Tuesday, 31 May 2016

It's time for Jane Bond: I spy seven potential 007 actors perfect for the role

If you think the chances of the next James Bond being female are up there with the disappointingly long odds on Captain America starting to date men, here’s a polite history lesson. If it hadn’t been for 2002’s Die Another Day firing blanks with the critics, a suave female super spy operating in the same film universe as 007 might already have sipped down her first minimally mixed martini.

Studio MGM once planned to give Halle Berry’s Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson her own spin-off following the NSA agent’s appearance alongside Pierce Brosnan in Lee Tamahori’s disastrous turn at the Bond helm. Naturally, the idea was swiftly dropped down an industrial chimney after the 20th 007 adventure, with its invisible CGI cars and dumb ice palace lairs, was ruthlessly torn to pieces by the merciless sharks otherwise known as the world’s critics.

Prior to Berry, production company Eon even considered giving Tomorrow Never Dies’ Michelle Yeoh her own movie as Chinese spy Wai Lin. So why shouldn’t Gillian Anderson, and now Game of Throne’s’ Emilia Clarke, tout themselves for the role of “Jane Bond”? Here are seven actors who would make a heavenly

Hang on a minute, Pike played turncoat MI6 agent Miranda Frost in Die Another Day, I hear you cry. But plenty of 007 stalwarts, from Charles Gray to Maud Adams, have appeared in different roles in more than one Bond movie. Pike has the steely countenance, cut-glass Brit accent and spiky sex appeal (as seen in the excellent Gone Girl) to play the suave British agent, and at the age of 37 has the perfect blend of youthfulness and maturity. She’s even played Pussy Galore for a BBC radio production of Goldfinger, and has narrated audio versions of several Bond books. Now at the peak of her career following an Oscar nod for Gone Girl, the role of the new 007 would surely be Pike’s already had she only been born a fella.

She may be of diminutive stature, but assorted swarthy slavemasters, frazzled Dothraki and treacherous maegi could tell you that the 29-year-old star of Game of Thrones is to be messed with at your peril. Still, Clarke barely registered as the new Sarah Connor in sci-fi sequel Terminator: Genisys (a fault, perhaps of the film-makers rather than the actor) last year, and is clearly yet to prove herself on the big screen. She wants it, though.

Anderson is officially bidialectal, meaning that she can pull off perfect English and American accents (a legacy of her mixed roots), which ought surely to make her a shoo-in for MI6 recruitment. Best known for the X- Files movies and television series, the Chicago-born actor was excellent in a supporting role as a hard-nosed Brit agent in the 2012 James Marsh Troubles drama Shadow Dancer, led by one-time Bond candidate Clive Owen. She’s quite capable of pulling off the cruel-eyed menace combined with dazzling charisma that undercuts the very best Bonds, and keen on the role.

Her turn as a no-nonsense working-class spook in the BBC’s The Night Manager might suggest Colman belongs in the gloomier John le Carré carriage of the spy drama express train, rather than Ian Fleming’s more glamorous luxury cabin suite. But the Norwich-born actor also has a powerful background in comedy thanks to long-running stints in cult British TV sitcoms such as Peep Show, and could help return the long-running spy saga to light-hearted territory. Might she make an even better Q?

Now we’re talking. If Winslet can be persuaded to slum it as a dystopian baddie in the Divergent movies, she could hardly turn down the chance to play the first-ever female Bond. The 40-year-old star of Titanic and Steve Jobs has a suitably chameleonic range, as typified by her Oscar-winning turn as a former Nazi prison guard in The Reader, and has topped recent UK polls of actors the public would like to see play 007. She’s never led an action franchise, but what a signing it would be.

About to prove her all-action chops as female Han Solo type Jynn Erso in the new Star Wars (don’t call it a) prequel Rogue One, though there are worrying reports that Gareth Edwards’ movie has run into trouble six months ahead of its December release. Still, Jones picked up an Oscar nod for best actress following her beautifully understated turn as Stephen Hawking’s wife Jane in The Theory of Everything, so she ought to have few problems throwing bad guys and enemy agents off train carriages.

If the perfect candidate ought to combine posh sex appeal and the ability to beat grown men to a pulp, Blunt is the Aston Martin DB5 of Jane Bond hopefuls. More than capable of handling action, comedy and serious drama with all the verve and panache one might expect from Her Majesty’s top agent, the chance to replace Daniel Craig would surely represent just the latest challenge for an actor who has taken Hollywood by storm in recent years. When compared to Blunt’s bad-ass turn as Rita Vrataski, in sci-fi action spectacular Edge of Tomorrow, Hollywood’s top action star, Tom Cruise, exhibited all the screen menace of Nick Nack from The Man With the Golden Gun. And all this from the woman who once played Miss Piggy’s PA.

sourced: the guardian international

US issues summer travel alert for Europe warning of 'greater targets for terrorists'

The US State Department has issued a travel alert for Europe, cautioning Americans that the influx of summer tourists and a series of high-profile events “will present greater targets for terrorists planning attacks in public locations”.

