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Thursday, 25 September 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 24 Sep 2014 02:38 AM PDT
A still image captured from U.S. Navy video footage shows a Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile (TLAM) is launched against ISIL targets from the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea in the Arabian Gulf, September 23, 2014.
The UN chief is “aware” that the Syrian government did not directly “request” airstrikes on terrorist targets on their soil and urged all parties involved in the US-led anti-ISIS campaign to take all necessary precautions to minimize civilian casualties.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he is “aware” that the US-led intrusion and airstrikes on Islamic State targets were not carried out “at the direct request of the Syrian Government,” in a statement delivered at a climate summit press conference.
However, he noted that Damascus “was informed beforehand” and that the strikes took place in “areas no longer under the effective control” of the government.
“I regret the loss of any civilian lives as a result of strikes against targets in Syria. The parties involved in this campaign must abide by international humanitarian law and take all necessary precautions to avoid and minimize civilian casualties,” the UN chief added.
In a letter to the UN secretary general, US Ambassador Samantha Power used Article 51 of the UN charter to justify air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria, claiming that it was necessary to protect civilians and secure Iraq’s borders.
The US explained that Iraq has “made it clear” that it faces a “serious” threat from the Islamic State militants coming from Syria, a country which Washington says offers “safe havens” for militants.
“These safe havens are used by ISIL (ISIS) for training, planning, financing, and carrying out attacks across Iraqi borders and against Iraq’s people,” the letter reads.
It is because of this threat and at the request of the Iraqi government that the US decided to lead a coalition against Islamic State positions in Syria, “in order to end the continuing attacks on Iraq,” to protect civilians and help Baghdad secure state borders.
Stating that IS poses a dire threat both to the region as well as to the security of the United States, Powers writes that Article 51 of the UN charter provides countries the right to engage in self-defense, including collective self-defense, against an armed attack.
“As is the case here, the government of the State where the threat is located is unwilling or unable to prevent the use of its territory for such attacks,” the letter, dated September 23, reads.
It argues that strikes against ISIS in Syria are justified as the Syrian regime “cannot and will not confront these safe havens effectively itself.”
“Accordingly, the United States has initiated necessary and proportionate military actions in Syria in order to eliminate the ongoing ISIL threat to Iraq.”
In addition, Washington is also conducting military action against Al-Qaeda “elements in Syria known as the Khorasan Group,” which it believes could be responsible for plotting against America and its allies.
The air campaign against the Khorasan extremists was separate from the one targeting the Islamic State group, as the US believes they were close to carrying out “major attacks” against the West.
This US Navy photo shows an an F/A-18E Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31, and an F/A-18F Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 213, as they prepare to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77)to conduct strike missions against ISIL targets on September 23, 2014 in the Gulf.
“Intelligence reports indicated that the group was in the final stages of plans to execute major attacks against Western targets and potentially the US homeland,” announced Lt. Gen. William Mayville, director of operations for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He specified that the group is “establishing roots in Syria in order to advance attacks against the West and the homeland.”
Calling the strikes “successful,” Mayville also announced that more than 40 Tomahawk missiles were launched from the Gulf and the Red Sea, saying “the majority of the Tomahawk strikes were against Khorasan.”
Earlier in the day, US President Barack Obama said that he ordered the strikes in Syria to “disrupt plotting against the United States and our allies by seasoned al-Qaeda operatives in Syria, who are known as the Khorasan Group”.
“Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people,” he added.
However, the US airstrikes will not be “effective, if there is no coordination of actions on the ground and if no ground military operations are carried out,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem told RT Arabic.
“The US is mocking the whole world when they say that they are going to coordinate their actions not with the Syrian government, but with the moderate Syrian opposition. This is funny. What moderate opposition are you talking about?” Moualem told RT Arabic. “This moderate opposition is killing Syrians just like al-Nusra or ISIS.”
If the US “seriously wanted to fight the ISIS and other terrorist organizations,” there would be an international organization under the aegis of the UN, in which all countries would participate, Moualem said.
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Posted: 24 Sep 2014 01:41 AM PDT

Russia has condemned the US-led airstrikes targeting ISIL Takfiri terrorists in Syria, calling the move a violation of international law.
“Russia would like to emphasize that such actions can only be undertaken within the framework of the international law,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Tuesday.
The law “prescribes to have a prior and clear consent of the government of Syria to such actions, or a decision passed by the UN Security Council to that effect,” Lukashevich added.
He also noted that the initiators of the unilateral measure should bear full legal responsibility for their action.
According to reports, the United States and its allies have carried out at least 200 airstrikes against the ISIL militants operating inside Syria. The strikes were carried out without approval of the United Nations. The Syrian government says the US had informed if of the strikes in advance.
The air raids were launched in northern and eastern Syria late on Monday, apparently targeting militants from the ISIL and the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front. However, some 12 civilians are so far said to have been killed in the raids.
On Monday night, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that the US army and “partner nation forces are undertaking military action against ISIL terrorists in Syria using a mix of fighter, bomber and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles.”
The ISIL terrorists currently control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have carried out heinous crimes in the two countries, including mass executions and beheadings of people.
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Posted: 24 Sep 2014 01:36 AM PDT

