Daily Archives: July 28, 2017

‘Controversy, not artistry’: How the media covers Arab art – Deutsche Welle

Posted: July 28, 2017 at 7:00 pm

Maan Abutaleb is the co-founder and editor of the online Arab-language music magazine Ma3azef.comand a radio showwith the same name featuring contemporary Arab music. His debut novel "All The Battles" was published in Arabic in Februaryand the English edition will be published in September.

DW: What does freedom of speech mean to you?

Abutaleb: For me, it means that we can address what we want to address without having to think about freedom of speech. The problem is that you end up having to talk about things because you are not allowed to talk about them or you sort of self-censor and you don't end up talking about something because you are worried about freespeech.

What gets lost in those two scenarios is writing about something just for the sake of the topic itself. For example, at ma3azef.com, we do not want to address something just to break some boundaries. We do not write about a band just because they are controversial. We write about bands because they are good, because they make good music. We shouldn't have to think about whether this falls into our (idea of)freedom of speech or not.

A screenshot of the Arab art magazine ma3azef.com

But there is another aspect to free speech that many do not think about and that is logistics. Some regimes limit access to online tools of communication so we have trouble talking to our writers. We are even having trouble paying our writers because sometimes sending money to them would get them into trouble, like in Egypt. If they cannot be compensated for their hard work, it is difficult for them to write for us.

Is it true that media from outside the Arab-speaking world solely covers art that goes against the government orsocietal norms?

What's happening now is that whether it is the Arab press or the Western press, all of the focus is on the political side and no attention whatsoever is given to the artistic side of a work. You find that books, novels, music andtheater do not get covered for the quality of the art in them but for the topic they are addressing. I think this is a disaster in the realm of arts and aesthetics. My interest in arts and music is purely the artistry. Great art is often not black and white but nuanced and complicated.

A lot of people find this reactionary and old-schoolbut we want to write about the aesthetic value of the work. Often you find that both the people who traditionally repress freedom of speech, like censors or governments, and the people who claim to be pro-freedom of speech are wary of this approach.

For our magazine, I want to say that an album is good because it contributes to this genre:it's interesting, it's engaging, it's pleasingor it's a beautiful work.

On the other side, we are not going to ignore a piece of art because we may disagree with the politics of it. This is what I mean about nuance.

But isn't art intrinsically political?

Of course. If you're from our part of the world, then everything is intrinsically political. We are not battling that. We don't want to get rid of that at all. What we do want to emphasize is that you can be political but at the same time you can also do work that is great art.

The Arab world is a very troubled place right now so artistic thinking does reflect that - Abutaleb

This view of art -that art is OK because it is sensationally political -is a patronizing view of culture that comes from the Arab world. We do not accept that. Subtlety is being lost for easy-to-understand headlines.

That said, the Arab world is a very troubled place right now so artistic thinking does reflect that.

So what type of art is being missed?

What's interesting is what people are doing in different parts of the Arab world, where they are trying to converse with their own surroundings. We are muchmore interested in local scenes in Cairo, where they are writing music that they know their neighbors, their friends and their community will enjoy.

This is one of the reasons our magazine is only in Arabic. We find that there is a lot of value in having a discussion in the Arab world about the Arab world.

Interview: Ole Tangen Jr

This commentary is a part of DW'sFreedom of Speech Project which aims to highlight voices from around the world on the topics of freedom of expression and press freedom. You can also follow the project on Facebook.

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Atheism in Russia Cut 50% in Three Years – Church Militant

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MOSCOW (ChurchMilitant.com) - A recentpoll is showing the number of atheists in Russia has dropped by half in the last three years.

According to the Levada Center, a Russian-based, independent, non-governmental research organization, those who consider themselves "absolutely irreligious" fell from 26 percent in 2014 to just 13 percent in 2017. As many as 44 percent described themselves as "quite religious," 33 percent as "not too religious" and 9 percent as "very religious."

The survey was conducted in urban and rural populations within the respondent's home by a personal interview method. In June, a total of 1,600 people aged 18 and over were interviewed in 137communitiesin 48 regions.

Entrance to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin Mary,opened in 1911,closed by Communist authorities in 1937 and reopened in 1999.

Between 2014 and 2017, the feelings toward Catholics have not changed significantly, but 34 percent of the Russians polled view the Holy Catholic Church with "respect" and 40 percent view the Church with "benevolence." Ten percent have "conflicted feelings" toward Catholics and another 5 percent look on them with "dislike" and "fear" combined. Thirteen percent found it "difficult to answer."