“We are alerting US citizens to the risk of potential terrorist attacks throughoutEurope, targeting major events, tourist sites, restaurants, commercial centers and transportation,” department officials wrote.

The alert came just hours after the French president, François Hollande, said thatterrorism remained the biggest threat to the Uefa Euro 2016 football championship, which is scheduled in June and July.

Announcing the alert, the State Department said: “Euro Cup stadiums, fan zones, and unaffiliated entertainment venues broadcasting the tournaments in Franceand across Europe represent potential targets for terrorists, as do other large-scale sporting events and public gathering places throughout Europe.”

The alert noted that France has extended its state of emergency through 26 July to cover the championship and the Tour de France.

The State Department also mentioned the Catholic church’s World Youth Day, which begins 26 July in Krakow, which it said is expected to draw 2.5 million visitors.

The travel alert follows terrorist attacks in November in Paris and in March in Brussels, which killed 130 and 32 people respectively. The US previously issued aglobal travel alert following the attacks in Paris, and issued a travel alert for Europe specially after the attacks in Brussels. In March, the State Department encouraged citizens to “exercise vigilance when in public places or using mass transportation”.

Unlike travel warnings, travel alerts are issued for a defined period of time around short-term events, according to the state department’s website. Travel warnings are issued when the state department wants “you to consider very carefully whether you should go to a country at all”.

The travel alert for Europe is scheduled to expire on 31 August.

A spokesman for the state department said that the new warning amounted to an extension of the previous one, which was issued on 22 March following the Brussels attacks and was due to expire in late June.

“We took the opportunity, because it’s the beginning of summer, to make our concerns known,” he told reporters.

“I’m not aware of any specific, credible terrorist event around these events or in any particular place in Europe. This was issued ... based on an accumulation of information,” Kirby said.
The British Foreign Office declined to comment but pointed to its own guidance advising of a “high threat” of terrorism in some European countries.

sourced: the guardian international

Falluja: Isis believed to have stopped 20,000 civilians leaving city

Falluja: Isis believed to have stopped 20,0Islamic State militants in central Falluja are believed to have prevented at least 20,000 residents from leaving the city and are offering fierce resistance to advancing Iraqi forces.

A string of cautious early engagements, which are believed to have killed scores of Isis members and a smaller number of Iraqi troops, have set the scene for a protracted and difficult fight for Iraq’s fourth city that will likely expose large numbers of trapped civilians, whom the group is using as human shields.

Almost three days after Iraqi officers declared that troops had breached the outskirts of Falluja, they have stopped at three points near the city’s dense urban centre, which is thought to hold as many as 1,000 Isis members. Many are hiding in a fortified tunnel and bunker network built over the past two-and-a-half years.

Military planners say Isis leaders appear unsure about whether to stay and fight, as they did in the battle for the Kurdish city of Kobani in late 2014 and Ramadi late last year, or to flee and regroup elsewhere as happened during the fights for Tikrit and Sinjar, both of which fell within 48 hours of a final assault.

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Equally unsure is the makeup of Iraqi forces that will eventually move on the city centre, with large numbers of Iranian-backed Shia militias determined to join an attack nominally led by the national military. State forces number around 20,000, nearly a quarter of whom are Sunnis who have been positioned at the vanguard for the almost exclusively Sunni city. US airstrikes have been pivotal to the early days of the operation, the most ambitious launched by Iraq’s military since Isis overran much of the north of the country in June 2014.

Isis had occupied Falluja for six months before then and, despite being besieged since late last year, has concentrated many of its most fervent fighters there. In messages on the group’s main social media sites, it vowed not to leave and threatened to take the fight to Shia forces. In an equally sectarian pitch, Aws al-Khafaji, the leader of the Shia Abu al-Fadl al Abbas brigades, was seen on video on Monday urging his members to “cleanse Iraq of the tumour that is Falluja”.

It is understood that the US military has partly conditioned its support on the Iraqi military taking the lead in the attack and the militias remaining on the outskirts. Air strikes have been focussed on the southern approach to the city centre, which is where the army assault is concentrated.

Some senior Isis figures had fought with the group’s forerunner, al-Qaida in Iraq, in two battles against the US military in April and November 2004. The first fight took a month and the second around six weeks to subdue similar numbers of militants to those now in Falluja.

The long, brutal battles helped give rise to Isis’s reputationfor fielding diehard fighters that can defy technically superior militaries. Sunni militants have since then seen Falluja as a bastion of resistance, not just against US forces but also the Iraqi government, which has long viewed the city and its residents with deep suspicion.

Some Iraqi officials have maintained that Falluja was being used as a command post for Isis members who have launched regular attacks inside Baghdad, 50km to the east, including a series of coordinated bombings earlier this month that killed more than 300 people. The city, however, and its surrounding areas have been sealed for more than two years, with the only access point being through the deserts to the west.

