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Four million US government workers hit by cyber breach

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FBI investigating cyberattack that is believed to have compromised data of current and former federal employees.

Since the intrusion, OPM said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks [Reuters]

Since the intrusion, OPM said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The US government agency that collects personnel information for federal employees has said that a cybersecurity breach had compromised the data of up to four million people.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday that it has launched a probe and would hold the culprits accountable, Reuters reported.

“The FBI is working with our interagency partners to investigate this matter,” the bureau said in a statement.

“We take all potential threats to public and private sector systems seriously, and will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) detected new malicious activity affecting its information systems in April and the Department of Homeland Security said it concluded at the beginning of May that the agency’s data had been compromised. The office handles employee records and security clearances.

“This would likely be the largest theft of US government data in the history of the United States,” Patty Culhane, Al Jazeera’s White House correspondent reporting from Washington, said.

“Basically, OPM is like the human resources department of the entire federal government. They also get security background checks for people who want to get security clearances,” she said.

“The big question remains exactly what information was stolen? Was it social security number, your federal ID or was it salary information. Right now OPM is not saying.”

A US law enforcement source told Reuters a “foreign entity or government” was believed to be behind the cyberattack. Authorities were looking into a possible Chinese connection, a source close to the matter said.

A Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington said hypothetical accusations were irresponsible and counterproductive.

“Jumping to conclusions and making [a] hypothetical accusation is not responsible,” and is “counterproductive”, Chinese embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan said in emailed comments.

Security precautions

The OPM had previously been the victim of a cyberattack, as have various federal government computer systems at the state department, the US Postal Service and the White House.

Since the intrusion, OPM said it had implemented additional security precautions for its networks. It said it would notify the 4 million people affected and offer credit monitoring and identity theft services to the people affected.

“The last few months have seen a series of massive data breaches that have affected millions of Americans,” US Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.

But he called the latest intrusion “among the most shocking because Americans may expect that federal computer networks are maintained with state of the art defences”.

It is thought that the ramifications of the data breach could potentially affect every federal agency.

California man brutally beat 82-year-old Sikh grandfather he mistook for 'one of those people'

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Piara Singh

Washington: An 82-year-old Sikh grandfather was brutally beaten with a steel pipe by a man who reportedly targeted him for looking like one of “those people”.

Piara Singh was attacked outside his gurdwara in Fresno California where he was preparing free meals to give to the homeless. He suffered a punctured lung and head injuries and was left lying in a pool of blood, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Two years later, members of Mr Singh’s Sikh community say that while his physical wounds have healed, they are still waiting for closure in the case because of a third delay in sentencing.

The assailant, Gilbert Garcia Jr who was 29 at the time of the 2013 incident, was initially charged with attempted murder but admitted elder abuse and a hate crime in February.

And as they wait for Garcia to at last be sentenced, community advocate Ike Grewal told local KFSN news that the attack was all the more troubling because it is believed the attacker confused Mr Singh for a radical Muslim.

“The Sikhs have been attacked all over the United States after 9/11 and this is not acceptable because we have been mistaken as radicals when we are not,” Mr Grewal said.

Speaking to the LA Times shortly after the incident itself, Mr Singh’s nephew Charanjit Sihota said that police told him they found Garcia hiding behind a tree in a neighbour’s garden, and that as he was arrested he shouted that he hated “those people” and wanted to bomb their places of worship.

Even if his attack was misdirected, legal expert Tony Capozzi told KFSN, it can still be classed as a hate crime. “His hatred was the focus, the driving force, towards that belief,” he said. “And the fact that the victim wasn’t of the religion he thought it was is of no consequence.”

(Agencies)

Obama administration still after Edward Snowden

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A man holds a placard with a portrait of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. | Photo: Reuters

A man holds a placard with a portrait of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. | Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

The White House said Snowden must still face prosecution, despite the expiration of the surveillance program under the Patriot Act.

Former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed a mass spy program ruled illegal by U.S. federal courts, must still face prosecution despite the expiration of the Patriot Act, the White House said Monday.

“The fact is that Mr. Snowden committed very serious crimes, and the U.S. government and the Department of Justice believe that he should face them,” White House Josh Earnest said during a press briefing Monday.