The poll is also indicatingthat Jews are now seen in a more favorable light. The number of those who say they either "dislike" or "fear" Jews has dropped from 15 percent in 2014 to 11 percent in 2017.

As to Muslims, 17 percent have "conflicted feelings," and 13 percent look on Muslims with "dislike" or "fear."

After the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, 500,000 Catholics were estimated to be in the country. Several have since died or emigrated to their ethnic homelands in Europe, such asGermany,Belarus orUkraine. The communist Soviet Union, which persecuted all religions, saw Catholicism as a non-Russian allegiance. Owing to the dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church in present-day Russia, Catholicism is still not officially recognized by the State. As a result, Catholics have commonly been seen as outsiders.

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New Atheists & American Left Fall Out over Islam | National Review – National Review

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On Friday, it became official: The New Atheists are no longer welcome on the left. Battered, condemned, and disinvited, these godless and once-favored public intellectuals are now homeless, spurned by their erstwhile progressive allies.

Richard Dawkins, the famously skeptical evolutionary biologist, was the last shoe to drop. He was disinvited from a speaking engagement at Berkeley because his comments about Islam had offended and hurt...so many people, according to the events organizers.

Dawkins is in good company. His New Atheist compatriots, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, had already been expelled from the party. In both cases, insufficient deference to Islam was the proximate cause. Hitchens was denounced as a neocon for his support of the Iraq War. This was nonsense; he remained a committed socialist, but felt a war on Islamic terror and autocracy was needed. Harris is a liberal, straight and true, but drew the ire of Reza Aslan for refusing to except Islam from his broad critique of religion. Islam is not a religion of peace, Harris often says. In fact, he thinks its just the opposite. For that, everyone from Glen Greenwald to Ben Affleck has cast him as an Islamophobe and a bigot.

That means that three of the much-acclaimed Four Horsemen of New Atheism have been turfed from the left for extending their critique of religion to Islam. The fourth is Daniel Dennett, who also criticizes Islam. The only actual philosopher of the bunch, he is far too boring and ponderous to be noticed, let alone denounced, by anyone. In his place, one can add Bill Maher, a popularizer of New Atheism who has also been barred from Berkeley over criticism of Islam. One by one, these men have been excommunicated from the Left.

What has happened? Why did the Left delight in seeing these men ignorantly mock and vilify Christians, but denounce them when they treated Islam the exact same way?

Confirmation bias deserves at least a part of the blame. The New Atheists have long harbored an irrational fear of Christianity, but Christophobia doesnt worry the Left. Combatting Islamophobia, however, is a progressive priority, and so it is noticed and addressed when it strikes.

The argument that the liberal obsession with Islamophobia stems from a healthy regard for the status of minorities only goes so far. As Michael Walzer, the socialist intellectual, has written in Dissent, I frequently come across leftists who are more concerned with avoiding accusations of Islamophobia than they are with condemning Islamist zealotry. There is a reason, after all, why many Democrats stubbornly and proudly refuse to say the words Islamic terrorism, preferring to speak of generalized extremism.

But these same people who insist that evil men have perverted Islam are usually the first to falsely bring up Timothy McVeigh as an example of a Christian terrorist. Christianity is presented as a reflection of the actions of its evildoers (and even those who disclaim the faith), while Islam is not. The actions of orthodox Islamic believers, the Left suddenly maintains, are no reflection on the tenets of the peaceful Islamic faith.

Farther left, the defense of Islam becomes a defense of Islamic radicalism and intolerance. Slavoj iek sees in Islamism the rage of the victims of capitalist globalization. Judith Butler insists that understanding Hamas [and] Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important.

These voices cannot just be dismissed as aberrant: They are prominent, fiercely secular left-wing intellectuals who find common cause with Hamas which pushes gays off of buildings and stabs children in their sleep and with Hezbollah, the Party of God.

In fact, they join a long line of left-wing apologists for murderous anti-Western regimes. Eric Hobsbawm, the renowned historian, refused to abandon the Soviet Union, even after the tanks rolled through Prague. Professors Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman spent years dismissing and minimizing reports of a genocide in Cambodia as Western propaganda. Michel Foucault, the postmodern philosopher, defended the indefensible cruelty of the Iranian Revolution by claiming that Iran doesnt have the same regime of truth as ours.

Clearly, the Lefts problem is bigger than Islam. Any foreign leader who can be seen as opposing Western, capitalist domination will find some praise or at least rationalizations from progressives. As Alan Johnson, the social-democratic political theorist, has written:

The left is vulnerable...because it takes its cue from what it is against rather than what it is for. In conversation with the Polish anti-Stalinist dissident Adam Michnik in 1993, the liberal philosopher Jurgen Habermas admitted he had avoided any fundamental confrontation with Stalinism. Why, asked Michnik? He did not want applause from the wrong side replied Habermas. You have to read that twice, and then think about the enormities of Stalinism, to realise just how appalling it is. But Habermas was only expressing a piece of liberal-left common sense.

