Prosecutor explains Mladic mix-up

The trial began — and then it stopped because of so-called “disclosure” problems. What’s up with that?

Prosecutors at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal today gave their first detailed explanation for the bungled opening of the Ratko Mladic trial. In a 42-page filing to the court, they blamed the fiasco on a computer “operator error” that had led to the non-disclosure of around 5,000 documents, or just over 3 percent of the disclosable trial record. They added that the omissions were largely “technical” in nature, and should not require a lengthy trial delay.

The trial, which began on May 16 with a summary of the prosecution case against the former Bosnian Serb military commander, was due to resume on May 29 with the calling of witnesses. But Judge Alphons Orie ordered an indefinite delay while he investigated “significant errors” by the prosecution in the disclosure process. Lawyers for Mladic have called for a six-month postponement of the trial, alleging “an unprecedented disclosure failure whose scope is without parallel in the history of the Tribunal.”

For those interested in the details, I have posted the latest prosecution filing here, along with the defense filing here, and e-mail correspondence between the prosecutor and defense here.

The Caspian’s Naval Arms Race

Satellite image of the Caspian Sea

A rise in the naval buildup of powers on the Caspian Sea highlights the deepening of unresolved regional tensions.

By John CK Daly for ISN Security Watch

---

Why has Russia built a new stealth equipped artillery ship, the Mahachkala, as Kazakhstan prepares to launch the Kazakhstan missile boat, its first domestically built warship, from its Zenit shipyard in Uralsk?

Because both nations are concerned about the security of their burgeoning Caspian energy assets, with Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan also developing Caspian flotillas. While the global media focuses on rising US-Chinese naval tensions in the western Pacific, in isolated Central Asia a maritime arms race has been triggered by the resources of the Caspian, a cultural and political fault line where Christian Europe intersects the Muslim world. The sea, previously peacefully divided between the USSR and Iran, now has new players.

The 143,244 square-mile Caspian is the world’s largest enclosed body of water and is an endorheic sea: rivers only flow into it, with no egress to the open ocean.

What assets are the five nations scrambling to protect? Reserves, offshore production fields, undersea pipelines and tankers. In 2009 the US Energy Information Administration estimated that the Caspian could contain up to 250 billion barrels of recoverable oil along with an additional 200 billion barrels of potential reserves and 9.2 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas.

Before 1991 the Soviet Union and Iran divided the inland sea amongst themselves. Under the 1921 Soviet-Iranian Treaty of Friendship, each had an “exclusive fishing rights in its coastal waters up to a limit of 10 nautical miles,” while the 1940 Soviet-Iranian treaty which supplemented the agreement further declared that the “parties hold the Caspian to belong to Iran and to the Soviet Union.” Needless to say, both treaties became invalid with the breakup of the USSR.

Ripples of discontent

Since the December 1991 implosion of the USSR, three new nations arose in the Caspian region and contested the bilateral arrangements: Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. ever since, the five nations have wrangled about how equitably to divide the Caspian’s waters and seabed, but little has been achieved. Adding to the confusion, the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) did not definitively declare whether the international law of the sea or the law of inland lakes applied to the Caspian, labeling it instead as “a special inner sea.”

Asia-3 Key to Syria Crisis

By Javad Heydarian  May 10, 2012

There are many reasons why Syria isn’t another Libya and so requires an alternative model of resolution, perhaps, similar to Yemen and Egypt where a political arrangement paved the way for leadership transition. This is precisely where the role of Syria’s main Asian allies is crucial to any kind of lasting progress.

Clearly, Syria is in the midst of a protracted humanitarian crisis. With thousands killed and ongoing deadly clashes between security forces and armed opposition – including a bombing attack Thursday in Damascus that killed dozens and shaved the facade off a military intelligence building – the international community  is still struggling to effectively implement a roadmap to peace.

Ongoing shelling of opposition strongholds, especially in Homs and Idlib, has further intensified calls for some kind of international intervention, sentiments given voice at the Friends of Syria Summit at the end of March in Istanbul. Yet it’s also clear that there’s little appetite, especially among many NATO countries, for intervention, whether in the form of establishing humanitarian buffer zones or the imposition of a no-fly-zone.