The surveillance program terminated after the Senate failed to reauthorize parts of the Patriot Act which expired Sunday, although the lawmakers did vote to advance the White House-backed Freedom Act so a new form of data collection is likely to be approved in the coming days, according to BBC.

The Freedom Act will curtail the phone records program by forcing the NSA to get a narrower set of records from private phone companies. The bill also requires the agency to get warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and phone call records will be maintained by the telephone companies, rather than being stored by NSA. In May, a federal appeals court rejected the government’s long-standing claim that such bulk collection was permissible under the Patriot Act, ruling instead that the NSA acted without congressional approval. However, NSA critics have expressed concern that that the bill does not go far enough to protect civil liberties of U.S. citizens, as it would still allow the intelligence agency to track calls made by people. The Freedom Act is the only legislative reform that has resulted from the Snowden’s leaks which caused public concern and debate over privacy violation by government agencies. In a series of leaked documents, Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA collects data from almost all U.S. phone calls, along with harvesting millions of emails and other forms of electronic communication.

U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Snowden of espionage and for exposing the NSA program, but escaped prosecution when granted political asylum in Russia where he currently resides.

US Muslim wins hijab case against Abercrombie & Fitch

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Supreme Court rules in favour of Muslim woman who said clothing label denied her a job because of her headscarf.

The company denied Elauf the job on the grounds that wearing the scarf violated its "look policy" [Reuters]

The company denied Elauf the job on the grounds that wearing the scarf violated its “look policy” [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a Muslim woman who filed a lawsuit after she was denied a job at the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing chain because she wore a headscarf for religious reasons.

On an eight to one vote, the court handed a win on Monday to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency that sued the company on behalf of Samantha Elauf, who was denied a sales job in 2008 at a store in the state of Oklahoma when she was 17.

The company denied Elauf the job on the grounds that wearing the scarf violated its “look policy” for members of the sales staff, a policy intended to promote the brand’s East Coast collegiate image.

The ruling was welcomed by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which campaigns for the civil liberties of Muslim communities in the US.

“We welcome this historic ruling in defence of religious freedom at a time when the American Muslim community is facing increased levels of Islamophobia,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

“We applaud Samantha’s courage in standing up for her rights by contacting CAIR, which led to the EEOC lawsuit and to our amicus brief filed with the court.”

The legal question before the court was whether Elauf was required to ask for a religious accommodation in order for the company to be sued under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which, among other things, bans employment discrimination based on religious beliefs and practices.

Elauf was wearing a headscarf, or hijab, at the job interview but did not specifically say that, as a Muslim, she wanted the company to give her a religious accommodation.

The EEOC has reported that Muslims file more employment claims about discrimination and the failure to provide religious accommodations than any other religious group.

Muslim woman claims United Airlines attendant refused her an unopened can of Diet Coke saying it could be used as weapon

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Tahera Ahmad, 31, director of interfaith engagement and associate chaplain at Northwestern University was travelling Friday from Chicago to Washington when the incident occurred. (Photo courtesy: Facebook)

Tahera Ahmad, 31, director of interfaith engagement and associate chaplain at Northwestern University was travelling Friday from Chicago to Washington when the incident occurred. (Photo courtesy: Facebook)

by David Harding & Joel Landau, New York Daily News

United Airlines has been accused of discrimination after refusing to give an unopened can of Diet Coke to a female Muslim passenger.

Tahera Ahmad, 31, said in a post on her Facebook page that the flight attendant was “clearly discriminating against me” after giving the male passenger seated next to her an unopened can of beer.

She did not respond to the Daily News’ request for comment.

Ahmad, who is the Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University, said that in the ensuing argument, one of her fellow passengers told her: “You (are) Moslem, you need to shut the f–k up.”

The alleged incident happened as she asked for the can of pop on a flight from Chicago to Washington on Friday. Ahmad was traveling to attend an interfaith event for KIDS4PEACE to promote peaceful conversations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ahmad was given one can that had already been opened, but said she wanted an unopened can for hygienic reasons.

But she said she was told by the flight attendant: “Well, I’m sorry. I just can’t give you an unopened can, so no Diet Coke for you.”

Ahmad said she then pointed out that the man next to her had just been handed an unopened beer and told the attendant she was being discriminated against. The employee then quickly opened her neighbor’s beer can.