Unlike in 2004, the western entrances to the city and many of the approaches to the cities of Ramadi and Heet, which Isis held until earlier this year, have now been cleared. US officials say the group maintains a small number of “rat runs” into Anbar province, which could potentially be used as an escape route. Paths to the north, which have seen more than 3,000 civilians flee in the past week, are controlled by militias and Iraqi troops, who are allowing women, children and elderly men to cross, but detaining all military-aged males for screening.

Aid organisations had previously accused Iraqi troops of detaining some young men without explanation after they fled Falluja in 2015 and earlier this year, but most detainees are now being released in less than a week.

Iraqi leaders say the move to retake the city is essential to the war against Isis, but it has caught US officials unaware. The offensive came as Washington urged that efforts be focused instead on Mosul, one of two main centres of gravity for Isis, along with Raqqa in Syria.

Falluja is deeply symbolic for Isis and its loss would be damaging for the group. It has, however, concentrated much of its energy in the fight for the two cities through which it imposed itself as a force in both Iraq and Syria, after shredding the sovereignty of both states in 2014. Ever since, the jihadis have shaken the regional order, pursuing a genocide against minorities including the Yazidi sect and attempting to act as a de facto representative of the region’s Sunnis.

“We will beat them in Mosul,” said a senior western official directly involved in the war against Isis. “The Iraqis can wound them in Falluja, but the reality is that this is a confidence builder for them. The real fight starts later, but only when they can sort out their political differences.”

Before the launch of the Falluja operation, Iraqi politics had been crippled by stalled anti-corruption reforms. Two mass protests that breached the country’s seat of government had also weakened the authority of the prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi. The powerful Shia cleric Moqtadr al-Sadr organised both of the rallies, demonstrating a formidable ability to harness public sentiment when the government could not.

Abadi last week urged demonstrators to not invade Baghdad’s green zone for a third time, so his officials could focus on Falluja. Protesters heeded his request, marching towards the area while chanting “peaceful, peaceful.”

sourced: the guardian international

Judge 'manipulated' 9/11 attacks case, court document alleges

The judge overseeing the premiere military tribunal at Guantánamo Bayeffectively conspired with the prosecution to destroy evidence relevant to defending the accused architect of the 9/11 attacks, according to a scathing court document.

Army Col James Pohl, who this week at Guantánamo is presiding over a resumption of pretrial hearings in the already troubled case, “in concert with the prosecution, manipulated secret proceedings and the use of secret orders”, the document alleges, preventing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s defense team from learning Pohl had permitted the Obama administration to destroy the evidence.

The accusation comes in a 10 May defense filing that the military commissions have recently unsealed. It contains significant detail about an episode that Mohammed’s attorneys say has permanently tainted the most high-profile test of the US’s post-9/11 turn toward military justice for terrorism cases.

“First they tell us they will not show us the evidence, but they will show our lawyers. Now, they don’t even show the lawyers. Why don’t they just kill us?” Mohammed, who faces execution, is quoted as saying in the filing.

Mohammed’s attorneys argue that the secret maneuvering left them unable to challenge the destruction of evidence. They contend that the case ought to be scrapped entirely. Their brief quotes a famous 1932 supreme court case, Powell v Alabama, to argue that failing to provide the defense access to evidence “would be little short of judicial murder”.

“Whatever legitimate national security interests might purportedly justify the near-Star Chamber proceedings that have riven this case, there can be no articulable excuse for so clearly misleading Mr. Mohammed’s counsel and preventing them from seeking remedies to prevent the destruction of crucial evidence,” they continued.

The filing does not specify what the destroyed evidence was. Classified annexes accompanying the filing remain withheld.

But on 19 December 2013, Pohl ordered the US to “ensure the preservation of any overseas detention facilities still within the control of the United States” – a reference to the secret “black site” prisons where the CIA and its allies tortured Mohammed and his co-defendants.

According to the defense filing, six months after Pohl issued an evidence-preservation order at the defense’s behest and over the prosecution’s objections, the judge “authorized the government to destroy the evidence in question”. Pohl’s reversal of course was “the result of secret communications between the government and Judge Pohl, which he conducted without the knowledge of defense counsel”, the motion asserts.

That order, issued exclusively to the prosecution, carried with it a direction to provide the defense with a “redacted version”. But Pohl “did not actually instruct the prosecution to proffer any proposed redactions of the order until 18 months after granting the government permission to destroy the evidence, and over a year after it was apparently actually destroyed”, the defense team claims.

“[B]elatedly,” Mohammed’s attorneys say, the commission gave them a version of Pohl’s destruction order “by attaching it to another secret order,” and concluding, “without benefit of ever having examined the actual evidence, that the government’s proffer or a summary of a substitute for the original (now destroyed) evidence provided the defense with an adequate alternative to access to the evidence in question.”

Destroying the evidence in secret while permitting the defense to believe it had been preserved has “substantially gutted” the credibility of the military commission and “irreparably harmed” Mohammed’s ability to defend himself in a death-penalty case, the lawyers say. The episode “call[s] into question Judge Pohl’s impartiality”.