On top of the mission creep associated with the Libyan intervention, Syria’s superior defensive capabilities, relatively astute and intact leadership, densely populated landscape, and lack of hydrocarbon resources has so far deterred any direct intervention. Yet what makes Syria so special is the degree to which it enjoys tremendous operational, diplomatic, and strategic support from three Asian powers: namely, Iran, China, and Russia.

This means that there only two realistic options: first, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) plan to step up its logistical and financial support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in order to reverse the regime’s military edge; or an international mission followed by independent monitoring and an eventual political settlement between the government and all relevant factions in the opposition, especially the Syrian National Council (SNC).

Nicaragua divided over death of revolutionary leader

Tomás Borge was the last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN).

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega, center right, and first lady Rosario Murillo, center left, attend the funeral of the late Tomás Borge in Managua, Nicaragua, Wednesday, May 2.
(Arnulfo Franco/AP)

---

By Tim Rogers, Correspondent
posted May 3, 2012 at 5:19 pm EDT

MANAGUA, Nicaragua

The firebrand revolutionary and last living founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN), Comandante Tomás Borge, died this week, reopening old divisions from the tumultuous decade of revolutionary rule and counterrevolutionary war in the 1980s.

To his supporters, Mr. Borge was a stalwart revolutionary who fought bravely and endured months of imprisonment and torture to help overthrow the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979. He was both loved and feared by many Nicaraguans for his role in the insurrection in the 1970s and in the subsequent revolutionary government of the ’80s, when he served as the iron-fisted minister of the interior dressed in Cuban-made, olive drab military uniforms. Critics claim Borge quickly went from victim to oppressor, repeating the torture and attrocities of the dictatorship he helped overthrew.

The Sandinista Revolution became a cold war proxy and the United States boosted the Contras to fight the FSLN.

As Sandinistas remember Borge’s life, they are calling him a “man of exemplary courage and principle,” “an example for the youth,” a “great revolutionary,” and even “a prophet of God.” Supporters remember him as a sensible and rational man who was both dedicated to the revolution, but humble enough to recognize the mistakes it made in the 1980s.

“We were victims of arrogance,” he told me in 2005, as we sat in his office amid walls covered in photos of Borge posing with a virtual “who’s who” list of US-identified bogymen: Fidel Castro, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, and Yassir Arafat, to name a few. Borge also kept a photograph of Sandinista namesake Gen. Augusto Sandino posing with his father, a revolutionary from the 1930s.

Borge told me the next Sandinista government, which returned to power in 2007, would implement “more realistic” policies and not repeat the mistakes of land confiscations, nationalizations, or mandatory military service. And so far, despite a couple of notable stumbles, the Sandinista government of today has clearly set a different tack than it did in the 1980s.

Citizen Chen

How a Chinese legal activist became an icon of freedom.

BY ISAAC STONE FISH | MAY 2, 2012

Click here to see the images that are turning Chen into an icon.

After six days of negotiations between the United States and China, blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng left the U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday afternoon. Details remain sparse, but the deal is already proving controversial. Chen apparently told reporters that he believed his wife would be beaten to death if he stayed in the embassy. Zeng Jinyan, the wife of prominent dissident Hu Jia, told Foreign Policy, “I can confirm without doubt that I spoke to both Chen and Yuan [Chen's wife]. Yuan told me she was frightened. Chen said he did not want to leave the embassy and did so because officials threatened to send his family back [to his hometown, where he was under de facto house arrest] if he refused.” Wang Xuezhen, a Shandong-based activist who has campaigned for Chen’s release, told FP, “It’s now clear from several friends that Chen feels threatened.” In an interview with CNN, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who helped negotiate the case, insisted Chen left the embassy of his own free will.

But by being unable to guarantee protection for Chen or his family, the State Department has shown the limits of the United States’ human rights engagement with a man who, to the small group of dissidents, activists, and intellectuals who represent China’s best hope for a democratic future, is an icon of freedom.

Chen is a hero to China’s growing community of liberal activists. FP spoke with a number of Chen supporters, whose views have often been lost amid the flurry of reporting over the diplomatic efforts to free the blind activist. “He’s a very pure moral voice” in a land where moral power is “weak,” said a Beijing-based columnist and author.