In short, the New Atheists have won applause from the wrong side: the anti-Muslim, crusading Right. Christopher Hitchens, an endlessly entertaining writer who could give it to Saddam Hussein as good as anyone, was every right-wingers favorite radical. Sam Harris started finding agreement with the likes of Douglas Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Rich Lowrys defense of Harris from Ben Affleck appeared in the New York Post. Bill Maher now delights the Right as much as he infuriates it. And the Left, smelling traitors in its midst, simply cannot tolerate this sort of transgression.

But more attention is needed to the specific nature of the Lefts double standard when it comes to Islam. Why must ardent secularists from the Islamic world like Ayaan Hirsi Ali the type of people the Left looks to for inspiration in the history of Western secularism be deemed bigots, while Sharia-supporting conspiracy theorists like Linda Sarsour are cherished? Why has criticizing Islam caused the New Atheists to cross a red line in the progressive imagination?

These positions make no sense if one thinks of the Left as seriously secular, convinced of the need to end the reign of superstition. But American liberals profess neither the passionate skepticism of David Hume nor the honest, urgent atheism of Nietzsche. They prefer to embrace a shallow, culture-war atheism instead.

This culture-war atheism provides evidence, quick and easy, to support the proposition that America is split into two camps: the intelligent, sophisticated, urbane, righteous liberals and the idiotic, gullible, backward, bigoted conservatives. The former are atheists and the latter are believers, flattering one side and bludgeoning the other. In fact, it is this type of thinking that made progressives fall in love with the New Atheists in the first place.

New Atheism pleased the Left as long as it stuck to criticizing God, who was associated with the beliefs of President George W. Bush and his supporters. It was thus fun, rather than offensive, for Bill Maher to call religion ridiculous, because he was assumed to be talking about Christianity. Christopher Hitchens could call God a dictator and Heaven a celestial North Korea, and the Left would laugh. Berkeley students would not think to disinvite Richard Dawkins when he was saying Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion.

Truth be told, New Atheism was always fundamentally unserious. It does not even try to address the theistic arguments for the existence of God. Indeed, philosopher A.C. Grayling insists that atheists should not even bother with theology because they reject the premise. Our new rationalists, it turns out, will not even evaluate arguments that do not conform to their prejudices.

Battering a fundamentalist straw-man with an equally fundamentalist materialism, New Atheism is one big category error. Over and over, its progenitors demand material proof for the existence of God, as if He were just another type of thing a teacup, or perhaps an especially powerful computer.

This confusion leads the New Atheists to favor the rather elementary infinite-regress argument: If God created everything, then who created God? But as the theologian David Bentley Hart replies:

[God is] not a supreme being, not another thing within or alongside the universe, but the infinite act of being itself, the one eternal and transcendent source of all existence and knowledge, in which all finite being participates....Only a complete failure to grasp the most basic philosophical terms of the conversation could prompt this strange inversion of logic, by which the argument from infinite regresstraditionally and correctly regarded as the most powerful objection to pure materialismis now treated as an irrefutable argument against belief in God.

The rest of the New Atheists arguments can be handled even more quickly. Dawkins sees God as a complex superbeing subject to natural evolution and then deems him to be statistically improbable. He may be right, but why he thinks he has in the process critiqued anything resembling religion is beyond me. Dennett, who endeavors mainly to show that religion is a natural phenomenon, seems to confuse his validation of a religious claim with its refutation. Hitchens offers no real argument and plenty of historical inaccuracies. He is generally content to list the bad deeds of believers, explain away or ignore the good deeds of other believers, and then pretend that he has somehow disproven Christianity. Harris, to quote David Bentley Hart once more, declares all dogma pernicious, except his own thoroughly dogmatic attachment to nondualistic contemplative mysticism, of a sort which he mistakenly imagines he has discovered in one school of Tibetan Buddhism, and which (naturally) he characterizes as purely rational and scientific.

None of this New Atheist silliness bothered the Left so long as it flattered the right tribes and battered the wrong ones. It was only once the New Atheists extended their critique of religion to Islam that progressives began to turn on them. Muslims, though largely right-wing before the War on Terror, had become a marginalized group. Seen as the victims of Western colonialism, neoconservative aggression, and day-to-day discrimination, they became a part of the coalition of the oppressed, which is to say, they became virtuous. Islam, consequently, became a faith and tradition deserving of respect, not a mind virus like Christiniaty, busy infecting fools.