The flight attendant then told the passenger: “We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people, because they may use it as a weapon on the plane.”

Asking other passengers for help, she was then told to “shut the f–k up,” Ahmad claimed.

“I can’t help but cry on this plane because I thought people would defend me and say something,” she wrote in the post. “Some people just shook their heads in dismay. “#IslamophobiaISREAL”

But people on the Internet have supported her and the post had received nearly 7,000 shares as of Sunday morning. Some Twitter users pledged to boycott the airline and are sharing a picture of a can of Diet Coke with the hashtag #unitedfortahera.

United said in a statement issued Saturday night that the flight attendant on Shuttle America flight 3504 attempted “several times” to accommodate Ahmad’s request and there was an initial misunderstanding.

They also said the flight’s crew talked to her when they arrived and the company further reached out Saturday afternoon to apologize to her.

“We look forward to having the opportunity to welcome Ms. Ahmad back,” United said.

A United spokesman declined additional comment to the Daily News.

But Ahmad said in another post early Sunday morning that she was “truly disappointed” by the company’s response, which she said labeled the incident as a can of soda-specific issue and did not addressed the bias she said she encountered.

“It is ridiculing to my integrity to dismiss the discriminatory behavior towards me,” she said. “It is truly disheartening when the discrimination of Americans as myself who are working hard every day to promote dialogue and understanding is disregarded and trivialized.”

 

Ahmad said she was still waiting for a “written sincere apology for the pain and hurt I experienced as a result of the discrimination and hateful words towards me.

“This is not about a can of soda,” she said. “I was really hoping that after speaking with me they would have publicly acknowledged their lack of consistency in following procedure, the flight attendant’s rude and discriminatory behavior and accusations which led to hateful words, and the unfortunate lack of bystander intervention nor the flight attendants attempt to intervene and prevent further disrespect which created an unsafe space for me.”

Ross Ulbricht, convicted mastermind behind Silk Road website sentenced to life in prison

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Ross Ulbricht

by Liz Fields, Vice

Ross Ulbricht, the hiking, yoga-loving libertarian convicted of masterminding and running the online black market bazaar known as Silk Road, has been sentenced to life in prison.

At the hearing on Friday, Judge Katherine Forrest, who has presided over the gnarled case that has revealed many twisted plots and shadowy secrets since it began in January, delivered her verdict in front of a packed courtroom.

“I don’t know that you feel a lot of remorse,” Forrest said to Ulbricht. “I don’t think you know that you hurt a lot of people.”

The 31-year-old Ulbricht, a former Boy Scout, sat with his lawyers. Minutes before Forrest delivered her decision, Ulbricht reportedly made a tearful last plea for leniency to the court.

“I’ve changed — I’m not the man I was when I created Silk Road,” Ulbricht said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I’m a little wiser. A little more mature and much more humble.”

The minimum sentence he could have possibly received was 20 years.

Even in the days before his sentencing, Ulbricht had denied his involvement in running the “dark” website that he had previously admitted to founding as part of a libertarian experiment — a sort of Amazon or eBay-type marketplace where users could buy or sell any description of goods, from drugs and arms to murder for hire, with the supposedly untraceable currency known as bitcoin.

In an impassioned letter to the court this week, Ulbricht made a plea for Forrest to spare him life in prison and instead sentence him to 20 years, saying that creating Silk Road turned out to be a “very naïve and costly idea that I deeply regret.”

“Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit,” Ulbricht wrote. “What it turned into, was, in part, a convenient way for people to satisfy their drug addictions… I learned from Silk Road that when you give people freedom, you don’t know what they’ll do with it.”

Ulbricht’s mother, Lynn Ulbricht, told VICE News ahead of the sentencing the family was “preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”

“Even the best possible is a very long prison sentence for nonviolent convictions spanning two decades of the most productive and rewarding years of Ross’ life,” she said.

To this day, Ulbricht has refuted that he operated the site under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. During the trial, his lawyers tried to convince the court that Ulbricht was simply a patsy, and after creating the site, left it in the hands of another operator — the “real” Roberts — who turned it into the $1.2 billion underground emporium it became before the feds shuttered the site.

