermine the democratic accountability that is supposed to be provided by the separation of powers.

Furthermore, as you were quoted in the Guardian series, the agency searches “may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function . . .”

Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, was exactly on point: “You either have oversight and separation of powers with the checks and balances that come with that, or you don’t. It’s amazing that, once again, no one at the CIA was held accountable.”  Consequently, the issue now is not only the cover-up of torture by the CIA but – at least equally important – the “unbridled agency that spied on Americans (including Senate Intelligence Committee staffers) as eagerly as they spied on foreign adversaries,” as the Guardian described it in referring to the Church Committee investigation in the 1970s.

Does American democracy deserve any less than an intense investigation of the CIA’s obstruction of the democratic process in the 2000s?

The Guardian revelations make it still more difficult for the kind of excuses made by those who can hardly pretend to be disinterested observers – former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, for example – who wrote Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program,published on September 9, 2015. We published our own (VIPS) critique of “Rebuttal” five days later. And before the final vote on John Brennan’s nomination to become CIA director,we tried to warn you not to trust him.

We believe you will agree that more needs to be done to replant the moral moorings of honesty that must anchor the intelligence profession to which we have given so many years. And we think that one step in that direction would be for you to seize this new opportunity to give prominence to the edifying story of how your committee and its staffers stepped up so effectively to their responsibilities in investigating and exposing the very sad and delicate chapter of CIA torture.

The play-by-play provided by the Guardian series, with its appropriate focus on the top investigator Daniel Jones, has created an opportunity we hope will not be squandered; a chance to tell a truly uplifting story sure to encourage others to behave in similarly exemplary manner.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Jean Maria Arrigo, PhD, member of 2005 American Psychological Association task force evaluating the role of psychologists in U.S. intelligence and military interrogations of detainees (associate VIPS)

Eugene DeFriest Betit, Ph. D., DIA, US Army (ret.)

Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA

Bogdan Dzakovic, Former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (Ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East, CIA and National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS)

Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA Operations Officer

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)

Russia and rebels cast doubt over Syria ceasefire

U.S. forces seen in Syrian town: rebel source

By Angus McDowall and Katya Golubkova | BEIRUT/MOSCOW-Sat Sep 17, 2016

Russia and Syrian rebels cast doubt over the prospects for an increasingly shaky five-day-old ceasefire on Saturday, with Moscow saying the situation was worsening and a senior insurgent warning that the truce "will not hold out".

A rebel fighter walks by damaged buildings near Castello road in Aleppo, Syria September 16, 2016.REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

A general view shows Castello road in Aleppo, Syria September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

The ceasefire is the result of an agreement between Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with air power, and the United States, which supports some rebel groups. It has reduced the fighting since coming into effect on Monday.

However, some violence has persisted across Syria, and promised aid deliveries to besieged areas remain blocked, with both sides accusing the other of bad faith.

Russia's Defence Ministry said conditions in Syria were deteriorating, adding that it believed the ceasefire had been breached 199 times by rebels and saying the United States would be responsible if it were to collapse.

Earlier on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin cast doubt over Washington's commitment to the deal, but also said he believed that securing a ceasefire was a common goal for the two countries, which both agreed to extend it on Friday.

Insurgents say they only reluctantly accepted the initial deal, which they believe is skewed against them, because it could relieve the dire humanitarian situation in besieged areas they control, and blamed Russia for undermining the truce.

"The truce, as we have warned, and we told the (U.S.) State Department - will not hold out," the rebel official said, pointing to the continued presence of a U.N. aid convoy at the Turkish border awaiting permission to travel to Aleppo.

"It is not possible for the party (Russia) that wages war against a people to strive to achieve a truce, as it is also not possible for it to be a sponsor of this agreement while it bombs night and day, while on the other side, the other party - America - has the role of spectator," he said.

Moscow has itself accused rebels of breaking the truce and said Washington needs to do more to make them abide by its terms, including separating from the jihadist Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which only broke formal allegiance to al Qaeda in July.

The five-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country's population, drawing in global and regional powers, causing an international refugee crisis and inspiring jihadist attacks around the world.

OVERNIGHT SHELLING

Both sides have accused the other of being responsible for aid deliveries being stuck far from Aleppo, where army and rebel forces were supposed to pull back from the Castello Road which leads into besieged, insurgent-held eastern districts.

Russia on Friday said the Syrian army had initially withdrawn but returned to its positions after being fired on by rebels, who in turn say they saw no sign of government forces ever leaving their positions.