As such, attacks on Muslims or their faith not only appeared to be punching down at the innocent, but also became attacks on the left itself. The New Atheists, merely by being consistent and focusing on the most-egregious religious intolerance, in effect surrendered their sophistication and, in the Lefts eyes, joined the ranks of the bigoted, reactionary Right.

There is just one problem: We dont want them either.

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

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US, NATO Forces Train to Deter and Defend in Saber Guardian 2017 – Department of Defense

Posted: at 6:56 pm

CONSTANTA, Romania, July 28, 2017 The Danube River shore was shrouded in mist from smoke grenades as shells fired from naval guns burst in midair and legions of Romanian infantrymen, paratroopers and armored vehicles amassed on the beach. From behind them, a small contingent of U.S. Army Stryker vehicles cleared the way for the troops by raining gunfire down on the beach sands.

The event, a river crossing exercise that took place July 16 outside Bordusani, Romania, was one of dozens of combined combat-training exercises that U.S. Army Europe and the armed forces of 21 European partner nations conducted together as part of Saber Guardian 2017. The annual multinational combat-training exercise took place July 11-20 in locations across Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria and involved 25,000 troops -- 14,000 from the United States and 11,000 from Europe.

The exercise was the military's largest land-force exercise in Europe this year, said Marine Corps Col. Mark Van Skike, the chief of joint training and exercises for U.S. European Command. Saber Guardian is one of 18 exercises in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea that fall under the Eucom Joint Exercise Program.

Led by Bulgaria and the U.S., Saber Guardian was hosted by Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. 'Other participants include: Armenia, Croatia, Czech, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

Realistic Training

The U.S. and European units work and train together in realistic combat scenarios that prepare them to respond in unison to any new security crisis that emerges on the continent. They practice coordinating air, land, and sea forces to launch multidomain assaults or defense operations. And they cooperate to mobilize and transport multinational forces to an area at short notice.

"This is a tremendous experience. We're getting better in interoperability and in establishing secure communications, secure fires and a common operational picture," said Army Col. Jeff Shoemaker, chief of training, readiness and exercises for U.S. Army Europe.

Deterrence is also a core component of the mission. Brig. Gen. Timothy Daugherty, deputy chief of staff for operations for USAREUR, said the United States demonstrates through these exercises that it will stand with its European partners, and that all the participating nations together show that they can be a powerful unified fighting force -- and that adversaries who see this may be much less likely to launch an attack in the first place.

"That is absolutely a viable deterrent. When an adversary sees that we can consolidate troops very quickly and relatively effectively, that is a deterrent. We're deterring them, because they know that it would be costly to attack," Daugherty said.

U.S. Army Europe and its partners conducted the first Saber Guardian exercise in 2013. It took on added importance in its organizers' eyes a year later with Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, said Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of U.S. Army Europe. European military leaders needed assurance that they and the United States could act together to prevent warfare from erupting further west into Europe's heartland, he said.

Hodges noted that NATO nations held a summit in July 2016 in Warsaw, Poland, in which they called for building a stronger "forward defense force" in Central and Eastern Europe to counteract new regional threats.

"With its illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia changed the security environment in Europe. That's why the alliance made the decision that we had to reassure our allies and deter further aggression," Hodges said.

In the meantime, the exercises can better prepare the militaries of NATO member nations if new crises emerge, Shoemaker said. But he, too, foresees Saber Guardian offering NATO some pathways forward.

"The goal is to synchronize the NATO exercise program with the USAREUR exercise program so that they complement one another," he said. "We have a number of countries that will leave Saber Guardian at a much better level of training, and certainly NATO will benefit from that. It builds the entire multinational military capability."

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NATO membership, assassinations, political warfare – The Ukrainian Weekly (press release) (subscription)

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18 mins ago Must reads/In the Press By Staff | 18 mins ago

Will Ukraine join NATO? A course for disappointment, by Steven Pifer, Brookings Institution July 25 (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/07/25/will-ukraine-join-nato-a-course-for-disappointment/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm _content=54625936):

Following the visit to Kyiv by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier this month, President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine would seek to meet the alliances membership criteria by 2020.

Ukraine today is involved in an undeclared, low-intensity conflict with Russia in the Donbas. That is not a conflict of Kyivs choosing, but one forced upon it by Moscow. The Kremlin has organized, led, funded, armed and otherwise supported in some cases with regular units of the Russian army violent separatism in Donetsk and Luhansk of a kind that Russia itself would never tolerate

Even if the Donbas conflict were settled, there would remain the issue of Crimea and its illegal seizure, occupation and annexation by Russia.

