Monday, March 9, 2015

CIA Reshuffle Features ‘Mission Centers’, Cyber-Warfare to ‘Cover the Entire Universe’

RT.com
RT.com
March 7th, 2015
Reader Views: 480

The Central Intelligence Agency has announced a sweeping reorganization, introducing a new Directorate dedicated to cyber-espionage and establishing ten new cross-directorate ‘mission centers’.
The CIA’s new cyber-division will be called the Directorate of Digital Innovation. It joins the four existing Directorates: Support, Science and Technology, and Operations and Analysis, under the new organization plan. Analysis is reverting to its traditional name, having been renamed “Directorate of Intelligence” previously, while Operations used to be known as the “National Clandestine Service.”
Additionally, agency director John Brennan announced the establishment of ten new “mission centers,” gathering CIA officers from across different Directorates to concentrate on specific subjects, regions or targets.
The 9/11 Commission criticized the CIA for not sharing intelligence that might have helped stop the 2001 attacks, and recommended a number of intelligence reforms. The new “mission centers” will put together operatives from the five Directorates to follow urgent threats and “fill information gaps”, Brennan explained.

According to Brennan, the centers will be organized by region – East Asia, for example – or by type of threat. The agency already operates two such information-sharing centers, devoted to counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism.
“I know there are seams right now, but what we’ve tried to do with these mission centers is cover the entire universe, regionally and functionally, and so something that’s going on in the world falls into one of those buckets,” he told reporters.
Brennan cited the need to adapt to the “unprecedented pace and impact of technological advancements” as the justification for establishing a new digital directorate. Its mission, as Brennan explained, would be to counter foreign hackers trying to penetrate US computer systems, as well as help American spies steal digital secrets around the world, saving the CIA a lot of “time, resources and energy.”
Cyber threats were the first type of threat on the list National Intelligence Director James Clapper presented to Congress at the annual hearing at the end of February. Clapper said that cyber-attacks had been “increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and severity of impact.”
US intelligence agencies have blamed foreign hackers for several high-profile attacks over the past year. North Korea was accused of hacking Sony Pictures in November, purportedly over a comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-un. The February 2014 hacking attack on the Las Vegas Sands Corp, the world’s largest casino company, was blamed on Iran.
Critics of espionage and surveillance have argued the US, rather than North Korea, China or Iran, is the real threat to cyber-security around the world. “The real danger here is the US, the superpower,” Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesman for WikiLeaks, told RT last month. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden helped expose how the NSA and its UK counterpart hacked into the world’s largest supplier of mobile phone chips. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

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More than Two Million Migratory Birds Killed in Cyprus

by Naharnet Newsdesk 12 hours ago

More than two million migratory birds were killed in Cyprus last autumn to feed an illicit taste for the delicacy on the Mediterranean island, a conservationist group said Monday.

The survey by Birdlife Cyprus was carried out in the key season between September and October and estimates the number of birds indiscriminately trapped in nets or with limesticks.

The group said its surveillance showed "a dramatic situation of this illegal activity sadly taking place," with the number of mist nets used almost doubling in 2014 from the year before.

It found some 16 kilometres (10 miles) of net supports active during autumn and more than 6,000 limesticks were reported from enforcement agencies and other non-governmental organisations.

Limesticks are twigs covered in a sticky substance that instantly trap birds that alight onto them, leaving them to dangle helplessly.

"With these trapping levels for autumn 2014, BirdLife Cyprus estimated that over two million birds could have been killed across the whole of Cyprus," said Birdlife, the most since it began monitoring the activity 13 years ago.

Such methods are used to catch blackcaps and song thrushes, much sought after delicacies that fetch up to 80 euros ($86) for a dozen at Cypriot restaurants.

The Game and Fauna Service, in charge of the fight against poaching in Cyprus, says the illegal trade is worth about 15 million euros a year.

- 'Out of control' -

Birdlife said the figures showed illegal trappings were now "out of control" and that more needed to be done by the authorities in Cyprus, including the British military at bases on the island.

A clampdown on restaurants was needed to prevent Cyprus revisiting the 1990s when up to 10 million birds were estimated to have been killed.

Autumn is the peak season for bird trapping with an estimated 3,000-4,000 poachers involved. The numbers for spring are lower because the birds are less plump.

Birdlife Cyprus chief Clairie Papazoglou said poaching was a "serious, persistent and growing problem" in "what has been the worst year with the highest trapping levels since the start of the monitoring programme in 2002".

Tim Stowe of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds called for zero-tolerance by the British military.

"The report highlights the illegal trapping of songbirds on the British military base has escalated and we are urging the Ministry of Defence... to resolve it before this autumn's migration," said Stowe.

A huge crackdown on trappers and restaurants was enforced before Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, but now conservationists say the government lacks the political will to eradicate the trade.