On 24 May, the prosecution led by army Brig Gen Mark Martins filed a response to the motion, but it will remain unavailable to the public for at least another two weeks, according to military commissions rules. Martins declined earlier this month to respond to Mohammed’s attorneys.

Attorneys for one of Mohammed’s co-defendants, Mustafa al-Hasawi, informed the commission that same day that they “reasonably expect to disclose” classified evidence related to the episode in an unscheduled oral argument.

Once proposed to provide swift justice for the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed’s military commission has yet to proceed to trial four years after the Pentagon announced charges against him. Mohammed and his co-defendants have clashed with the prosecution for years over access to evidence and standards of fairness, to include an ongoing controversy about the FBI spying on the defense attorneys. Pretrial hearings resume this week, with Pohl still presiding.

The current military commission is the second Mohammed and his co-defendants face. They were initially charged in 2008, but that commission was voided after Barack Obama launched an ultimately doomed 2010 effort to move the trial to civilian court. In the interim, Obama and Congress passed an overhaul of the military commissions in an effort to bolster their credibility against the charge of ad-hoc justice.

Karen Greenberg, the director of Fordham University Law School’s Center on National Security, said the allegation of collusion to destroy evidence could prove to be a tipping point for the military tribunals more broadly.

“This may well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in underscoring the unviability of the military commissions,” Greenberg said.

“Remember, a main reason they couldn’t have this [trial] in federal court was that it would have been such a circus. And now you have a full-blown circus, with judicial and every other kind of misstepping.”

sourced: the guardian international

Philippine president-elect says 'corrupt' journalists will be killed

The Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte said corrupt journalists were legitimate targets of assassination, as he amped up his controversial anti-crime crusade with offers of rewards for killing drug traffickers.

Duterte won this month’s elections by a landslide largely due to an explosive law-and-order platform in which he pledged to end crime within six months by killing tens of thousands of suspected criminals.

The foul-mouthed politician has launched a series of post-election tirades against criminals and repeated his vows to kill them – particularly drug traffickers, rapists and murderers. In a press conference called on Tuesday to announce the new cabinet, in his southern hometown of Davao, Duterte said journalists who took bribes or engaged in other corrupt activities also deserved to die.

“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said when asked how he would address the problem of media killings in the Philippines, after a reporter was shot dead in Manila last week.

The Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, with 174 murdered since a chaotic and corruption-plagued democracy replaced the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos three decades ago. “Most of those killed, to be frank, have done something. You won’t be killed if you don’t do anything wrong,” Duterte said, adding that many journalists in the Philippines were corrupt.

Duterte also said freedom of expression provisions in the constitution did not necessarily protect a person from violent repercussions for defamation. “That can’t be just freedom of speech. The constitution can no longer help you if you disrespect a person,” he said.

Duterte raised the case of Jun Pala, a journalist and politician who was murdered in Davao in 2003. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Pala, who was a vocal critic of Duterte. His murder has never been solved. “If you are an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you,” said Duterte, who has ruled Davao as mayor for most of the past two decades and is accused of links to vigilante death squads.

“The example here is Pala. I do not want to diminish his memory but he was a rotten son of a bitch. He deserved it.”

One of the world’s deadliest attacks against journalists took place in the Philippines in 2009, when 32 journalists were among 58 people killed by a warlord clan intent on stopping a rival’s election challenge. More than 100 people are on trial for the massacre, including many members of the Ampatuan family accused of orchestrating it.

Duterte has named Salvador Panelo, the former defence lawyer for the Ampatuans, as his presidential spokesman, a nomination criticised by the victims’ families and journalists’ organisations. Duterte, who will assume office on 30 June, also said he would offer bounties to law enforcement officers who killed drug traffickers. He said 3m pesos (£14,450) would be paid to law enforcers for killing drug lords, with lesser amounts for lower-ranking people in drug syndicates.

Outlining some of his other plans for his war on crime, Duterte said he would give police special forces shoot-to-kill orders and send them into the main jail in Manila where prisoners run drug trafficking operations.

He also said he would enlist junior soldiers to kill corrupt top-ranking police officers who were involved in the drug trade. “I will call the private from the army and say: ’Shoot him’,” Duterte said. He urged police not to wait until he assumed the presidency, and start killing criminals immediately. “Now, now,” he urged them.

Police earlier confirmed killing 15 people in a series of drug raids across the country over the past week, which Amnesty International described as a sharp and sudden escalation in the long-standing problem of questionable deaths by Filipino security forces.

sourced: the guardian international

Milky weigh: our galaxy has the mass of 700bn suns, say scientists

Our galaxy has a collective mass 700 billion times that of the sun, according to the most accurate measurement yet by scientists.

The estimate covers the mass of all the stars, black holes, gas clouds, dust, dark matter and other unidentified flying objects in the Milky Way. The previous rough ballpark figure was around a trillion solar masses - the standard measure for big astronomical objects.