The issue of security of the Russian segment of the Internet will be a topic for discussion at the meeting of the Russian Security Council, with the participation of President Vladimir Putin and several high-ranking officials. The meeting will take place next week. According to various reports, the officials will make a number of decisions regulating the use of the Internet in Russia, providing for the ability to cut the Russian Internet, known as Runet, from the outside world, in case of emergency.
Officials at the Ministry for Communications, the Vedomosti newspaper wrote, will inform the president on the results of July tests that showed the vulnerability of the Russian segment of the world wide web.
This is not a question of disconnecting Russia from the international network, yet, Russian operators will need to set up their equipment in a way to be able to disconnect the Russian Internet from the global network quickly in case of emergency, the newspaper wrote. As for the state of emergency, it goes about both military actions and large-scale riots in the country.
In addition, the government reportedly discusses a possibility to empower the state with the function to administer domains. Currently this is a function of a public organization – the Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet.
The purpose of the possible measure is not to isolate Russia from the outside world, but to protect the country, should the USA, for example, decide to disconnect Russia from the system of IP-addresses. It will be possible to avoid this threat, if Russia has a local regulator to distribute IP-addresses inside the country, rather than the ICANN, controlled by the United States government. This requires operators to set up “mirrors” that will be able to receive user requests and forward them to specific domain names.
Russian IT specialists have already discussed such an opportunity and said that it would be hard, but possible to do. This will require a connection with a country, where there is no such prohibition. Any CIS country, for example, could become a donor of the free Internet in this case.
The president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, strongly refuted the above-mentioned media reports. “Of course, disconnecting Russia from the global Internet is out of the question,” he said. However, he added, “our partners in the United States and in Europe have been quite unpredictable lately.” “In Russia, we must think how to ensure our national security.” He confirmed that Russia was developing measures in the field of information security.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Coordination Center for the National Domain of the Internet said that they were prepared for Russia’s possible disconnection from the global network. “The infrastructure of national domains that has been built over 20 years, will withstand any attack,” the press service of the center told ITAR-TASS.
The head of the League of Safer Internet, Denis Davydov, said that the changes would be prepared in case Russia was going to be cut off from the Internet from the outside. There is such a possibility, the expert said, although he preferred not to comment on how high such a probability could be.
According to him, ICANN international corporation, which manages all domain names, IP-addresses of the Internet and regulates global address Internet space, still remains under the supervision of the US Department of Commerce.
Rumors of tightening control over the Russian segment of the Internet appeared in spring, against the backdrop of deteriorating relations with the West. It was said that a work group of the presidential administration was developing a new three-level system of data transfer to ensure all traffic of regional and local operators goes only through networks of Russian national operators. It was also said that placing DNS-servers of .ru .rf domains outside Russia would be prohibited. However, press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said that he had never heard of the existence of such a work group.
In early September, State Duma deputies appealed to the government with a request to prepare a “plan of civil defense,” should Russia be disconnected from the Internet, to prevent damage to banking and commercial organizations, the work of which is based on the world wide web.
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Posted: 24 Sep 2014 01:02 AM PDT

The United States’ recklessly aggressive posture towards Russia and China has put them in a position where they are wondering when Washington will attack them, an American political commentator says.
Don DeBar, an anti-war activist and radio host in New York, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Monday while commenting on a retired US Navy admiral’s assertion that the US should keep its nuclear weapons in European countries in the wake of Russian activities in Ukraine.
“Withdrawing our relatively few weapons would be the absolute wrong signal at this moment,” former NATO chief James Stavridis said last week.
DeBar said that “the United States is playing a very dangerous game with Russia, and with China, by the way, but particularly with Russia.”
“Aside from the decision that was made long time ago to implement the so-called missile-defense [system] in Europe and to move NATO up to the borders of Russia, and even aside from the overthrow of the Ukrainian government that took place with the backing of the United States earlier this year, and the civil war, the war that’s been going on in Ukraine on the border of Russia now for six months or more, and even despite the obvious determination of Russia to stand up at this point and say enough and no further, the United States now is contemplating or has announced its intensions to bomb targets in Syria in the face of the Syrian government’s sovereignty basically,” he added.
“With Syria being a treaty-bound ally with Russia – with a mutual defense pact, and with the warning that came from [Russian] Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov over the past few days to the United States that the US must respect Syria’s sovereignty and international law and the United Nations’ charter, the Russians aren’t the type to draw rhetorical red lines, like you see with President Obama, President Bush and President Clinton,” DeBar said.
He went on to say that Russians do say exactly what they intend to do, and they generally do what they said they will do. “And they have said that this is not something that is to be permitted.”
“In a situation where the United States has been encircling steadily — since the fall of the Soviet Union – Russia where it has been more and more aggressive in its treatment of Russia and announced simultaneously — over the past few years — plans to treat China in a similar way, the so-called pivot to Asia, under a condition where Russia and China now feel driven into each other’s arms both in terms of commercial, industrial relations and political relations but also a military cooperation, the continued aggressive posture of the United States towards Russia leads them essentially in a position of wondering when the attack will come,” the activist noted.
“The game the United States is playing…is extremely dangerous, and not just in terms of some possible political outcome but for the survival of humanity on this planet and of most life. And it’s extremely reckless what’s coming out from Washington now and unfortunately the only people poised to stop it are the people in the United States and they seem preoccupied with other things,” DeBar concluded.
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