"There is no change," said Zakariya Malahifji, an official for a rebel group in Aleppo on Saturday, asked whether there had been any move by the army to withdraw from positions along the road.

Syria's government said it was doing all that was necessary for the arrival of aid to those in need it in all parts of the country, particularly to eastern Aleppo.

Two convoys of aid for Aleppo have been waiting at the Turkish border for days. The U.N. has said both sides in the war are to blame for the delay of aid to Aleppo, where neither has yet withdrawn from the Castello Road into the city.

But senior U.N. officials have accused the government of not providing letters to allow convoys to reach besieged areas in Syria. The government said the road was being fired on by rebels, which they deny, so it could not give convoys a guarantee of safety.

Warplanes strafed or bombed rebel-held areas in the northwestern province of Idlib, as well as positions north of the city of Homs and east of the city of Hama overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based war monitoring group also reported clashes between the army and rebels or shelling overnight in the capital's Eastern Ghouta suburbs, in Ramousah south of Aleppo and in the southern province of Deraa.

ISLAMIC STATE

Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army rebels are pushing south in northern Syria from the towns of al-Rai and Azaz towards the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab, supported by tanks and jets, security sources said, clashing with the jihadist group.

Vehicles were mobilised in northern Syria across from the Turkish village of Arapakesmez from the early hours of the morning and Turkish artillery deployed at the border have fired at Islamic State targets.

CNN Turk footage showed white smoke rising from across the border in Syria as Turkish howitzers fired west of al-Rai, where the Syrian Observatory said Free Syrian Army rebel groups gained control of two villages.

If the ceasefire deal is successful, Moscow and Washington will start to share targeting information on militant groups, including Islamic State, they have said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Katya Golubkova in Moscow, Olesya Astakhova in Bishkek and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Dominic Evans)

The Crisis of Indian Intelligence

The operational incompetence of the Indian intelligence has now become legendary as it failed to defend the country during the Kargil, Mumbai and Pathankot attacks. They even get away from violence infected regions such as Kashmir and Assam. This way of intelligence mechanism raised many questions including the waste of money and resources.

by Musa Khan Jalalzai

( September 9, 2016, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) During the last three decades, there have been tenacious efforts in India to introduce security sector reforms in order to bring intelligence agencies under democratic control, but notwithstanding the last reform proposals of the Naresh Chandra Committee report (2012), democratic governments in the country could not succeed to bill the cat. Since the end of the cold war and the disintegration of Soviet Union in 1990s, internal conflicts in the country deeply impacted the performance of its intelligence mechanism, where terrorist groups introduced new tactics. The emergence of sectarian mafia groups, and new terrorist organizations like Daesh and Taliban, further embroiled Indian intelligence agencies in an unending domestic violence.

The three decades fight of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the IB with domestic separatism and international terrorism brought about many changes in the attitude of its stakeholders and policy makers to control their self designed operational strategies that caused misunderstanding between India and its neighbours. In states, like Kashmir, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Assam, several separatist and terrorist groups emerged with new tactics, while the recent Patankot terrorist attacks generated a new debate about the failed strategies, weak security approach, and power politics within the intelligence infrastructure. These and other incidents showed that intelligence review committees, reports and political parties were right in their criticism against the operational flaws of the agencies.

The Mumbai attacks unveiled a number of terrorist tactics, which were prevailed in the country. These tactics, and the way terrorist targeted civilians and the police were new to R&AW and the IB. In Delhi, intellectual circles and policy makers started debates with the assumption that counterterrorism operations have influenced by weak intelligence analysis in the country. They also raised the question of check and balance, while the bureaucratic and political involvement further added to their pain. The exponentially growing politicization, radicalization, and sectarian divide within all intelligence agencies ranks including R&AW and IB, and violence across the country painted a negative picture of professional intelligence approach to the national security of India. The perception that the agencies decide whatever they want without restricting themselves to the advisory role caused deep misunderstanding between the citizens and the state. Political rivalries, poor coordination, sectarian and political affiliations, uncorroborated reports, and the lack of motivation are issues that need the immediate attention of Indian policy makers.