But from the start, the evidence against Ulbricht was manifold and damning. Screenshots of drug listings, several journals providing information on transactions in painstaking detail, fake identification documentation, and thousands of pages of chat logs were just some of the data seized by the multi-agency federal taskforce from Ulbricht’s home and laptop after his arrest in October 2013.

Some of that evidence retrieved became the subject of inquiries into authorities’ dubious investigative methods, including early allegations of an illegal search and seizure of data from Silk Road’s servers abroad. The revelation in March that two senior Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents also allegedly pilfered hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoins during the nearly two-year investigation also did nothing to allay the multiple online government-conspiracy theories surrounding the case.

But despite these setbacks, Ulbricht was ultimately convicted in February on a raft of charges, including drug trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, and hiring assassins to take out members of Silk Road.

This week, federal prosecutors sent their own 16-page letter to judge Forrest asking her to slap Ulbricht with “a lengthy sentence, one substantially above the mandatory minimum,” to “send a clear message” to others involved in the dark website racket. Since Silk Road was shut down, many other drug marketplaces peddling similar — or worse — products have sprung up to meet demand.

“Ulbricht’s conviction is the first of its kind, and his sentencing is being closely watched,” the letter says. “The Court thus has an opportunity to send a clear message to anyone tempted to follow his example that the operation of these illegal enterprises comes with severe consequences.”

Forrest appeared to agree.

“In the world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist,” she told Ulbricht as she delivered his sentence. “You were captain of the ship — the dread Pirate Roberts.”

“Silk Road’s birth and presence asserted that its… creator was better than the laws of this country,” she added. “This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous.”

The federal prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to VICE News’s calls for comment Friday.

Lynn Ulbricht said that her son plans to appeal the decision and that his attorneys say there are “very strong” grounds for appeal.

For now, Ross Ulbricht will remain in the Brooklyn, New York, jail he has spent more than a year in since his arrest, teaching his fellow inmates math, physics, and yoga, his mother said.

US media highlight Modi govt's first year failures

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CHINA-INDIA-POLITICS-MODI

New York: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi- led government marks its first year in office on Tuesday, American media has taken a critical view of his accomplishments, saying his flagship ‘Make in India’ drive is “so far mostly hype”, job growth remains sluggish amid “outsize expectations”.

“India’s Modi at One Year: ‘Euphoria Phase’ Is Over, Challenges Loom,” reads a headline in the Wall Street Journal of an article on Modi’s first year as Prime Minister.

“A year after Indian voters handed Narendra Modi a once-in-a-generation mandate for change and economic revival, messy realities are sinking in,” the WSJ report said.

It said that Modi’s ‘Make in India’ drive, aimed at supercharging manufacturing growth, ” is so far mostly hype”.

It cited economic parameters like exports to say that the “economy is merely limping along”.

Inflation-adjusted lending for capital investment last year fell to a level not seen since 2004, it said adding that exports were down for the fifth straight month in April, corporate earnings were dismal and foreign institutional investors have pulled around USD 2 billion out of Indian stocks and bonds in May so far.

The New York Times, in a news analysis, said Modi must face the reality that much of his agenda is still only potential.

“From abroad, India is now seen as a bright spot, expected to pass China this year to become the world’s fastest-growing large economy. But at home, job growth remains sluggish. Businesses are in wait-and-see mode. And Modi has political vulnerabilities, as parliamentary opposition leaders block two of his central reform initiatives and brand him ‘anti-poor’ and ‘anti-farmer’,” the NYT article titled ‘After a Year of Outsize Expectations, Modi Adjusts His Political Course for India’ said.

It said “most formidable of all is a problem” Modi has “made for himself: outsize expectations that he would sweep away constraints to growth in India, like stringent laws governing labour and land acquisition.

The NYT quoted senior vice president at leading Indian garment exporter Orient Craft’s Vimarsh Razdan as saying that the Modi government’s “image became larger than they themselves.

“They have become superheroes. And everyone knows superheroes don’t exist,” he said in the report.

The WSJ article said that while Modi has swaggered across stages from New York to Paris to Sydney, helping put the country back on investors’ maps, “on other key fronts, Modi has moved less decisively, frustrating investors who hoped for bolder change after last year’s election.”