Scientists began trying to “weigh” the Earth two centuries ago, and astronomers eventually established the distance to the sun. Later, using Newton’s equations, they arrived at a mass for the sun (it is 330,000 times the mass of the Earth).

But the galaxy had proved more intractable. One big problem is that to arrive at a good estimate, astronomers have to be sure of the speeds of very distant objects. The other is that – because Earth is where it is – only a fraction of the galaxy is visible to telescopes.

“The fact that we sit inside the galaxy does introduce some difficulties,” said Gwendolyn Eadie, a PhD student at McMaster University in Ottawa, who led the study which was presented at the Canadian Astronomical Society’s annual conference in Winnipeg on Tuesday.

“We have a heliocentric perspective: we see everything from the perspective of our sun’s position (and movement) through the galaxy. It’s important that we take the movement and position of the sun into account when we measure the motions and positions of other objects in the Milky Way. Luckily, in this regard I can stand on the shoulders of giants. Over the years, many astronomers have put in an enormous effort to figure out how to take these things into account.”

She and her supervisor, Professor William Harris, an astronomer and physicist at McMaster, made the best of the incomplete data and devised a “galactic mass estimator” to make calculations that they believe are more plausible than any so far. They have submitted a paper to the Astrophysical Journal. The ultimate prize, in research of this kind, is a better understanding of dark matter – the cold, invisible, untouchable but massive material that must act as gravitational glue in every galaxy, but which so far has not been identified. But better estimates of mass will deliver better understanding.

“The mass of a galaxy’s dark matter halo plays a large role in the formation and evolution of that galaxy. Certain properties such as star formation rates and the size of supermassive black holes are known to depend on the mass of the galaxy,” Eadie said.

“So, pinning down the mass of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is incredibly important both for our understanding of our own galaxy, and putting the Milky Way into the context of other galaxies in the universe.”

The new approach, she says, provides an estimate for the total mass held within any distance from the galactic centre. The galaxy is roughly 100 to 120 million light years in length so the calculations are a work in progress. She believes that comparisons of measurements and results will lead to better calculations and more accurate models of the galaxy.

“We can also compare the total mass estimate to the amount of visible matter that we see in the Milky Way and then get a prediction for the amount of dark matter,” said Eadie.

“With our estimate, it seems that dark matter makes up about 88% of the Milky Way’s mass.”

sourced: the guardian international

Trump taunts 'sleazy' media amid questions over donations to veterans

A defensive Donald Trump lashed out reporters during a combative press conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan as he faced sustained questioning over the money he pledged to donate to veterans’ organizations.

The New York real estate developer was under pressure to release details about the $6m he said he raised for veterans during a charity event in Iowa that his campaign organized after he chose to skip a Republican debate hosted by Fox News because of an ongoing feud with the network.

Speaking from a podium at Trump Tower and flanked by veterans wearing camouflage “Make America Great” hats, Trump announced on Tuesday morning that he had distributed $5.6m to dozens of veterans groups, including a personal donation of $1m to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. Trump held up a copy of the $1m check to hammer home his point.

“I raised close to $6m,” Trump said. “It’ll probably be over that amount when it’s all said and done, but as of this moment it’s $5.6m.”

Sneering at the media gathered before him, Trump asked: “Are you ready? Do you have a pen?” He began reading out a list of the names of each organization that he said has received donations, and the exact dollar amounts that have been distributed to the groups.

The Republican repeatedly tore away from the list to rail against the media, calling journalists “not good people”, “bad people”, “so unfair”, “the most dishonest people I’ve ever met” – and even “sleazy”. He called the press coverage of his fundraiser “potentially libelous” and blamed the media for distorting an act of goodwill – which he didn’t want to have credit for – and making it appear duplicitous.

“The press should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump lamented. “I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job.”

He added: “I wanted to do this out of the goodness of my heart. I didn’t want to do this where the press is all involved.”

After Trump announced that he had raised the $6m for veterans in January and posed for photographs of him handing oversized checks to certain charities, the money did not materialize. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Trump had not yet made good on his own donation.

Trump blamed the delayed distribution of the money on a laborious vetting process, and said at this point all the pledged funds have been paid out except for a single check to one organization waiting on IRS approval.

“When you send checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and to companies and to groups that you’ve never heard of, charitable organizations, you have to vet it,” Trump said. “You send people out. You do a lot of work. Now most of the money went out quite a while ago. Some of it went out more recently.”

Asked by an ABC News journalist, Tom Llamas, if this was an example of his tendency to exaggerate, Trump said firmly that it was not. He then returned to the reporter minutes later.

“What I don’t want is when I raise millions of dollars, have people say, like this sleazy guy right over here from ABC,” Trump said of Llamas. “He’s a sleaze in my book,” he continued. “You’re a sleaze because you know the facts and you know the facts well.”

As he continued his broadside against the press, one reporter asked if this treatment was to be expected in the White House briefing room.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “It is going to be like this.”