Birdlife has also called for tougher sentencing available to the courts to be enforced while pinpointing a need to change attitudes towards killing and eating migratory birds.

The law provides for penalties of up to three years in jail and fines as high as 17,000 euros but these are rarely imposed.

During winter, millions of birds take refuge in Cyprus from colder northern climates.

An estimated 60 species are listed as threatened or in need of protection are snared in illegal Cypriot traps.

SourceAssociated Press

Science

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Pakistan Test-Fires Nuclear Capable Ballistic Missile

by Naharnet Newsdesk 10 hours ago

Pakistan test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Monday, the military said, less than a week after the first high-level talks with arch-rivals India for nearly a year.

The militay said the Shaheen III surface-to-surface missile had a range of 2,750 kilometers (1,700 miles) and can carry nuclear and conventional warheads.

"The test launch, with its impact point in the Arabian Sea, was aimed at validating various design and technical parameters of the weapon system at maximum range," the military said in a statement.

India and Pakistan -- which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 -- have routinely carried out missile tests since both demonstrated nuclear weapons capability in 1998.

Pakistan's most recent missile test came last month with the launch of a low-flying, terrain-hugging cruise missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Islamabad last week for talks with his Pakistani counterpart.

It was the first senior-level dialogue between the nuclear-armed rivals since their prime ministers met in New Delhi last May.

Relations between the two countries, always fraught, soured further last August amid a rise in clashes along their borders and a row over a Pakistani diplomat meeting Kashmiri separatists.

SourceAgence France Presse

World Politics India

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Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s

Europe

Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s

By Michael Birnbaum March 8 at 5:16 PM

MOSCOW — Thought the Soviet Union was anti-American? Try today’s Russia.
After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.
The indignation peaked after the assassination of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, as conspiracy theories started to swirl — just a few hours after he was killed — that his death was a CIA plot to discredit Russia. (On Sunday, Russia charged two men from Chechnya, and detained three others, in connection with Nemtsov’s killing.)
There are drives to exchange Western-branded clothing for Russia’s red, blue and white. Efforts to replace Coke with Russian-made soft drinks. Fury over U.S. sanctions. And a passionate, conspiracy-laden fascination with the methods that Washington is supposedly using to foment unrest in Ukraine and Russia.
The anger is a challenge for U.S. policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. And it is a marker of the limits of their ability to influence Russian decision-making after a year of sanctions. More than 80 percent of Russians now hold negative views of the United States, according to the independent Levada Center, a number that has more than doubled over the past year and that is by far the highest negative rating since the center started tracking those views in 1988.

Russians wait in line outside a McDonald's in 1991 in Moscow. The fast-food chain has had to emphasize its local ties after finding that it’s not immune from the anti-Western sentiment in the country. (AP)

Nemtsov’s assassination, the highest-profile political killing during Vladimir Putin’s 15 years in power, was yet another brutal strike against pro-Western forces in Russia. Nemtsov had long modeled himself on Western politicians and amassed a long list of enemies who resented him for it.
The anti-Western anger stands to grow even stronger if President Obama decides to send lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military, as he has been considering. The aim would be to “raise the cost” of any Russian intervention by making the Ukrainian response more lethal. But even some of Putin’s toughest critics say they cannot support that proposal, since the cost is the lives of their nation’s soldiers.
[U.S. military vehicles paraded 300 yards from the Russian border]
“The United States is experimenting geopolitically, using people using people like guinea pigs,” said Sergey Mikheev, director of the Kremlin-allied Center for Current Politics, on a popular talk show on the state-run First Channel last year. His accusations, drawn out by a host who said it was important to “know the enemy,” were typical of the rhetoric that fills Russian airwaves.
“They treat us all in the same way, threatening not only world stability but the existence of every human being on the planet,” Mikheev said.
Soviet rhetoric was officially anti-Western, but it couldn’t repress ordinary Russians’ passion for the Beatles or their enthusiasm for getting news from jammed Voice of America broadcasts. Those positive feelings spilled over after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
But the list of perceived slights from the United States has long been building, particularly after the United States and NATO bombed Serbia, a Russian ally, in 1999. Then came the war in Iraq, NATO expansion and the Russia-Georgia conflict. Each time, there were smaller spikes of anti-American sentiment that receded as quickly as they emerged.

