War in Context

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• The U.S. practice of training and harboring terrorists
• Damn Rolling Stone — for what?
• Rebecca Solnit: Emerging from darkness, the Edward Snowden story
• Global opposition to U.S. drone strikes
• Momentum shifts in Syria, bolstering Assad’s position
• Afghanistan: What Pakistan wants
• How do birds navigate?
• Music: Bebel Gilberto — Close Your Eyes
• Obama’s ‘Insider Threat’ policy equates whistleblowers, spies, and terrorists
• The NSA admits it analyzes way more people’s data than previously revealed
• The creepy, long-standing practice of undersea cable tapping

The U.S. practice of training and harboring terrorists Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:46 AM PDT Blake Fleetwood writes: For more than 50 years the U.S. has harbored and trained Cuban exile terrorists who have blown up civilian planes and mounted raids killing innocent civilians and tourists in Havana and other South American countries. The most famous example of this is Luis Posada Carriles, who Venezuela and Cuba have been seeking [...]

Damn Rolling Stone — for what? Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:36 AM PDT Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden appeared on the cover of Time magazine. What later became an iconic image — the embodiment of evil, global terrorist #1, the face of Islamic extremism, or however else Americans came to view this face — did at the time show a man with an indisputable look of serenity. [...]

Rebecca Solnit: Emerging from darkness, the Edward Snowden story Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:32 AM PDT It’s true that, as Glenn Greenwald and others have written, the American media has focused attention on the supposed peccadillos of Edward Snowden so as not to have to spend too much time on the sweeping system of government surveillance he revealed. At least for now, the Obama administration has cornered the document-less whistleblower at Moscow’s international airport, leaving him nowhere on the [...]

Global opposition to U.S. drone strikes Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:30 AM PDT Pew Research Global Attitudes Project: In most of the nations polled, there continues to be extensive opposition to the American drone campaign against extremist leaders and organizations. In 31 nations, at least half disapprove of the U.S. conducting drone missile strikes targeting extremists in places such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. At least three-in-four hold [...]

Momentum shifts in Syria, bolstering Assad’s position Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:29 AM PDT The New York Times reports: Not long ago, rebels on the outskirts of Damascus were peppering the city with mortar rounds, government soldiers were defecting in droves and reports circulated of new territory pried from the grip of President Bashar al-Assad. As his losses grew, Mr. Assad unleashed fighter jets and SCUD missiles, intensifying fears [...]

Afghanistan: What Pakistan wants Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:28 AM PDT Anatol Lieven writes: To understand Pakistan’s position in the conundrum of Afghanistan’s future, it is necessary to understand that in certain respects, Pakistan and Afghanistan have long blended into each other, via the population of around 35 million Pashtuns that straddles both sides of the border between them (a border drawn by the British which [...]

How do birds navigate? Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:27 AM PDT The Economist: For decades scientists have known that birds’ ability to navigate with great accuracy over long distances, in some cases migrating from one side of the world to the other, relies on a magnetic sense that humans lack. Experiments with homing pigeons performed in the early 1970s found that attaching a magnet disrupted their [...]

Music: Bebel Gilberto — Close Your Eyes Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:26 AM PDT

Obama’s ‘Insider Threat’ policy equates whistleblowers, spies, and terrorists Posted: 17 Jul 2013 06:17 PM PDT Steven Aftergood writes: A national policy on “insider threats” was developed by the Obama Administration in order to protect against actions by government employees who would harm the security of the nation. But under the rubric of insider threats, the policy subsumes the seemingly disparate acts of spies, terrorists, and those who leak classified information. [...]

The NSA admits it analyzes way more people’s data than previously revealed Posted: 17 Jul 2013 06:16 PM PDT Atlantic Wire: As an aside during testimony on Capitol Hill today, a National Security Agency representative rather casually indicated that the government looks at data from a universe of far, far more people than previously indicated. Chris Inglis, the agency’s deputy director, was one of several government representatives — including from the FBI and the [...]

The creepy, long-standing practice of undersea cable tapping Posted: 17 Jul 2013 06:15 PM PDT Following revelations that both the U.S. and the U.K. spy agencies, the NSA and GCHQ, are tapping directly into the Internet’s backbone, The Atlantic asks: how does one tap into an underwater cable? The process is extremely secretive, but it seems similar to tapping an old-fashioned, pre-digital telephone line — the eavesdropper gathers up all [...]