This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.
- The death toll for the Syrian conflict is 93,000, according to the UN. 5000 people die every month.
- The US announced confirmation of Syria’s use of chemical weapons and the ensuing debate about what the crossing of this so-called red line now means for US action.
- Special UN rapporteur Richard Falk has called for an international inquiry into Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
- A negotiated end is sought to protests and clashes in Turkey.
- Tunisian rapper Weld El 15, on the run from a two year sentence for his anti-police song, has turned himself in.
- The AFP tracks casualties in Iraq (Google Doc).
- The polls have opened in the Iranian presidential election.
- A pre-election hacking campaign targeted Iranian Gmail users.
- President Hamid Karzai demanded on Saturday that Britain turn over more than 80 prisoners of war within two weeks.
- In Kabul, a mid-week suicide bombing in front of the Supreme Court left sixteen or more civilians dead and many injured.
- Bagram was handed over to Afghanistan three months ago, but dozens of foreign inmates, mostly Pakistani, have seen little change in their detention.
- The US disrupted Al Qaeda’s online magazine Inspire.
- Du Bin, a Chinese journalist who had completed a documentary on forced labor camps and freelanced for the New York Times, has been detained in Beijing.
- Korean officials held talks in Panmunjom.
- Threats to journalists by paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland are on the rise.
- Northern Ireland’s police have seized arms ahead of the G8.
- Colombia’s peace talks have resumed in Cuba.
- Brazilian journalist and newspaper José Roberto Ornelas de Lemos was murdered at a bakery in Rio de Janeiro on June 11.
- A group of American physicians have called, in the New England Journal of Medicine, on Guantánamo Bay’s doctors to refuse participation in the force-feeding program.
- An Iraqi prisoner named Abd al-Hadi and identified as a senior Al Al Qaeda commander has been charged in the Guantánamo war crimes tribunal.
- Microsoft and Google both call on the government to allow them to be more transparent and forthcoming to the public about the government’s information/data requests to them.
- Senator Gillibrand’s amendment that would remove military sex assault prosecutions from chain of command and hand them to independent military prosecutors was stripped from the defense bill after backlash from top brass. Gillibrand, however, plans to push the measure on the floor.
- The NSA leaker was identified upon his request as Edward Snowden, who has fled to Hong Kong.
- Will China hand him over?
- Concerned about what it might mean that the government knows your metadata? The Guardian has an interactive breakdown of what information is available from the telecom services we all use.
- ProPublica also has some tips about safer online activity.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently met with surprise success against the Justice Department in FISA court. The EFF is after court documents on government surveillance activity that was found by a FISA court to have circumvented the law, which the FISA court has ruled is legal for them to obtain, (kind of shockingly) rejecting the arguments of the DOJ. Here’s a link to the ruling.
- The ACLU hopes to see court success of its own in its lawsuit against the government over the Verizon metadata dragnet. As a Verizon customer itself, it can claim standing to sue. (The complaint itself.)
- Inside the NSA’s China hacking group.
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Photo: Taksim Square, Turkey. A protester throws a petrol bomb towards the police. June 10. Kostas Tsironas/AP.