Moreover, numerous intelligence committees like Henderson-Brook-Committee on Indo-China war defeat in 1962, B.S Raghavan IAS Committee on the failure of intelligence failure during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, L.P Singh Committee, K.S Nair Committee, the 1999 Kargil Review Committee, and the Ram Pradham Committee on the intelligence failure during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (2008), have taken place after every big perceived intelligence failure. In addition to these committees, several investigative reports were prepared to spotlight the failure of R&AW, MI, IB and other civilian and military agencies in responding to major terrorist attacks against India. The lack of legal and parliamentary oversight has been a very complicated issue since the Kargil war as several stakeholders refused to allow judiciary and parliamentary committees to investigate the ooze. More than 70% of Indians don’t know about the basic function of their country’s secret agencies, because the cover of secrecy is often serving as a blanket of immunity from legal action, accountability, and misuse of taxpayers’ money.

The operational incompetence of the Indian intelligence has now become legendary as it failed to defend the country during the Kargil, Mumbai and Pathankot attacks. They even get away from violence infected regions such as Kashmir and Assam. This way of intelligence mechanism raised many questions including the waste of money and resources. The involvement of intelligence agencies in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, generated controversial stories in print and electronic media. In Afghanistan, there are speculations that Indian intelligence use the country against Pakistan, recruit Afghans and Pakistanis to carryout terrorist attacks in Baluchistan. Afghan military and political leadership has also expressed the same concern in their private meetings that their country serves the interests of India in the region.

Terror attacks, whether in Assam or Kashmir have exacerbated by the day, which lead policy maker to the conclusion that the involvement of intelligence agencies in a proxy wars across borders causes major terror incident in the country. Amidst all these failures and incomplete intelligence stories, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to bring his own team of experts, in order to introduce security sector reforms and bring intelligence under democratic control, but he also needs to understand the difficulties faced by his precursors. He also needs to find out why R&AW and the IB lack cryptanalysts who break enemy codes and ciphers despite India’s aggrandisement in the field of computer technologies. This deficit is in stark contrast to the regional trends, where state agencies have been hiring ever-greater number of experts. In his Indian Express article (2014) Praveen Swami noted: “India’s over five-year efforts to monitor encrypted traffic-run by the mainly military-staffed National Technical Research Organization-has failed to make progress in decrypting even chat programmes used by terrorists, like Viber and Skype”.

The Kargil Review Committee found that human intelligence aspect of Indian intelligence agencies was weak. During the Kargil war, R&AW succeeded in intercepting the telephone conversation between General Pervez Musharaf and his Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Aziz, which provided crucial evidence to international media that terrorist operation was being controlled from military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Experts perceive it a major intelligence success. Moreover, the Kargil Review Committee also criticized military intelligence for its failure related to the absence of update and accurate intelligence information on the induction and de-induction of military battalions, and the lack of expertise to spotlight military battalions in the Kargil area in 1998. The committee further criticized the lack of fresh information, which make impossible for an intelligence agency to make accurate judgement of the looming threat. According to Indian intellectual circles, rivalry among the intelligence agencies, the issue of appointment in war zones or violence infected areas have badly affected the counterterrorism efforts across the country. In a country like India, where credit snatching influences intelligence analysis, there is no way to judge the accuracy of collected intelligence information.

---

The writer is author of “Fixing the EU Intel Crisis” can be reached at,zai.musakhan222@gmail.com

Egypt court freezes assets of top human rights defenders

Human rights NGOs are accused of receiving foreign funding to 'sow chaos,' and their directors could now face life sentences

Hossam Bahgat, one of the defendants, leaves court after a previous hearing in April (AFP)

Saturday 17 September 2016

An Egyptian court on Saturday approved a freeze on the assets of five prominent human rights activists and three non-governmental organisations, the latest twist in a five-year-old case in which the NGOs are accused of receiving foreign funds to sow chaos.

Many Egyptian rights activists say they are facing the worst assault in their history amid a wider campaign to erase freedoms won in a 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.

An investigating magistrate had ordered the asset freezes, but they were subject to court approval.

Saturday's decision paves the way for criminal proceedings against the defendants that could lead to life sentences if they are found guilty.

The court froze the assets of Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights founder and former director Hossam Bahgat and Gamal Eid, the head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information.

Eid wrote on Twitter on Saturday that "this revenge was expected - we will carry on despite living under threat.

"But we will not live in complicity with a police regime that hates human rights, the 2011 revolution and democracy."

The court also froze the assets of three organisations and their directors: the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and its director Bahey el-din Hassan, the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and its director Mostafa al-Hassan, and the Egyptian Right to Education Center and its director Abdelhafiz Tayel.

At least 11 human rights defenders are also banned from travel in relation to the case, which has been going on since 2011.