Polling Russians on their foreign policy View Graphic

Polling Russians on their foreign policy

Putin cranked up the volume after protest movements in late 2011 and 2012, which he blamed on the State Department. It wasn’t until last year, when the crisis started in Ukraine, that anti-Americanism spread even among those who once eagerly hopped on planes to Miami and Los Angeles.
Fed by the powerful antagonism on Russian federal television channels, the main source of news for more than 90 percent of Russians, ordinary people started to feel more and more disillusioned. The anger seems different from the fast-receding jolts of the past, observers say, having spread faster and wider.
The years of perceived humiliations have “led to anti-Americanism at the grass-roots level, which did not exist before,” said Vladimir Pozner, a journalist who for decades was a prominent voice of the Soviet Union in the United States. More recently, he has to explain the United States inside Russia. “We don’t like the Americans, and it’s because they’re pushy, they think they’re unique and they have had no regard for anyone else.”
Anti-American measures quickly suffused the nation, ranging from the symbolic to the truly significant. Some coffee shops in Crimea stopped serving Americanos. Activists projected racially charged images of Obama eating a banana onto the side of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Russians cheerfully flocked to exchange Western-branded clothing for T-shirts with pictures of an Iskander missile launcher that said “Sanctions? Don’t make my Iskander laugh.”
[Before Nemtsov’s assassination, a year of demonization]
“This anti-Western propaganda radically changed the atmosphere in the society,” said Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, the opinion polling firm. “It has become militarist.”
Many Russians tapped into a deep-rooted resentment that after modeling themselves on the West following the breakup of the Soviet Union, they had experienced only hardship and humiliation in return.
“Starting from about 1989, we completely reoriented toward the West. We looked at them as a future paradise. We expected that once we had done all that they demanded, we’d dance for them and they would finally hug and kiss us and we would merge in ecstasy,” said Evgeny Tarlo, a member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, on a Russian talk show last year. Instead, he said, the West has been trying to destroy Russia.
The anti-Americanism makes it harder for American culture to make inroads through its traditional means — soft-power routes such as movies, music and education. Last year, Russian policymakers ended a decades-old high school exchange program that offered their nation’s best and brightest the chance to spend semesters at U.S. schools. Few Western artists now perform on Russian soil.
Western diplomats also say privately that they find themselves frozen out of speaking engagements and other opportunities to explain their countries’ positions to Russian audiences. And Russians who work for local outposts of Western companies say their friends and neighbors increasingly question their patriotism.
A handful of business leaders have warned that Russia risks permanently stunting its own economic development with the angry self-isolation.
“I worry that the recent crisis might drive Russia into a certain historic confrontation, hampering the country's development in all spheres,” said former finance minister and Putin ally Alexey Kudrin in an interview with TASS.
But those are lonely voices amid the torrent of anti-Western fury.
“What the government knew was that it was very easy to cultivate anti-Western sentiments, and it was easy to consolidate Russian society around this propaganda,” said Maria Lipman, an independent Moscow-based political analyst who is working on a study of anti-Western attitudes.
Even McDonald’s, long an embodiment of Russian dreams about the West, was targeted for supposed health violations in the fall. Some of its most prominent locations were forced to shut down temporarily. When they reopened, McDonald’s started an advertising campaign emphasizing its local ties and its 25-year history in Russia, playing down the Golden Arches’ global significance as a bright beacon of America.
Last week, one McDonald’s billboard in the heart of Moscow read: “Made in Russia, for Russians.”

Putin critic, Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov killed in Moscow

Before Nemtsov’s assassination, a year of demonization

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Iran's New Missile Puts Israel 'in Range'

The Iranian military on Sunday announced that it had developed a new long-range cruise missile with a range of some 2,000 kilometers.

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By Yaakov Levi

First Publish: 3/8/2015, 4:07 PM

Iran's Revolutionary Guards fire a Saegheh missile (illustration

Reuters

As the US and its allies continue to discuss limiting Iran's nuclear program with Tehran, the Iranian military on Sunday announced that it had developed a new long-range cruise missile with a range of some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) – putting Israel well within its reach, Israeli sources said. The missile, called the “Soumar,” features “different characteristics in terms of range and pinpoint accuracy in comparison with the previous products,” Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan said at the unveiling of the missile Sunday.

The missile, Dehqan said, was developed based on the needs of the Iranian Armed Forces, and is “a crucial step towards increasing the country’s defense and deterrence might.”

On Saturday, an Iranian military official said that the country would be unveiling yet another missile system will be unveiled on April 18, when the country marks National Army Day. That system, called the Talaash-3, is based on the Russian S-200 missile system, the official said.

In his speech in Washington last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that while the world is capitulating to Iranian demands to allow it to continue with its nuclear development program, the issue of its delivery systems – the advanced missiles it is developing – has not even been placed on the agenda yet, because Iran refuses to discuss it at all. Commenting Sunday, Iran's Aerospace Division head Amirali Hajizadeh said that Tehran “will never negotiated the country's defense capabilities, including the development of its ballistic missiles.”

In a statement, Iran's state-controlled Press TV quoted government sources as saying that “Iran has repeatedly assured other countries that its military might poses no threat to other states, insisting that the country’s defense doctrine is entirely based on deterrence”

The new Soumar missile is named for a city on the Iraqi border whose inhabitants were nearly all wiped out by an Iraqi chemical attack during the Iran-Iraq war.