Anonymous Hackers Deface International Police Association Website [PHOTOS]

By Jacob Kleinman | Apr 27, 2012 02:52 PM EDT

Members of the hacktivist collective called Anonymous lashed out at the International Police Association http://ipa-iac.org (IPA) on Friday afternoon. The Anonymous hackers responsible left an angry message on the website’s homepage, stating that they defaced the page “for the lulz” (for fun) but also warned that they might have stolen some “sensitive data.”

It appears that Anonymous targeted the IPA for this hack because they saw a glaring weakness in the website’s security and not in order to expose the international organization for any illegal or immoral activity.

A message posted at the top of the page reads, “oHai [hello]… International Police Association (International Admin Center) you will see we haz [had] some #LULZ at your expense maybe you will fix your security issues and of course… we always recommend you NOT store admin passwords in PLAINTEXT For a site like International Police Association… w3 [we] really expected moar [more]… #LULZ the thin…”

The hack was self-credited to Anonymous, and confirmed by several posts on Twitter, but the particular hacker(s) responsible declined to take responsibility, fearing that the “feds” might be watching. The message continues to boast that Anonymous cannot be stopped because “There is no head to cut off motherfu–kers!!!” Before concluding with the words, ” F–k the police!!!!”

On Twitter several accounts associated with Anonymous boasted of the successful hacktivist attack on the International Police Association.

“DEFACED International Police Association http://ipa-iac.org/ by #Anonymous,” wrote a Twitter user called MotorMouth.

AnonOpsSweden also confirmed the cyber-attack, writing “International Police Association #hacked http://ipa-iac.org/ #Anonymous“

The International Police Association is the largest organization for police officers in the world according to Wikipedia, and is not connected to Interpol http://www.interpol.int/ . The IPA was founded by English police sergeant Arthur Troop in January 1950 under the model “Service Through Friendship” with the goal of creating friendly links to encourage cooperation between police officers across the world. The organization currently has around 400,000 members in 64 countries. Its main offices are based in Nottingham, England.

Source: http://ipa-iac.org/ / Screenshot

What Is the Role of Lawyers in Cyberwarfare?

Posted May 1, 2012 5:00 AM CDT By Stewart A. Baker and Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

What Is the Role of Lawyers in Cyberwarfare?Washington, D.C., attorney Stewart A. Baker and Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force, debate whether the U.S. should learn the practicalities of winning a cyberwar—and then ask lawyers for their input—or, instead, set the legal ground rules before conducting cyberwarfare in Patriots Debate: Contemporary Issues in National Security Law. The book is sponsored by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, which invited both writers to address the legal approach to cyberwar.

STEWART BAKER’S POSITION

Stewart A. Baker

Lawyers don’t win wars.

But can they lose a war? We’re likely to find out, and soon. Lawyers across the government have raised so many showstopping legal questions about cyberwar that they’ve left our military unable to fight, or even plan for, a war in cyberspace.

No one seriously denies that cyberwar is coming. Russia may have pioneered cyberattacks in its conflicts with Georgia and Estonia, but cyberweapons went mainstream when the developers of Stuxnet sabotaged Iran’s Natanz enrichment plant, proving that computer network attacks can be more effective than 500-pound bombs. In war, weapons that work get used again.

Unfortunately, it turns out that cyberweapons may work best against civilians. The necessities of modern life—pipelines, power grids, refineries, sewer and water lines—all run on the same industrial control systems that Stuxnet subverted so successfully. These systems may be even easier to sabotage than the notoriously porous computer networks that support our financial and telecommunications infrastructure.

No one has good defenses against such attacks. The hackers will get through.

Even very sophisticated network defenders—RSA, HBGary, even the Department of Defense’s classified systems—have failed to keep attackers out. Once they’re in, attackers have stolen the networks’ most precious secrets. But they could just as easily bring the network down, possibly causing severe physical damage, as in the case of Stuxnet.

So as things now stand, a serious cyberattack could leave civilians without power, without gasoline, without banks or telecommunications or water—perhaps for weeks or months. If the crisis drags on, deaths will multiply: first in hospitals and nursing homes, then in cities and on the road as civil order breaks down. It will be a nightmare. And especially for the United States, which has trusted more of its infrastructure to digital systems than most other countries.

We’ve been in this spot before. As Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell predicted, airpower allowed a devastating and unprecedented strike on our ships in Pearl Harbor. We responded with an outpouring of new technologies, new weapons and new strategies.