There have been no criminal charges yet, but the provisions under which the human rights defenders are being investigated can lead to charges that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Migrant flows to Europe continue, as United Nations convenes summit in New York

Refugees and migrants sit next to tents at the Souda municipality run camp on the Greek island of Chios on September 7. (Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters)

By James McAuley September 17 at 6:00 AM

PARIS — In the midst of the greatest migration upheaval since the end of World War II, world leaders will gather Monday in New York for a major United Nations summit on the global refugee crisis.

While the summit’s main agenda item will be the 22-page proposal drafted to strengthen protections for migrants — by ensuring “a people-centered, sensitive, humane, dignified, gender-responsive and prompt reception” — the situation in the Mediterranean Sea, the transit zone where more than 1 million people passed into Europe last year, is anything but safe.

Following the landmark agreement between the European Union and Turkey signed in March, the traffic along the eastern Mediterranean route — from the Middle East through the Aegean Sea, used by the majority of the migrants and refugees who arrived last year — has generally slowed, although the U.N.’s refugee agency reported a temporary uptick in the first week of September, with more than 1,000 migrants crossing to Greece from Turkey.

[The number of Europe-bound migrants falls, but death toll rises]

Meanwhile, traffic along the less-regulated central Mediterranean route, typically with migrants from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa headed to Italy and its outer islands, has increased after a long summer of warmer weather and more-conducive travel conditions. While the overall flow of migrants across the Mediterranean has fallen in 2016, the number of deaths at sea has risen by approximately 15 percent, according to the most recentstatistics collected by the International Organization for Migration.

 

Through the end of September 2015, the organization reported that 470,000 migrants and refugees had arrived in Europe and that an additional 2,900 had died while attempting the journey. By comparison, through September 14 of this year, IOM reported that 297,000 have arrived on the continent, while 3,200 have died en route.

“We already know the UN summit is doomed to abject failure,” Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said in a statement in advance of Monday’s assembly. “Faced with the worst refugee crisis in 70 years, world leaders have shown a shocking disregard for the human rights of people who have been forced to leave their homes due to conflict or persecution.”

In geopolitical terms, analysts say that a continued flow along the eastern Mediterranean route, even a small one, risks upsetting the E.U.’s deal with Turkey, especially given tense relations in the aftermath of the attempted coup against the Turkish government in mid-July.

[Greece was once the fast lane to Europe for refugees. Now it’s a grim waiting room.]

In August, approximately 3,400 migrants arrived in Greece by sea, the highest number since April, the month that immediately followed the signing of the deal. The reason for this temporary increase remains unknown.

According to Elizabeth Collett, director of the Brussels-based Migration Policy Institute Europe, it is not the numbers that present an issue. Rather, the potential problem lies in the pressure the constant influx will place on Greece, where, she said, detention centers are overcrowded, few adequate facilities have been prepared, and migrants are “underserved by overstretched services.”

These difficult conditions could force Greek authorities to transport migrants from outer Aegean islands to the mainland. But according to the E.U. agreement with Turkey, that country will take back migrants only from the outer islands, not from mainland Greece.

“There’s this children’s game called Jenga,” Gerald Knaus, a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a founding member of the Berlin-based European Stability Initiative, said in an interview. 

“If you pull out the wrong block, the whole thing might come crashing down.”

“The paradigm in Europe has been making sure the Turks don’t walk away from the deal,” he said, “but that’s not the danger. The danger is that nobody does anything. It’s not the numbers themselves that are the problem, it’s the potential for mistakes they create.”

Sugar industry paid scientists for favourable research, documents reveal

Harvard study in 1960s cast doubt on sugar's role in heart disease, pointing finger at fat

Newly uncovered correspondence between a sugar trade group and researchers at Harvard University in the 1960s shines more light on how food and beverage makers have attempted to shape the public's understanding of nutrition. (iStock)

Sep 13, 2016

The sugar industry began funding research that cast doubt on sugar's role in heart disease — in part by pointing the finger at fat — as early as the 1960s, according to an analysis of newly uncovered documents.

The analysis published Monday is based on correspondence between a sugar trade group and researchers at Harvard University, and is the latest example showing how food and beverage makers attempt to shape public understanding of nutrition.

• Sugar industry's secret documents echo tobacco tactics
• the fifth estate | The Secrets of Sugar

In 1964, the group now known as the Sugar Association internally discussed a campaign to address "negative attitudes toward sugar" after studies began emerging linking sugar with heart disease, according to documents dug up from public archives. The following year the group approved "Project 226," which entailed paying Harvard researchers today's equivalent of $48,900 US for an article reviewing the scientific literature, supplying materials they wanted reviewed, and receiving drafts of the article.