Outside Trump Tower, a group of veteran activists protested the presumptive Republican nominee waving signs that said “Veterans vs Hate”, the name of their grassroots organization, and “not a political prop”.

Trump claimed during the press conference that the protesters had been sent by his likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton. The veterans said they had not, and as evidence one admitted to having voted for Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s Democratic challenger.

“Donald Trump is trying to discredit veterans because we’re not being convenient props in his narrative of bigotry and hate,” said Perry O’Brien, an Afghanistan veteran.

O’Brien continued: “I’m here because when I served in Afghanistan, I served with women, I served with Muslims, and I served with Latinos – all groups that Donald Trump has maligned and even threatened. All of those folks actually donned the uniform, they actually served their country. As far as we can see, as veterans in the military community, Donald Trump only seems interested in serving himself.”

sourced: the guardian international

Georgian vegan cafe attacked by 'sausage-wielding nationalists'

A vegan cafe in the centre of Tbilisi was shocked to find itself the subject of far-right ire after a group arrived and threw meat on patrons’ plates, leading to a public brawl.

Customers said a group entered the cafe wearing sausages around their necks and carrying slabs of meat on skewers, before attacking customers and staff.

Witnesses described the attackers as “far-right extremists”, and said the clash spilled onto the street outside after the attackers were asked to leave. Minor injuries were reported but the perpetrators fled before police arrived.

A statement issued on Facebook by the Kiwi Cafe on Monday described the incident as “an anti-vegan provocative action” accusing the attackers of being “neo-Nazis” who support “fascist ideas”.

According to the statement, the attackers “pulled out grilled meat, sausages, and fish and started eating them and throwing them at us... they were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us.”

The statement also alleged that memberes of group had come to the neighbourhood a month earlier and asked a nearby shopkeeper whether foreigners or members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community frequented the cafe.

Launched a year ago, the cafe has become a popular meeting place for foreigners and had been showing English-language episodes of the animated sci-fi sitcom Rick And Morty when the violence broke out.

Prank or politics?

Coming just three days after a march by right-wing nationalists timed with independence day celebrations, some Tbilisi residents are concerned that the cafe violence could mark the emergence of organised political actions by Georgian ultra-nationalists.

During a march through the capital, a group appeared carrying banners with the slogan “Georgians for Georgia”.

For locals, the phrase has troubling connotations, bringing back memories of the divisive policies under Georgia’s first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, that led ethnic minorities to declare independence in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the early 1990s.

It remains unclear whether the meat assault was merely a prank that turned violent, or an organised political actions by Georgian nationalists spurred on by the events of the independence day celebrations.

The Kiwi Cafe has pledged to stay open and said it remained “ready to accept all customers regardless of their nationality, race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, or religious views.”

sourced: the guardian international

Dozens killed in bombing of national hospital in Idlib

At least two dozen people including several children have been killed in northern Syria in the latest apparent attack by forces loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime on medical facilities in opposition-held areas, UN officials and activists have said.

The bombing of the national hospital and its surroundings in Idlib city, a provincial capital wrested from regime control last year, was the latest incident in a systematic aerial campaign against medical personnel and facilities that has gone unpunished despite its intensification over the last year and a half.

“There is no use to all of this. The bombing of hospitals will continue and cannot be stopped – that much is clear,” said Zedoun al-Zoabi, head of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations, which operates a number of hospitals in northernSyria. “We have lost hope, and all we can do is build hospitals underground because there is no international decision to prevent the bombing of hospitals.”

The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights said the attack happened at 10pm on Monday, with multiple airstrikes by pro-government forces targeting the national hospital. According to first responders, at least 30 people were killed and dozens of civilians wounded, and the death toll was likely to rise as rescue operations continued, the statement said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several children were among the dead.

It was unclear whether the attack was conducted by Russian or Syrian fighter jets.

locator map

Farouk Kashkash, the hospital’s director, told the Guardian the missiles struck very close to the hospital and put its operations theatre out of service, covering much of the facility with debris and wreckage and prompting patients to flee and staff to go underground. “The staff have stopped working because of the imminent danger,” he said. “We expect everything. What do you expect an enemy to do? They do everything, targeting hospitals, women and children. It is no longer strange.”

Assad’s government considers all medical facilities operating in opposition territory as legitimate military targets under a counter-terrorism law passed early in the civil conflict, now in its sixth year. The act prompted many opposition hospital directors to cease providing GPS coordinates of their facilities to the air forces operating over Syrian territory.

Last month a hospital backed by Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross was destroyed in an airstrike in Aleppo, killing patients and doctors including one of the last paediatricians remaining in the rebel-held part of the city.

As early as 2013, the UN independent commission of inquiry investigating alleged war crimes in Syria said attacks on medical facilities were being used systematically as a weapon of war by the Assad regime. Attacks by both sides on medical facilities have continued unabated in recent months. MSF said in February that a total of 94 airstrikes and shelling attacks hit facilities supported by the organisation in 2015 alone.