Until the simmering conflict in the Donbas and frozen conflict in Crimea are resolved, Ukraine has little prospect of membership. Bringing Ukraine in with the ongoing disputes would mean that NATO would face an Article 5 contingency against Russia on day one of Kyivs membership.

the Ukrainian government needs to manage expectations, not fan them. Setting membership as a goal with a fixed near-term date sets a target that will not be met. Kyiv should continue to deepen its cooperation with NATO and incorporate the reforms that it would undertake in a membership action plan in its annual action plans with the alliance. instead of pressing NATO for an early membership signal, the Ukrainian government should urge that the alliance maintain its open door policy. Kyiv cannot get in now. It wants to ensure, however, that not now does not become never.

Flurry of Kiev [sic] assassinations a new Russian front in Ukraine, by Hannah Thoburn, Hudson Institute, July 11 (https://www.hudson.org/research/ 13757-flurry-of-kiev-assassinations-a-new-russian-front-in-ukraine):

Since July 2016, when the Belarusian-turned-Ukrainian investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed by a car bomb detonated in the middle of a Kyiv street, two Ukrainian army colonels have been killed by car bombs and two pro-Ukrainian Russian nationals targeted for assassination. On June 27, Maksym Shapoval died when a bomb placed in his car exploded in Kyiv. His colleague Lieutenant Colonel Oleksander Kharaberiush perished similarly in March 2017 in the southeastern city of Mariupol. Both men worked in military intelligence.

March 2017 also saw the assassination of Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian lawmaker who had absconded to Kyiv and was helping Ukrainian authorities to prepare their case against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. He was shot down in central Kyiv despite having a bodyguard at his side.

The murders are rather an offshoot of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The war has increasingly left its cozy confines 350 miles away and is slowly creeping into the calm streets of the capital. The Ukrainian authorities have been powerless to stop the trend. And that might just be the point.

It is this weakness that the perpetrators of the killings all are almost certainly done by or linked to agents of the Russian government hope to highlight.

Heres how to fight back against Russian political warfare, by Alexander Vershbow, Atlantic Council, June 21 (http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/here-s-how-to-fight-back-against-russian-political-warfare):

Three and a half years ago, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and launched its campaign to destabilize eastern Ukraine.

Russia has also engaged in political aggression against our societies, using cyberattacks, disinformation, propaganda, and influence operations (what the Soviets called active measures) to affect the outcome of elections and to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.

Russia wants to turn back the clock to a time when Russia dominated neighboring countries through force and coercion. Using cyberattacks, disinformation, economic warfare and active measures, it aims to weaken and divide NATO and the European Union (EU), which it sees as the main obstacles to its expanded power in Europe, and to reduce their attractiveness to other European nations.

Our strategy for meeting the Russian challenge must begin with, but go beyond, bolstering our defense and deterrence against potential Russian military threats. We also need to support Russias neighbors in their efforts to build strong, resilient societies and defend their sovereignty.

Multilaterally, we should urge our NATO allies to support a bigger alliance role in countering influence operations, disinformation and active measures by Russia. defending our societies is just as important as defending our borders. Collaboration between NATO and the EU would make sense in countering propaganda and disinformation, in sharing intelligence about cyber and other asymmetric threats, and in conducting joint exercises to ensure that little green men are not able to do to our countries what they did to Ukraine.

The free world is still worth fighting for, by Daniel Fried, The Washington Post, June 14 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/ 06/14/the-free-world-is-still-worth-fighting-for/?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.324c0a 6349c5):

The free world order is now challenged by a new nationalism, which rejects on principle an open, rules-based world; prefers zero-sum bilateral relations; and loathes transnational solidarity and cosmopolitan values. The nationalist idea has power and many powerful friends in Moscow, Europe and even Washington.

What then must we, who believe in the free world, do? In the short run, we must turn back Russia aggression. We must help the Ukrainians defend themselves, maintaining and possibly intensifying sanctions while pushing for a settlement that restores Ukraine to the Ukrainians. And we must work through NATO and the European Union to resist Russian leverage, both military and energy, and to expose Russian propaganda, dirty money and election interference.

We must also challenge the new nationalism with a new patriotism. The West needs to make room for patriotism in this liberal form, bound to higher principles. And we should define the nation based on cultural, linguistic and civic, not ethno-tribal, terms.

Most important, we need to recommit to the ideals of the free world. We must make the case that our interests are best served when our values advance; that these values include the rule of law at home and a rules-based world, human rights and democracy; that our nations successes depend on the success of others; and that the nation state, and the free world itself, are not ends in themselves but earn legitimacy as they serve these higher purposes.

