Scientific Journals Adapt to New U.S. Trade Sanctions on Iran

Scientific Journals Adapt to New U.S. Trade Sanctions on Iran

    Saturday, May 11, 2013   No comments

Scientific journals are being asked to help tighten U.S. trade sanctions on Iran. On 30 April, the Dutch publishing behemoth Elsevier of the Netherlands sent a note to its editorial network saying that all U.S. editors and U.S. reviewers must "avoid" handling manuscripts if they include an author employed by the government of Iran. Under a policy that went into effect in March -- reflecting changes in a law passed by the U.S. Congress in December -- even companies like Elsevier not based in the United States must prevent their U.S. personnel from interacting with the Iranian government.

The sanctions, aimed at punishing Iran for its pursuit of nuclear technology, have been broadened somewhat from previous rules issued by the enforcement agency, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a division of the Treasury Department.

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Benghazi Schools Obama In The Politics Of Scandal

Benghazi Schools Obama In The Politics Of Scandal

    Friday, May 10, 2013   No comments

President Obama has led an administration that so far has avoided a headline-grabbing, signature scandal. But now he's learning how one begins to take shape.

In many ways, the Benghazi story is following the arc of many Washington scandals of the past. It's rarely the initial incident that gets politicians in trouble. Instead, it's the way in which they respond to it.

After months of relative inattention, the media are seizing on missteps surrounding the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September, during which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American officials were killed.

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With Father and Sister Imprisoned, Exiled Bahraini Activist Maryam Alkhawaja Condemns Ongoing Abuses

With Father and Sister Imprisoned, Exiled Bahraini Activist Maryam Alkhawaja Condemns Ongoing Abuses

    Friday, May 10, 2013   No comments

The Bahraini government continues its crackdown on opposition protesters, with demonstrations repressed and scores of dissidents held behind bars. We’re joined by Maryam Alkhawaja, a leading Bahraini human rights activist. Her family has been highly critical of the U.S.-backed monarchy, and they have paid a heavy price. Maryam’s father, human rights attorney Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, is serving a life sentence in prison. He has already spent two years in jail. Her sister, Zainab Alkhawaja, is also imprisoned. A close friend of the family, Nabeel Rajab, is also in jail. Rajab had been the head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. "There has hardly been any real accountability of the Bahraini government of the human rights violations that have been going on in Bahrain for more than two years now," says Alkhawaja, who is now the acting president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

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Syria crisis: US-Russia accord offers no easy answers

Syria crisis: US-Russia accord offers no easy answers

    Friday, May 10, 2013   No comments

By Jim Muir

The vogue word "game-changer" has been heavily overused in recent months. But the agreement that seems to have emerged on Syria from more than five hours of intensive talks in Moscow between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov may turn out to be just that.

For the past two years, the international community has been hamstrung from taking concerted action over Syria, because the UN Security Council was paralysed by big power differences, with disputes between Washington and Moscow at the core.

Now at last the two seem to be genuinely singing from the same song sheet.

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Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra

Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra

    Thursday, May 09, 2013   No comments

The flag of Jabhat al-Nusra flying over Raqqa

 armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Evidence of the growing strength of al-Nusra, gathered from Guardian interviews with FSA commanders across Syria, underlines the dilemma for the US, Britain and other governments as they ponder the question of arming anti-Assad rebels.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said that if negotiations went ahead between the Syrian government and the opposition – as the US and Russia proposed on Tuesday – "then hopefully [arming the Syrian rebels] would not be necessary".

The agreement between Washington and Moscow creates a problem for the UK and France, which have proposed lifting or amending the EU arms embargo on Syria to help anti-Assad forces. The Foreign Office welcomed the agreement as a "potential step forward" but insisted: "Assad and his close associates have lost all legitimacy. They have no place in the future of Syria." Opposition leaders were sceptical about prospects for talks if Assad remained in power.