His government has avoided privatising state-run banks and companies, which could trigger unpopular job cuts.

Despite vows to improve India’s reputation for unpredictable tax collection, the government has hit investors with demands for back taxes they say they should not have to pay, it said.

The leading US dailies did give credit where due to the Modi government, saying as he marks the anniversary of his swearing in, he can point to some accomplishments.

The WSJ report said Modi has allowed more foreign investment in railways and defence and helped cut red tape.

His government has also deregulated fuel prices and permitted private competition in coal mining–“market-friendly moves designed to attract investment.”

His administration has also helped open millions of bank accounts for the poor and created new pension and insurance programs.

It quoted Krish Iyer, president and chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores Inc in India, as saying that the company is “seeing a lot of progress in ease of doing business. We feel encouraged by the market- and consumer-driven policies of the government.”

The NYT analysis said chief executives feel that since Modi came to power, India’s business culture has “indeed changed”.

“They rejoice that they no longer have to notarize all documents submitted to the government and say that it is far easier to find bureaucrats at their desks during the workday,” it said.

“By most measures, India’s economy has had a good year,” the NYT report said adding that India is heavily reliant on imported oil, and plunging prices have cut the cost of government fuel subsidies, allowing the authorities to rein in a chronic budget deficit.

Inflation fell to 4.87 per cent in April and foreign direct investment has risen by more than 25 per cent, to USD 28.8 billion in the 2014-15 fiscal year.

It noted other “flurry of changes” that the Modi government introduced including deregulating prices for diesel, petroleum and cooking gas, and raising limits on foreign investment in the defense and insurance sectors to 49 per cent.

Coalfield leases, found to have been sold at artificially low prices, were reallocated through a transparent process as were telecom spectrum allocations, it said.

(PTI)

Sexual violence an 'Epidemic' on US campuses, study confirms

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Activists have long pointed to cultural and institutional "hatred of women" as a cause of rape. | Photo: Reuters

Activists have long pointed to cultural and institutional “hatred of women” as a cause of rape. | Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

A staggering 37 percent of women have been raped, or subjected to an attempted rape, by the time they start their second year of college.

“Sexual violence on campus has reached epidemic levels,” a study published on Wednesday revealed.

The study by Brown University found that 15 percent of the 483 female college students surveyed had experienced “incapictated rape” (when alcohol or drugs are involved), while 9 percent had been subjected to “forcible rape” (when physical force is exercised) during their first year of college.

“If you swap in any other physically harmful and psychologically harmful event, a prevalence of 15 percent would be just unacceptably high,” Kate Carey, professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University School of Public Health and main researcher of the study, told Reuters.

Prior to starting college, 28 percent of the women surveyed had already experienced an attempted or completed rape. This increased to 37 percent by the time the time women start second year of college, the study found.

The research distinguishes itself from other studies for focusing primarily on first-year female students, examining their experiences over time, and distinguishing between “incapacitated” and “forced” cases of rape.

The study suggested four commonly used tactics by perpetrators of rape: manipulation through arguments and continuous pressure, use of physical force, physical or psychological threats, and performance of sexual acts while incapacitated by drugs or alcohol. It also looked at five types of contact the women surveyed had to report in the survey. These include caresses, kisses, or sexual touching; oral sex; attempt at sexual intercourse without success; forced sexual intercourse; anal sex or penetration with a finger or objects.

Intervention to prevent the epidemic of sexual violence on university campus was urged by the researchers. They suggested that “risky drinking behavior” ought to be one site for rape prevention.

Activists for gender justice, however, have long pointed at structural root problems causing rape and femicide. In a 2014 article for Salon, Katie Mcdonough called on people to “examine our culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity, which devalues both women’s and men’s lives and worth, and inflicts real and daily harm. We must examine the dangerous normative values that treat women as less than human, and that make them (…) deserving of death.”