The resulting article published in 1967 concluded there was "no doubt" that reducing cholesterol and saturated fat was the only dietary intervention needed to prevent heart disease. The researchers overstated the consistency of the literature on fat and cholesterol, while downplaying studies on sugar, according to the analysis.

• ANALYSIS | Why Coke is lowering its sugar levels in Canada

"Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind and we look forward to its appearance in print," wrote an employee of the sugar industry group to one of the authors.

The sugar industry's funding and role were not disclosed when the article was published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The journal did not begin requesting author disclosures until 1984.

Harvard researchers were paid today's equivalent of $48,900 for an article that concluded there was 'no doubt' that reducing cholesterol and saturated fat was the only dietary intervention needed to prevent heart disease. (Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)

'No appreciable relationship'

In an editorial published Monday that accompanied the sugar industry analysis, New York University professor of nutrition Marion Nestle noted that for decades following the study, scientists and health officials focused on reducing saturated fat, not sugar, to prevent heart disease.

While scientists are still working to understand links between diet and heart disease, concern has shifted in recent years to sugars, and away from fat, Nestle said.

A committee that advised the federal government on dietary guidelines said the available evidence shows "no appreciable relationship" between the dietary cholesterol and heart disease, although it still recommended limiting saturated fats.

• How 'toxic' is sugar?
• Dietary guidelines in U.S. crack down on sugar, eases on cholesterol

The American Heart Association cites a study published in 2014 in saying that too much added sugar can increase risk of heart disease, though the authors of that study say the biological reasons for the link are not completely understood.

The findings published Monday are part of an ongoing project by a former dentist, Cristin Kearns, to reveal the sugar industry's decades-long efforts to counter science linking sugar with negative health effects, including diabetes.

The latest work, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, is based primarily on 31 pages of correspondence between the sugar group and one of the Harvard researchers who authored the review.

In a statement, the Sugar Association said it "should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities," but that funding disclosures were not the norm when the review was published. The group also questioned Kearns' "continued attempts to reframe historical occurrences" to play into the current public sentiment against sugar.

Though scientists are still working to understand links between diet and heart disease, concern has recently shifted to sugars, and away from fat. (Matthew Mead/Associated Press)

Thinly veiled marketing

The Sugar Association said it was a "disservice" that industry-funded research in general is considered "tainted."

Companies including Coca-Cola Co. and Kellogg Co., as well as groups for agricultural products like beef and blueberries, regularly fund studies that become a part of scientific literature, are cited by other researchers, and are touted in news releases.

Companies say they adhere to scientific standards, and many researchers feel that industry funding is critical to advancing science given the growing competition for government funds. But critics say such studies are often thinly veiled marketing that undermine efforts to improve public health.

• IN DEPTH | 10 things to know about sugar
• Sugar intake should be reduced to 5-10% of calories, WHO says

"Food company sponsorship, whether or not intentionally manipulative, undermines public trust in nutrition science," wrote Nestle, a longtime critic of industry funding of science.

The authors of the analysis note they were unable to interview key actors quoted in the documents because they are no longer alive. They also note there is no direct evidence the sugar industry changed the manuscript, that the documents provide a limited window into the sugar industry group's activities and that the roles of other industries and nutrition leaders in shaping the discussion about heart disease were not studied.

Companies including Coca-Cola Co. and Kellogg Co. regularly fund studies that become a part of scientific literature, are cited by other researchers, and are touted in news releases. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)

'Public health extremists'

Nevertheless, they say the documents underscore why policy makers should consider giving less weight to industry-funded studies. Although funding disclosures are now common practice in the scientific community, the role sponsors play behind the scenes is still not always clear.

In June, the Associated Press reported on a study funded by the candy industry's trade group that found children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who don't. The National Confectioners Association, which touted the findings in a news release, provided feedback to the authors on a draft even though a disclosure said it had no role in the paper. The association said its suggestions didn't alter the findings.

In November, the AP also reported on emails showing Coca-Cola was instrumental in creating a non-profit that said its mission was to fight obesity, even though the group publicly said the soda maker had "no input" into its activities. A document circulated at Coke said the group would counter the "shrill rhetoric" of "public health extremists."

Coca-Cola subsequently conceded that it had not been transparent, and the group later disbanded.

• Taxing sugary drinks could help cut consumption, researchers say