Change: A Painful Process

One of several government buildings targeted in the raids.

Corruption in the form of graft and bribery is a thing of the past to most in the United States. When they hear about corrupt officials taking money from organized crime most Americans think back to the early 20^th century and the mafia. In the Czech Republic however, such corruption has been held to be just a part of life by most citizens.

While corruption is simply accepted by many Czechs, occasionally it comes to the center of public attention as with Thursday’s raid on government offices by Czech police. At 12:30 AM on Thursday the organized crime unit of the Czech police force raided government offices in Prague, the Czech capital.

Several senior officials of Prime Minister Petr Necas’ center-right governing party were seized in the raid including the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Jana Nagyova. While the police refused to give a reason for the raid it was part of a huge series of raids carried out by around 400 Czech police officers throughout the country on Wednesday and Thursday.

The recently increased crack down on corruption in the Czech Republic is seen by many as a hopeful sign of change in the former communist country. Like many former eastern bloc countries, the Czech Republic has continued to struggle with a legacy of corruption even decades after the fall of communism.

According to some commentators Thursday’s raid could be a potential “death blow” to a government already teetering on the brink of collapse due to repeated corruption scandals.

While there is hope that corruption may finally be facing its demise in the Czech Republic, the process may be slow and painful.

DC

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/world/europe/czech-police-raid-government.html?ref=world&_r=0

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/13/us-czech-raid-idUSBRE95C0LY20130613

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22895606

Cyber Warfare: The Secret War Unfolds

The war on terror has taken on a new face in the last few years: and it looks a lot like your computer screen. Over the last two years, the US cyber defense has grown increasingly aware of mounting numbers of attacks on US computers. These attacks have ranged from ambient data collection to full attacks on encrypted commercial mainframes. A few days ago in California, President Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss the international situation, and urged him to address the growing numbers of cyber-attacks on the US.

The irony of this request has now been made public. In the aftermath of the Guardian revelation of the extent of NSA surveillance programs, it has also been revealed that the NSA has allegedly conducted thousands of cyber-attacks into both mainland China and its protectorate, Hong Kong, since 2009. The attacks have included academic computers and some commercial servers, but the primary targets are extremely large bandwidth targets, huge server farms that push many terabytes of data through every day. This allows a single hack to gain access to the data which would otherwise require gaining access to thousands of computers.

Edward Snowden, Booz Allen Hamilton analyst

                The information is according to the NSA leaker Edward Snowden, 29, an analyst with Booz Allen Hamilton (a contractor of the NSA) has come forward as a whistle blower to give evidence as to the extent of the NSA surveillance. In his interview with the Guardian, Snowden explained that he believed that the programs had passed the boundary of secret democratic action, and that these actions needed to be passed through the public. While there is significant question as to the legality of his information releases, Snowden has made it clear that he has no desire to hurt America, but only to see the country grow.

WE

Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/12/edward-snowden-us-extradition-fight

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/12/politics/nsa-leak

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22883807

Chaos in Turkey

Protesters clash with riot police in Istanbul.

Tens of thousands took to the streets in Istanbul, Turkey on Saturday and Sunday to take part in anti-government protests despite Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's call to end the chaos.

The protests took place in Istanbul’s Taksim square, where protesters first clashed with riot police and armored vehicles at the beginning of the protests over a week ago. The protests began as a campaign to stop a government building project in the square but quickly grew into an anti-government riot against Prime Minister Erdogan and his ruling AK party.

Protesters first marched into the square last Friday chanting slogans such as "Tayyip resign!" and "Arm in arm against fascism!" Police responded to the protests with tear gas and water cannons. Far from helping control the situation, the police response caused more protesters to join the Istanbul protest as well prompted protests in three of Turkey’s other major cities.

Turkey, as a predominately Muslim country with a secular constitution, is a country divided between religious conservatism and secular liberality. Many in Turkey’s secular middle class dislike Erdogan’s authoritarian and religiously conservative stand on issues such as the sale of alcohol and public displays of affection. However Erdogan is fiercely supported in turkey’s religiously conservative heartland.

With Erdogan and his ruling party refusing to step down or hold early elections and protesters calling for his resignation, something must change if stability is to return to Turkey.

DC

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/08/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130608

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130531

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/02/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130602

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/09/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130609

NSA: Eyes On You

The US government's Patriot act has been a center of controversy for nearly a decade now, and in that time there have been more than a few dramatic revelations. And now there is another one. In a secret FISA court order, the NSA was authorized to collect data from millions of phone calls from a Verizon sub-contractor. The court order is unprecedented, requiring no suspicion, effectively placing millions of people under surveillance without any cause.

An NSA spokesperson has also maintained that the data collected from these calls is only the metadata associated with them, and none of the contents were kept. Even if this is true, it is still a hugely significant infringement. Metadata includes the recipient of the call, the duration, and can sometimes include the numerical user ID. This, cross referenced over time and with the volume of calls collected can reveal much, including the nature of the relationship between the two callers (active, occasional, or one time calls), and when cross-referenced with other public records can reveal details such as address, license and credit history.

NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland

The order was only discovered by the British news agency the Guardian on Wednesday when the NSA contacted the British branch of Verizon requesting data on all calls made between April 25 and July 19, from both landlines and wireless networks to be updated on a daily basis. The order is also not a new one. It is apparently about seven years old, and this was a routine three month renewal according to Senate intelligence chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. The NSA was created after the 9/11 attacks with the purpose of maintaining surveillance on foreign communications to counter terrorism. It has also been known to monitor domestic phone calls, though with far less apparent frequency.

WE

Sources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/obama-administration-nsa-verizon-records

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/no-such-agency-spies-on-the-communications-of-the-world/2013/06/06/5bcd46a6-ceb9-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP6913a999a8ca48279f208f15e240d9ba.htmlA

Death Tolls: A Five Year High

Over 300 people were killed in Iraq in the last week fueling sectarian tensions that have plagued the country for the last 10 years.

Over 10 bomb blasts killed more then 40 on Tuesday alone, with over 70 deaths on Monday. Tuesday’s attacks were spread around the country, with several of the attacks taking place in the capital city of Baghdad as well as the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The worst attack of the day occurred when a car bomb went off outside a Sunni mosque in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad. The attack killed 11 and wounded 21 worshipers on their way to the Mosque.

While Tuesday’s attacks, as well as a string of attacks on Friday that killed 66 primarily targeted Sunni Muslims a series of around 10 car bombings also resulted in 48 deaths in Shiite neighborhoods on Monday.

Sectarian tensions have been high since the US invasion of Iraq 10 years ago and have been growing over the last year. In December tens of thousands of minority Sunnis protested against unfair treatment at the hands of a majority Shiite government. In the last month the use of violence has increased significantly after an army raid on a Sunni anti-government protest camp killed 60 protesters.

Many see the tensions as being further fueled by the civil war the neighboring Syria, in which primarily Sunni rebels are fighting against a Shiite government. With April's death toll in Iraq reaching a five year high at over 700, experts and government officials fear that the violence will return to peak levels as in 2006-7 when monthly death tolls sometimes passed 3,000.

DC

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/us-iraq-violence-bomb-idUSBRE94K12R20130521

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22606848

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/world/middleeast/baghdad-basra-iraq-bombings.html

"CIA agent" caught in Russia

Russian press service photo of Fogle being detained.

 Few periods of history have been more iconic for international espionage then the Cold War. The Russian KGB versus the American CIA has been portrayed in hundreds of movies and books since the beginning of the Cold War after World War Two. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the espionage between Russia and the US dropped out of the public’s eye, but never ceased happening.

On Tuesday the arrest of U.S. Embassy Third Secretary Ryan Fogle brought the “spy game” back to the public’s attention. The FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB, said that Fogle was a CIA agent who was trying to recruit a Russian intelligence officer to work as a double agent.

Fogle's possessions at the time of arrest.

According to the FSB Fogle was caught carrying technical equipment, wigs to change his appearance, a letter for the instruction of the Russian agent, as well as a large sum of money equaling $100,000. The letter said the money was an “advance” for “cooperation” and offered $1,000,000 a year for continued cooperation and possible bonuses for useful information. The FSB held Fogle overnight before releasing him to the U.S. Embassy.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaulv to discuss the matter as well as to order that Fogle leave Russia. The Ministry said that Fogle had been declared "persona non grata," a person no longer welcome in the country, for "provocative actions in the spirit of the Cold War.”

The U.S. State Department acknowledged that a U.S. diplomat had been arrested but said that it did not expect the issue to have a large impact on the relations between the U.S. and Russia.

DC

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/us-russia-usa-detention-idUSBRE94D0DT20130514

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22522494

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22529251

A Fiery Statement

A truck carrying a Fateh-110 type missile.

Israeli airstrikes hit targets in Syria last week in what is said to be a statement from Israel that it will not tolerate the movement of arms from Syria to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The first target, a warehouse containing surface to surface missiles from Iran, was hit late last Thursday. Israeli planes fired air-to-ground missiles at the warehouse outside of the Damascus airport, while staying out of Syrian airspace by flying over Lebanon. The missiles were part of an arms pipeline leading from Syria to Lebanon that is used by Iran to provide weapons to the Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah.

It is thought that Iran seeks to send missiles to Lebanon in order to use a Hezbollah missile strike on Israel as a deterrent to keep Israel from striking Iranian nuclear facilities. The missiles destroyed in the airstrike were believed to be Iranian-made Fateh-110s, a mobile missile with a range capable of hitting most of Israel from southern Lebanon. 

The airstrikes provoked criticism from countries such as Turkey, and Iran, similar to that caused by Israel’s last airstrike in January. The January airstrike was also carried out to stop the transfer of arms to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah responded to the airstrikes on Thursday calling on Syria to supply them with weapons as a “strategic response” to the Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah went on the say that it would support any Syrian effort to retake the disputed Golan Heights. Syrian state television said last week after the airstrikes that Damascus had given the okay from military operation against Israel in the Golan Heights, which Syria lost to Israel in 1973

DC

Sources:

http://mwr.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/middleeast/israel-syria.html?from=homepage

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/09/us-syria-crisis-hezbollah-israel-idUSBRE9480TJ20130509

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/world/middleeast/hezbollah-syria-israel.html?ref=world&_r=0

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/09/syria-crisis-russia-missiles-idUSL2N0DQ01920130509

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/07/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSBRE9460C720130507

http://www.epictimesnews.com/2013/01/strike-at-dawn.html