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Syrian rebel leader Salim Idriss admits difficulty of unifying fighters

Syrian rebel leader Salim Idriss admits difficulty of unifying fighters

    Wednesday, May 08, 2013   No comments

ANTAKYA, Turkey — The defected Syrian general whom the United States has tapped as its conduit for aid to the rebels has acknowledged in an interview with McClatchy that his movement is badly fragmented and lacks the military skill needed to topple the government of President Bashar Assad.

Gen. Salim Idriss, who leads what’s known as the Supreme Military Command, also admitted that he faces difficulty in creating a chain of command in Syria’s highly localized rebellion, a shortcoming he blamed on the presence within the rebel movement of large numbers of civilians without military experience.

“It is difficult to unify the (rebels) because they are civilians and only a few of them had military service,” Idriss said.

Idriss has become the key man in the international coalition that’s battling to end the Assad regime. The United States announced in April that it would funnel $123 million in nonlethal aid through his group, an operation that’s already begun. At the same time, U.S. allies, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, agreed at a meeting in Istanbul that all lethal aid destined for the rebels would pass first to Idriss.

But whether Idriss and his Supreme Military Command can become a functioning military force remains a huge question. While U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was confident of Idriss’ ability to deliver a coherent rebel strategy while keeping weapons away from al Qaida-linked Islamist groups, there’s been little evidence that that’s the case.

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Who is arming the Syrian rebels?

Who is arming the Syrian rebels?

    Wednesday, May 08, 2013   No comments

Human rights activists and military affairs analysts have all concluded that Syria is awash with weapons. It will take years to bring the spread of weapons inside Syria under control. The availability of weapons in Syria is not a safety problem for Syrians after a settlement is reached, it will be a problem of all neighboring countries, especially Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

The New York Times compiled a record of cargo flights believed to be supplied to the rebels show that Syria might be the country with most weapons in the hands of non-governmental agencies at this time.

New York Times compilation of weapons heading to Syria: An Arms Pipeline to the Syrian Rebels

U.S. skeptical on reported use of chemical weapons by Syrian rebels

U.S. skeptical on reported use of chemical weapons by Syrian rebels

    Tuesday, May 07, 2013   No comments

U.S. officials said Monday that they were taking seriously new allegations that Syrian rebels had used chemical weapons but had seen no evidence to confirm the reports.

The Obama administration has said it believes the Syrian government likely used the nerve agent sarin in recent months and has supported a U.N. investigation into the use of chemical agents in Syria, where the government of President Bashar al-Assad has alleged the illicit weapons were used by the opposition.

On Sunday night, a Swiss broadcaster aired an interview with a leading member of a U.N. investigative committee, Carla Del Ponte, in which she said there are indications the rebels, not the government, used chemical weapons. U.S. officials, however, said they did not believe the rebels had obtained sarin or other such illicit agents.

“We are highly skeptical of suggestions that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position.”

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Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement

Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement

    Monday, May 06, 2013   No comments

Ian Cobain and Jessica Hatcher in Nairobi

The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.
In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts.
Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire. In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed.
As a handful of details began to emerge last week from the confidential talks between lawyers for the government and the Mau Mau veterans, the FCO said it acknowledged the need for debate about Britain's past, and added: "It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history." Up to 10,000 former prisoners may be in line for compensation, if the talks result in a settlement. Although the individual amounts will vary greatly, the total compensation is likely to run into tens of millions of pounds.
The Foreign Office knows that compensation payments to Mau Mau veterans are likely to trigger claims from other former colonies. Any such claims, if successful, would not only cost the British taxpayer many millions of pounds; they could result in testimony and the emergence of documentary evidence that would challenge long-cherished views of the manner in which Britain withdrew from its empire.
Former Eoka guerrillas who were imprisoned and allegedly mistreated by the British in 1950s Cyprus are already considering bringing claims against the British government.

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U.N. Has Gathered Testimony Indicating That Syrian Rebels Have Used Sarin Gas, Says Investigator

U.N. Has Gathered Testimony Indicating That Syrian Rebels Have Used Sarin Gas, Says Investigator

    Monday, May 06, 2013   No comments

Use of WMD in Syria could make a brutal war worse

GENEVA, May 5 (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

"Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

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