• Psychologists: psychology research should promote peace and nonviolence

    Political psychologists argue that psychology’s contributions can extend beyond understanding the origins and nature of violence to promoting nonviolence and peace. In a paper, they say they oppose the view that war is inevitable and argue that understanding the psychological roots of conflict can increase the likelihood of avoiding violence as a way to resolve conflicts with others.

  • U.S. worries about proliferation of drone technology

    A new Amnesty International report about U.S. drone use in the war on terror says that the drone campaign is killing so many civilians, that it does not only violate international law, but may be a war crime. The report also says that the growing use of drones by the United States in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia encourages their use by other states and groups. The United States rejects the figures of civilian casualties cited in the Amnesty report as unreliable, and says that the research methodology the report’s authors used is deeply flawed. The United States does agree, however, that there is a reason to worry about the proliferation of drone technology. “Going forward this is a technology that we know more people will probably get access to,” a State Department spokeswoman said.

  • Al Qaeda-linked groups among world's most active terrorist groups

    Only one of the 5,000 terrorist attacks in 2011 is attributed to al Qaeda Central, but more than half of the top 20 most active perpetrator groups in 2011 are linked to al Qaeda, according to new data released laste week in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) based at the University of Maryland. The GDT, a comprehensive, unclassified database of terrorist incidents, now contains information on more than 104,000 domestic and international terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2011. These attacks resulted in more than 225,000 deaths and more than 299,000 injuries.

  • U.S. first nuke in thirty years mired in costly legal wrangling

    The U.S. first nuclear construction project in thirty years is the center of a $900 million lawsuit pitting Westinghouse Electric Co. against Georgia Power. The $14 billion project is about twenty months behind schedule and $900 million over budget, and each side blames the other for the delays and cost overruns.

  • 2008 drone killing of al Shabab leader used phone info collected by NSA

    Court documents filed in the case of Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cab driver of Somali origin accused of aiding al Shabab, reveal that the 2008 killing by a CIA drone strike of al Shabab leader Aden Hashen Ayrow was aided by information collected by the NSA metadata collection program. The NSA was able to pinpoint Ayrow’s real-time location by tracking calls between him and Moalin. Lawyers for Moalin are appealing the conviction on grounds that he was unconstitutionally targeted by the NSA’s surveillance program.

  • MI6 asks for more spies in Afghanistan to fight terrorism after NATO withdrawal

    MI6, the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service, is calling for reinforcements from other agencies in order to strengthen the U.K. intelligence presence in Afghanistan after NATO forces withdraw from the country in 2014. Intelligence analysts warn that Afghanistan will become an “intelligence vacuum” which will allow terrorists to pose an increased threat to Britain. Intelligence sources said that Britain’s intelligence agencies were already “very stretched” and focused on potential threats from Yemen and Somalia, a fact which might persuade al Qaeda to seek to exploit the lack of attention to Afghanistan.

  • Police departments adopt sophisticated, cheap-to-operate surveillance technology

    Advancements in surveillance technology have been adopted not only by the National Security Agency (N.S.A) or other federal intelligence agencies. Local police departments have also incorporated the latest surveillance technologies into their work, allowing them to track individuals for different purposes.

  • Physicians feared terrorists might hack Dick Cheney’s cardiac defibrillator

    In a 60 Minutes segment aired yesterday (Sunday), former vice-president Dick Cheney told the interviewer that his doctors turned off the wireless function of his implanted cardiac defibrillator (ICD) “in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock.” Asked about the concern of Cheney’s physicians, electrophysiologists — these are the cardiologists who implant ICDs – say that as far as they know, this has never happened in the real world but that it is impossible to rule out the possibility.

  • Fighting al-Shabab’s recruitment efforts in U.S. Somali community

    Somali community organizations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are taking a proactive approach to the war against terrorist recruitment in America’s Somali community. “Given our support for the African peacekeeping mission, and the fact that the U.S. remains a top al Qaeda target, we need to get ahead of al-Shabab’s efforts to radicalize vulnerable youth,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Representative Ed Royce (R-California) said in his opening remarks at the hearing on the subject earlier this month.

  • Iraqi war- and occupation-related death toll estimated at half a million

    A scientific study calculating Iraqi deaths for almost the complete period of the U.S.-led war and subsequent occupation estimates, with 95 percent of statistical certainty, that the total excess Iraqi deaths attributable to the war through mid-2011 to be about 405,000 (“excess” death means death not related to natural causes or causes other than the war and occupation). The researchers also estimated that an additional 56,000 deaths were not counted due to migration. Including this number, their final estimate is that close to half a million people died in Iraq as a result of the war and subsequent occupation from March 2003 to June 2011.

  • Jeh Johnson nominated to head DHS

    President Barak Obama will nominate former Pentagon official Jeh (pronounced “Jay”) Johnson as the next secretary of homeland security. Johnson, 56, is a graduate of Morehouse College and Columbia Law School. He is grandson of sociologist and Fisk University president Dr. Charles S. Johnson. From January 2009 to December 2012 he was General Counsel of the Department of Defense.

  • Backlash: growing interest in counter-surveillance tools

    The revelations about the NSA surveillance programs has prompted what some see as high-tech civil disobedience: a growing number of products and applications aiming to limit the NSA’s ability to access encrypted e-mails, obtain phone records, and listen to phone conversations.

  • Turkey exposed Israeli spy network in Iran

    Israel and Turkey used to be close allies, but the relationship began to deteriorate in 2003, when Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister after his Islamic party won the parliamentary elections the year before. The relationship reached its low point in 2010, when nine Turks were killed by Israeli commandos on a ship carrying supplies to the Gaza Strip. This was also the year that Hakan Fidan became the head of Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, the Turkish intelligence service. Fidan is known for advocating a closer Turkey-Iran relationship – the Wall Street Journal wrote that “he rattled Turkey’s allies by allegedly passing to Iran sensitive intelligence collected by the U.S. and Israel.” Stories now emerge that in early 2012 Turkey deliberately blew the cover of an Israeli spy ring working inside Iran to collect information on Iran’s nuclear program.

  • S&P: U.S. government shutdown shaved 0.6 percent off Q4 annualized GDP

    Standard & Poor’s said the U.S. government shutdown trimmed 0.6 percent off fourth quarter growth, taking $24 billion out of the economy. S&P notes that in September, the rating agency expected 3 percent annualized growth of the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter, but that that expectation was based on the assumption that “politicians would have learned from 2011 and taken steps to avoid things like a government shutdown and the possibility of a sovereign default. Since our forecast didn’t hold, we now have to lower our fourth-quarter growth estimate to closer to 2 percent.” S&P warns that “If people are afraid that the government policy brinkmanship will resurface again, and with it the risk of another shutdown or worse, they’ll remain afraid to open up their checkbooks. That points to another Humbug holiday season.”

  • Canadian city developed mathematical formula to evaluate risk

    The City of Hamilton, Ontario has ranked Terrorism fourth on its list of top ten emergency risks, below Hazardous Materials and Explosions, Energy Supply Emergencies, and Epidemics/Pandemics.The city’s ranking of top 10 emergencies for which it plans is not a mere judgment call: The city’s emergency management office uses a mathematical equation to rate the risks to the city and its population.