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NATO was the real guarantor of peace in Europe, not the EU: Campbell – Derry Journal

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East Derry DUP MP Gregory Campbell has claimed that the real guarantor of peace in Europe since the Second World War has been the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), not the European Union (EU).

The MP, whose party was one of the few in the North to openly advocate a United Kingdom Brexit from the EU, said that to claim that the union, an outgrowth of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) trading pact, had cemented peace on the continent was to misread history.

Mr. Campbell said NATO, the western common defence alliance, which throughout the Cold War squared up against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellite states in central and eastern Europe, was the real peace-keeper, not the EU.

The DUP MP said that ongoing military collaboration with the several former Warsaw Pact nations, which controversially joined NATO following the collapse of the Soviet Union, should continue.

The security of Europe in the past, the present and hopefully the future, even in the central European belt, has been thanks to NATO, said Mr. Campbell.

The DUP MP argued that we should build and strengthen our relationship with all the NATO nations and not allow the misreading of history that says the European Union cemented peace, when it was in fact NATO.

Polish-born Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski agreed with Mr. Campbell saying the late 20th centurys relative peace had nothing to do with the EU. Mr. Kawczynski said he had struggled to get this message across during the Brexit referendum campaign.

He said: In the referendum campaign in Shrewsbury, one couple came up to me and said, Im going to vote for remain because the European Union has maintained peace in Europe over the last 60 years, and I had to spend the next 15 minutes explaining very succinctly that it is nothing to do with the EU.

What has kept peace in Europe in our time, thank God, has been that collective defence mechanism - anchored, I have to say, by support from the Americans and the Canadians.

Mr. Kawczynski added: We must trumpet the importance of NATO. We must also work with our Polish friends to ensure that they take the lead within the European Union in ensuring that, although the United Kingdom is pulling out of the EU, NATO continues to be supreme as the sole common defence umbrella for the whole continent.

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Mid Range | Firewalls | SonicWall