Six months later, Pentagon admits (maybe) we killed some kids in Syria

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While notable for admitting the possibility it killed two young children, admission called “too little, too late” by expert who says deathtoll of innocent people far exceeds Pentagon statement

Five year old Daniya Ali Al Haj Qaddour and her father, alleged militant Ali Saeed Al Haj Qaddour, both killed in a US air strike at Harem, November 5th 2014 (via SNHR)

Five year old Daniya Ali Al Haj Qaddour and her father, alleged militant Ali Saeed Al Haj Qaddour, both killed in a US air strike at Harem, November 5th 2014 (via SNHR)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

In what one journalist described as the “first near-confirmation” of civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led airstrikes inside Syria, an official announcement by the Pentagon on Thursday that one of its bombs “likely led” to the death of two young children was met by derision and suspicion by experts who say the real deathtoll of innocent people killed in such strikes far exceeds the U.S. military’s tepid admission.

The acknowledgement of the deaths was included in a report stemming from an internal investigation conducted by the Pentagon into specific bombings that took place on or around November 5 of last year near the Syrian town of Aleppo. According to the U.S. military, the strikes were aimed not at Islamic State (ISIS) militants—the group used by President Obama to initially justify U.S. airstrikes in the Syria—but rather another militant group operating in the country known as the Khorasan group. Despite early and repeated denials surrounding the incident and a six-month long probe, the report itself states that a “preponderance of the evidence” found by the investigators suggest the bombing “likely led to the deaths of two non-combatant children.”

However, in the wake of the official statement, investigative journalist Chris Woods, who has extensively tracked the civilian impact caused by U.S. drone attacks and airstrikes around the world, was quoted by the Guardian as saying the U.S. admission was simply “too little, too late.”

Woods, who has reported for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and more recently founded Airwars.org, a not-for-profit transparency project aimed at tracking and archiving the international air war against ISIS, said its inconceivable that U.S. military needed six months to investigate the incident and that its finding ignore widely available and key evidence. Citing his own research, Woods said last November’s attack may have killed up to four children, including five-year-old Daniya Ali al-Haj Qaddour.

“I am absolutely sure that Daniya was killed [in the November strike],” Woods said, adding that her mother and brother were also severely wounded in the bombing. The facts about this case “have been in the public domain for six months,” Woods continued, pointing to images and details of the children’s deaths which circulated on social media in the days immediately following their deaths. “I can’t see a conceivable benefit to to waiting six months to confirm this.”

According to the Guardian:

Thursday’s admission comes after several months of denials by the US that any civilians had been killed in either Syria or Iraq during the coalition’s campaign. But watchdog groups, like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, warn that many more civilian casualties have gone uncounted. By SOHR’s count, at least66 civilians have been killed by coalition air strikes in Syria alone since last September.

A family of five was killed in April in a suspected coalition-led air strike in Iraq,the Guardian has reported.

Since 8 August, the US-led coalition, which includes, Canada, Britain, France, Jordan and other countries, has carried out several thousand air strikes as part of the campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State militant group, which last year declared it had established a caliphate across vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. The coalition has launched nearly 4,000 air strikes in both Iraq and Syria.

Earlier this month, Al-Jazeera was among those who reported on a U.S. airstrike in northern Syria which may have killed more than fifty civilians. In a response to the Pentagon’s Thursday anouncement posted on Airwars.org, the monitoring group said it will soon publish its own major report on civilians allegedly killed by the coalition since U.S.-led bombing in both Iraq and Syria began last August. It said:

Our provisional findings show that between 384 and 753 civilians have been reported killed in some 97 problem incidents, according to local and international media, and Iraqi and Syrian monitoring groups.

Verifying these claims can be extremely difficult. Most areas being bombed by the coalition are occupied by Islamic State. Civic society has often collapsed, and local people live in fear of retaliation for speaking out. Even so, evidence linking the coalition to civilian deaths can often be compelling.

“The first claims of civilian deaths from coalition actions emerged just days after air strikes began in August 2014,” said Woods. “Since then, hundreds of likely non-combatant deaths have occurred, many in incidents better documented than the November 5th incident which CENTCOM has now conceded.”

Despite the fact the children were killed during the airstrike, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Terry, commander of the military operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, said that “From the investigation it can be determined that sound procedures were followed and must be followed in the future.”

US releases trove of Bin Laden letters

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More than 100 documents taken from late al-Qaeda chief shed new light on his mindset before he was killed by US troops.

Osama bin Laden

by Al Jazeera

The US has published a trove of declassified documents that shed new light on the mindset of Osama bin Laden, the late al-Qaeda leader, before he was killed by US Navy Seals in 2011.