In February last year, the NGO Physicians for Human Rights said it had documented 224 attacks on 175 health facilities since the start of the conflict, and 599 medical personnel had been killed.

Humanitarian sources say the Idlib hospital, which was also struck last year, has now entirely stopped operating. It was the fourth medical facility to be targeted in just the last two days by the Assad regime. The Shawqi Hilal dialysis centre in rural Aleppo, an internal medicine hospital in Idlib and a first aid community called Shaam in Idlib were all hit in recent days.

Footage emerged of the aftermath of the latest attack in Idlib, showing civil defence workers recovering civilians and children from under the debris of buildings.

“The search and rescue efforts are continuing by the civil defence teams since yesterday’s massacre and the teams are working on rescuing the victims,” the civil defence in Idlib said in a statement. “A little while ago we rescued an infant and a woman.”

Another statement said: “The planes of the regime and its allies have not stopped violating the ceasefire and the criminality and murder are ongoing.”

Voice recordings from the hospital immediately after the bombing, provided by Kashkash, the hospital director, depicted confusion as staff attempted to escape, shouting that dust had filled the medical facility’s basement.

Syrian government forces withdrew from Idlib last year after a spring offensive by an alliance of rebels known as Jaysh al-Fateh, including the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. The withdrawal was followed by a punishing air campaign that included the deployment of chlorine gas as a weapon.

Aerial bombardment of the province was also carried out by the Russian air force when it intervened in support of Assad last autumn.

The Turkish government, whose territory borders Idlib province, condemned what it called an appalling attack, saying it was further evidence that the Kremlin, Assad’s key backer, was not interested in a political solution to the crisis. Peace talks in Geneva recently collapsed as allies of Assad refused to negotiate a political transition that would ease him out of power.

“It is clear that [the] Russian Federation, who claims to advocate a political solution and the cessation of hostilities agreement, is blatantly disregarding the very principles it purports to uphold,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “We expect the international community to deliver on its commitments without further delay in the face of these crimes committed by the regime and the Russian Federation.”

It is unlikely there will be retribution for the escalating attacks on hospitals in the conflict. In early May the UN security council, including Russia, unanimously adopted a resolution calling for an end to attacks on medical facilities, but such attacks have continued in both Syria and Yemen, where the security council members are either directly involved in hostilities or providing logistical support to the combatants.

sourced: the guardian international

Blair government's rendition policy led to rift between UK spy agencies

British involvement in controversial and clandestine rendition operations provoked an unprecedented row between the UK’s domestic and foreign intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, at the height of the “war on terror”, the Guardian can reveal.

The head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, was so incensed when she discovered the role played by MI6 in abductions that led to suspected extremists being tortured, she threw out a number of her sister agency’s staff and banned them from working at MI5’s headquarters, Thames House.

According to Whitehall sources, she also wrote to the then prime minister, Tony Blair, to complain about the conduct of MI6 officers, saying their actions had threatened Britain’s intelligence gathering and may have compromised the security and safety of MI5 officers and their informants.

The letter caused a serious and prolonged breakdown of trust between Britain’s domestic and foreign spy agencies provoked by the Blair government’s support for rendition.

The letter was discovered by investigators examining whether British intelligence officers should face criminal charges over the rendition of an exiled Libyan opposition leader, Abdul Hakim Belhaj.

A critic of Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan dictator, Belhaj was seized in Bangkok in March, 2004 in a joint UK-US operation, and handed over to the CIA. He alleges the CIA tortured him and injected him with “truth serum” before flying him and his family to Tripoli to be interrogated.

According to documents found in Tripoli, five days before he was secretly flown to the Libyan capital, MI6 gave Gaddafi’s intelligence agency the French and Moroccan aliases used by Belhaj.

MI6 also provided the Libyans with the intelligence that allowed the CIA to kidnap him and take him to Tripoli.

Belhaj told the Guardian that British intelligence officers were among the first to interrogate him in Tripoli. He said he was “very surprised that the British got involved in what was a very painful period in my life”.

“I wasn’t allowed a bath for three years and I didn’t see the sun for one year,” he told the Guardian. “They hung me from the wall and kept me in an isolation cell. I was regularly tortured.”

The secret role played by MI6 was revealed after the fall of Gaddafi, when documents were found in ransacked offices of his intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa.

One, dated 18 March 2004 was a note from Sir Mark Allen, then head of counter-terrorism at MI6, to Moussa Koussa. It said: “I congratulate you on the safe arrival of Abu Abd Allah Sadiq [Abdul-Hakim Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years. I am so glad. I was grateful to you for helping the officer we sent out last week.”

Allen added: “[Belhaj’s] information on the situation in this country is of urgent importance to us. Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from [Belhaj] through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing. The intelligence on [Belhaj] was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo [Belhaj]. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful for the help you are giving us.”

Scotland Yard has concluded its investigation into the alleged involvement of intelligence officers and officials in Libyan rendition operations and an announcement about whether or not to prosecute is imminent.