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_productName NSA 6600 NSA 5600 NSA 4600 NSA 3600 NSA 2600 Deep Packet Inspection Firewall TotalSecure Firewall Overview S S S S S Stateful Packet Inspection Firewall TotalSecure Firewall Overview S S S S S Unlimited File Size Protection TotalSecure Firewall Overview S S S S S Protocols Scanned TotalSecure Firewall Overview S S S S S Application Intelligence and Control Threat Prevention Services Available S S S S S Intrusion Prevention Service Threat Prevention Services Available S S S S S Gateway Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Threat Prevention Services Available S S S S S Content & URL Filtering (CFS) Threat Prevention Services Available S S S S S SSL Inspection (DPI SSL) Threat Prevention Services Available S S S S S Content Filtering Client (CFC)1 Threat Prevention Services Available O O O O O Analyzer Reporting1 Threat Prevention Services Available O O O O O Capture Advance Threat Protection1 Threat Prevention Services Available O O O O O Enforced Client Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware (McAfee or Kaspersky) Threat Prevention Services Available O O O O O 24x7 Support Threat Prevention Services Available S S S S S Interfaces Firewall General 4x10GbE SFP+, 8x1GbE SFP, 8x1GbE, 1GbE Management, 1 Console 2x10GbE SFP+, 4x1GbE SFP, 12x1GbE, 1GbE Management, 1 Console 2x10GbE SFP+, 4x1GbE SFP, 12x1GbE, 1GbE Management, 1 Console 2x10GbE SFP+, 4x1GbE SFP, 12x1GbE, 1GbE Management, 1 Console 8x1 GbE, 1GbE Management, 1 Console Management Firewall General CLI, SSH, GUI, GMS CLI, SSH, GUI, GMS CLI, SSH, GUI, GMS CLI, SSH, GUI, GMS CLI, SSH, GUI, GMS Nodes Supported Firewall General Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted RAM Firewall General 4 GB 4 GB 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB Visual Information Display (LCD Display) Firewall General N N N N N Site-to-Site VPN Tunnels Firewall General 6000 4000 1500 1000 75 Global VPN Clients (Maximum) Firewall General 2000 (6000) 2000 (4000) 500 (3000) 50 (1000) 10 (250) SSL VPN NetExtender Clients (Maximum) Firewall General 2 (1500) 2 (1000) 2 (500) 2 (350) 2 (250) VLAN Interfaces Firewall General 500 400 256 256 256 SonicPoints Wireless Controller Firewall General S S S S S WWAN Failover (4G/LTE) Firewall General S S S S S Network Switch Management Firewall General S S S S S Firewall Inspection Throughput2 Firewall/VPN Performance 13 Gbps 9 Gbps 6 Gbps 3.4 Gbps 1.9 Gbps Full DPI Performance (GAV/GAS/IPS) Firewall/VPN Performance 3 Gbps 1.6 Gbps 800 Mbps 500 Mbps 300 Mbps Application Inspection Throughput Firewall/VPN Performance 4.5 Gbps 3 Gbps 2 Gbps 1.1 Gbps 700 Mbps IPS Throughput Firewall/VPN Performance 4.5 Gbps 3 Gbps 2 Gbps 1.1 Gbps 700 Mbps Anti-Malware Inspection Throughput Firewall/VPN Performance 3 Gbps 1.7 Gbps 1.1 Gbps 600 Mbps 400 Mbps IMIX performance Firewall/VPN Performance 3.5 Gbps 2.4 Gbps 1.6 Gbps 900 Mbps 600 Mbps SSL DPI Performance Firewall/VPN Performance 1.3 Gbps 800 Mbps 500 Mbps 300 Mbps 200 Mbps VPN Throughput4 Firewall/VPN Performance 5 Gbps 4.5 Gbps 3 Gbps 1.5 Gbps 1.1 Gbps Latency Firewall/VPN Performance 16 s 24 s 17 s 38 s 45 s Maximum Connections5 Firewall/VPN Performance 750K 750K 400K 325K 225K Maximum DPI Connections Firewall/VPN Performance 500K 500K 200K 175K 125K DPI-SSL Connections Firewall/VPN Performance 6000 4000 3000 2000 1000 New Connections/Sec Firewall/VPN Performance 90000 60000 40000 20000 15000 Logging Features Analyzer, Local Log, Syslog Analyzer, Local Log, Syslog Analyzer, Local Log, Syslog Analyzer, Local Log, Syslog Analyzer, Local Log, Syslog Network Traffic Visualization Features S S S S S Netflow/IPFIX Reporting Features S S S S S SNMP Features S S S S S Authentication Features XAUTH/ RADIUS, Active Directory, SSO, LDAP, Terminal Services6, Citrix6, Internal User Database XAUTH/ RADIUS, Active Directory, SSO, LDAP, Terminal Services6, Citrix6, Internal User Database XAUTH/ RADIUS, Active Directory, SSO, LDAP, Terminal Services6, Citrix6, Internal User Database XAUTH/ RADIUS, Active Directory, SSO, LDAP, Terminal Services6, Citrix6, Internal User Database XAUTH/ RADIUS, Active Directory, SSO, LDAP, Terminal Services6, Citrix6, Internal User Database Dynamic Routing Features BGP, OSPF, RIP BGP, OSPF, RIP BGP, OSPF, RIP BGP, OSPF, RIP BGP, OSPF, RIP Single Sign-on (SSO) Features S S S S S Voice over IP (VoIP) Security Features S S S S S Interface to Interface Scanning Features S S S S S PortShield Security Features S S S S S Port Aggregation Features S S S S S Link Redundancy Features S S S S S Policy-based Routing Features S S S S S Route-based VPN Features S S S S S Dynamic Bandwidth Management Features S S S S S Stateful High Availability Features S S S S S Multi-WAN Features S S S S S Load Balancing Features S S S S S Object-based Management Features S S S S S Policy-based NAT Features S S S S S Inbound Load Balancing Features S S S S S IKEv2 VPN Features S S S S S Active/Active Cluster Features S S S S S Terminal Services Authentication/Citrix Support Features S S S S S TLS/SL/SSH decryption and inspection Features S S S S S SSL Control for IPv6 Features S S S S Easy VPN Features S S S S Biometric Authentication Features S S S S DNS Proxy Features S S S S Hardware Failover Failover Active/Passive with State Sync, Active/Active DPI with State Sync Active/Passive with State Sync, Active/Active DPI with State Sync Multi-WAN Failover Failover S S S S S Automated Failover/Failback Failover S S S S S

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Mid Range | Firewalls | SonicWall

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Released Documents Show More Section 702 Violations By The NSA – Techdirt

Posted: at 6:56 pm

Always lawful and subject to strict oversight. Those are the NSA's defenses any time someone leaks something about its surveillance programs or obtains documents indicating abuse of snooping powers. It gets a little old when it's document after document showing the astonishing breadth of the NSA's surveillance programs or the continual abuse and misuse of these powers.

The Hill has dug through some recently-released documents and memos from the NSA which show long-term abuse of surveillance programs. The NSA recently ditched part of its Section 702 collection because it just couldn't stop hoovering up Americans' communications. This was "incidental," according to the NSA, and supposedly impossible to stop. But the incidents detailed in these documents suggest a lot of over-collection happened because no one noticed and, if anyone did, no one cared.