Hunkered down in his Pakistani compound, Bin Laden pleaded with his followers to stay focused on attacking the United States instead of being dragged into Muslim infighting.

“The focus should be on killing and fighting the American people and their representatives,” Bin Laden wrote in one of the documents revealed on Wednesday.

The letter was among thousands of files found by US Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011 when they descended on Bin Laden’s hideout in the garrison town of Abbottabad and shot him dead.

US intelligence agencies have now declassified more than 100 of these documents taken from Bin Laden’s archive, after politicians ordered the move and critics accused the CIA of withholding material.

The AFP news agency was given exclusive access to the documents ahead of their release.

CIA translations

Jeff Anchukaitis, spokesman for the US Director of National Intelligence’s office, said the release of “a sizeable tranche of documents recovered during the raid” was in keeping with US President Barack Obama’s call for “increased transparency”.

It was also in accordance with a law obliging the spy agencies to review all the Bin Laden materials for possible release, he said.

The documents are Central Intelligence Agency translations of the originals in English, and AFP had no way to independently verify the materials or the accuracy of the translation.

The release came shortly after US journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Washington’s official account of the hunt for Bin Laden and the raid that led to his death was a lie.

But CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani said the declassification had been long planned and had not been intended as a response to Hersh’s report.

From the strategic and theological discussions to the mundane details of domestic funding and security measures, the documents show Bin Laden once again attacking the West in a spectacular fashion.

Mindful of drone strikes taking out senior leaders, Bin Laden frequently referred to security headaches and advised against communicating by email.

He scolded his followers for gathering in large groups and fretted about a microscopic bug being inserted in his wife’s clothes.

He laid out plans to groom a new cadre of leaders willing to risk the dangers of joining al-Qaeda, and his associates discussed arrangements for smuggling Bin Laden’s favourite son and likely heir, Hamza, to Pakistan.

Citing domestic US public opposition to the Vietnam War, Bin Laden argued that the only way to alter US foreign policy was to “start striking America to force it to abandon these rulers and leave the Muslims alone”.

But the documents also highlight deep divisions among his followers over how to wage their campaigns.

Bin Laden warned that conflict with regimes in the Middle East would distract the extremists from hitting hard at what as far as he was concerned was the real enemy – America.

“We should stop operations against the army and the police in all regions, especially Yemen,” he wrote.

The correspondence reflected Bin Laden’s “worry that disunity within the global jihadist movement could spell its demise,” said a senior US intelligence analyst.

The letters also show Bin Laden was stunned by the Arab uprisings that erupted across the region from 2010 and urged his deputies to seize the moment of “revolution” and rally Muslim youth.

ISIL and Bin Laden

Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, which would later morph into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group – and which now increasingly overshadows al-Qaeda – also came up in the documents.

Bin Laden and his then deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, received a scathing rebuke in a letter from some Iraqi supporters, who demanded they denounce the bloodletting in Iraq.

The Jihad and Reform Front warned Bin Laden that God would hold him to account “for blessing the work done by the al-Qaeda in Iraq organisation without disavowing the scandals that are committed in your name”.

“If you still can, then this is your last chance to remedy the jihad breakdown that is about to take place in Iraq, that is mostly caused by your followers,” said the letter dated May 22, 2007.

Bin Laden wrote of the need for large-scale terror operations, even though some of his deputies were finding it difficult to organise massive attacks as they tried to avert drones overhead and US eavesdropping.

One document recently declassified in a terrorism trial in New York but not released on Wednesday quotes Abu Musab al-Suri, an al-Qaeda veteran, who advocated going after smaller targets of opportunity as a more realistic approach, intelligence officials said.

“Bin Laden at the time of his death remained focused on large-scale operations while other al-Qaeda leaders believed smaller operations, or inciting lone terrorist attacks, could succeed at bleeding the West economically,” the intelligence analyst said.

Bin Laden failed to win the argument. After his death, al-Qaeda’s leadership called for lone-wolf attacks, and Suri’s idea of “individual jihad” won out.

ISIL, which was officially excommunicated from al-Qaeda, now controls vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and its online propaganda has been blamed for inspiring attacks from Paris to the Dallas suburbs.

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