Whitehall sources have told the Guardian that police and prosecutors have been reviewing the issue for months. They say investigators have been frustrated by the way potentially key witnesses have said they were unable to recall who had authorised British involvement in the rendition programme, who else knew about it, and who knew the precise details of the Belhaj abduction.

“This is an extremely difficult area for police and prosecutors,” said one source. “The problem is, the CPS cannot bring a charge against a government policy.”

The letter to Blair sent by Manningham-Buller, who was director general of MI5 from 2002 to 2007, reflected deep divisions within Britain’s intelligence agencies over the methods being used to gather information after the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Though MI5 has been criticised about some of the tactics used, the letter suggests Britain’s security service had serious misgivings about rendition operations and the torture of suspects.

The Guardian has been told the MI5 chief was “shocked and appalled” by the treatment of Belhaj and vented her anger at MI6, which was then run by Sir Richard Dearlove.

“When EMB [Manningham-Buller] found out what had gone on in Libya, she was evidently furious. I have never seen a letter quite like it. There was a serious rift between MI5 and MI6 at the time.”

She has since said the aim of engaging with Gaddafi to persuade him to abandon his chemical and nuclear weapons programme was not “wrong in principle”.

However, she added: “There are clearly questions to be answered about the various relationships that developed afterwards and whether the UK supped with a sufficiently long spoon.”

The police files with the CPS are understood to describe how Belhaj, his pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar, and children, and Sami al-Saadi and his family were abducted from the far east to Gaddafi’s interrogation and torture cells in Tripoli in 2004.

The British government paid £2.2m to settle a damages claim brought by al-Saadi and his family. Belhaj has refused to settle unless he receives an apology.

Jack Straw, who as foreign secretary was responsible for MI6, and Allen have always denied wrongdoing.

In December 2005, when the first evidence emerged that Britain was colluding in CIA rendition operations, Straw told MPs: “There is simply no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop.”

When the Libyan renditions came to light, Straw said: “No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time.”

He has been interviewed by the police but only as a potential witness. Government officials, insisting on anonymity, said MI6 was following “ministerially authorised government policy”.

Blair said he did not have “any recollection at all” of the Belhaj rendition.

The Blair and Straw denials appeared to be contradicted by Dearlove.

He has said: “It was a political decision, having very significantly disarmed Libya, for the government to cooperate with Libya on Islamist terrorism. The whole relationship was one of serious calculation about where the overall balance of our national interests stood.”

Neither MI5 nor MI6, nor Manningham-Buller, wanted to make any public comment. Whitehall sources insist the relationship between MI5 and MI6 has now been repaired after a difficult period.

Belhaj is demanding an apology and an acceptance of British guilt. He has taken his case to the supreme court, which has yet to hand down a judgment.

Last year, the court was confronted with the prospect of Straw and British intelligence officers deploying the “foreign act of state doctrine” – that is to say, the courts here cannot rule on the case since agents from foreign countries, notably the US and Libya, were involved, and they are granted immunity.

Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, sometimes described as the “James Bond clause”, protects MI6 officers from prosecution for actions anywhere in the world that would otherwise be illegal. They would be protected as long as their actions were authorised in writing by the secretary of state.

However, lawyers for Belhaj say many cases involving deportation or asylum seekers, for example, relate to actions of foreign states and that, in any case, torture overrides all legal loopholes.

An inquiry under Sir Peter Gibson, a retired senior judge, into earlier rendition programmes in which British intelligence was involved, was abandoned because of the new and dramatic evidence about Belhaj’s abduction.

After insisting that the issues were so serious that it needed a judge-led inquiry rather than one carried out by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, David Cameron reversed his position. After the Gibson inquiry was dropped, he said the issues should be taken up by the committee after all.

Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general and now chair of the committee, said shortly after he was appointed last October: “Our longer-term priority is the substantial inquiry into the role of the UK government and security and intelligence agencies in relation to detainee treatment and rendition, where there are still unanswered questions.”

The Gibson inquiry published a damning interim report before it folded. It concluded that the British government and its intelligence agencies had been involved in rendition operations, in which detainees were kidnapped and flown around the globe, and had interrogated detainees who they knew were being mistreated.

It said MI6 officers were informed they were under no obligation to report breaches of the Geneva conventions; intelligence officers appear to have taken advantage of the abuse of detainees; and Straw, as foreign secretary, had suggested that the law might be amended to allow suspects to be rendered to the UK.

It raised 27 questions they said would need to be answered if the full truth about the way in which Britain waged its “war on terror” was to be established.

The questions include:

• Did UK intelligence officers turn a blind eye to “specific, inappropriate techniques or threats” used by others and use this to their advantage in interrogations?

• If so, was there “a deliberate or agreed policy” between UK officers and overseas intelligence officers?

• Did the government and its agencies become “inappropriately involved in some renditions”?

• Was there a willingness, “at least at some levels within the agencies, to condone, encourage or take advantage of a rendition operation”?

sourced: the guardian international