They detail specific violations that the NSA or FBI disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Justice Department's national security division during President Obamas tenure between 2009 and 2016. The intelligence community isn't due to report on compliance issues for 2017, the first year under the Trump administration, until next spring.

The NSA says that the missteps amount to a small number less than 1 percent when compared to the hundreds of thousands of specific phone numbers and email addresses the agencies intercepted through the so-called Section 702 warrantless spying program created by Congress in late 2008.

This is about the only place where any American can become part of the "one percent:" as the unwitting subject of NSA surveillance. NSA spokesman Michael Halbig says evidence of misuse is a sign the oversight is working. But oversight is also supposed to aid in prevention, not just detection of past misuse. And the NSA's internal oversight isn't nearly as "robust" as Halbig attempts to portray it.

The Hill reviewed the new ACLU documents as well as compliance memos released by the NSA inspector general and identified more than 90 incidents where violations specifically cited an impact on Americans. Many incidents involved multiple persons, multiple violations or extended periods of time.

For instance, the government admitted improperly searching the NSAs foreign intercept data on multiple occasions, including one instance in which an analyst ran the same search query about an American every work day for a period between 2013 and 2014.

The NSA also passed on intel to the FBI and CIA without properly minimizing it and made other dissemination errors. The documents show the NSA was also slow to inform other agencies of its minimization failures. Notification is supposed to made within five days of discovery, but in some cases it took the NSA more than three months to inform intel recipients of the error.

This information has been released at a critical time for the NSA. Section 702 powers are sunsetting this year and could be subject to additional modifications prior to their renewal. The FBI --perhaps even more than the NSA -- is looking for a clean reauthorization of Section 702 programs. This administration favors a clean re-auth, which means complaints about a 1% violation rate aren't likely to change anyone's mind. But 1% of several hundred million yearly searches is still a very large number of violations. If Google or Microsoft suffered a breach affecting the privacy of 1% of its users, it would be a huge problem even if the number of affected accounts amounted to a rounding error.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chair Pete Hoekstra -- a former surveillance state cheerleader -- now worries the NSA's collection powers have increased far past the point of reason. As he points, 1% simply isn't an acceptable failure rate.

One percent or less sounds great, but the truth is 1 percent of my credit card charges dont come back wrong every month. And in my mind one percent is pretty sloppy when it can impact Americans privacy.

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Released Documents Show More Section 702 Violations By The NSA - Techdirt

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Accused NSA leaker’s supporters ask feds to drop charges against her – MyAJC

Posted: at 6:56 pm

Reality Winners supporters said they delivered petitions with more than 16,000 signatures to the U.S. Justice Departments headquarters in Washington Thursday, asking the agency to drop its charges against the accused National Security Agency leaker.

Among those delivering the petitions on Whistleblower Appreciation Day were representatives from several groups, including CodePink, Defending Rights & Dissent, RootsAction.org, Whistleblower and Source Protection Program and Stand with Reality, a nonprofit campaign that is supporting Winners case through advocacy and fundraising.

"We should not be charging whistleblowers acting in the public interest, disclosing information responsibly to journalists, as if they were traitors to our country. Anyone who cares about a free press should be concerned about her case, Rainey Reitman, co-founder of Stand with Reality, said in a prepared statement.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors have accused Winner of leaking to The Intercept online news outlet a top-secret NSA report about Russias meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The Intercept published the report, which says Russian military intelligence officials tried to hack into the U.S. voting system just before last Novembers election.

A federal grand jury has indicted Winner, 25, on a single count of "willful retention and transmission of national defense information. She faces up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Winner, who is being held in the Lincoln County Jail, has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are defending their proposed rules for safeguarding top-secret information during her trial, now set for Oct. 23 in Augusta. Winners defense attorneys have argued those rules could block her from getting a fair hearing. Specifically, they have said the governments proposed protective order could prevent Winner from reviewing evidence in the case, including classified information. That, they said, would amount to a violation of the former Air Force linguists Sixth Amendment right to confer with her attorneys.

RELATED:Accused NSA leakers attorneys push back against proposed secrecy rules for trial

But in a court papers filed this week, the prosecutors said she will be given access to the records she is entitled to see under the Classified Information Procedures Act and as required by due process. But her attorneys must ask the court for her to see such documents, the prosecutors said.

The scope of classified discovery in this case has not yet been determined. It may include, for example, classified information to which the defendant has not previously had access, the government said in its court filing. Given the charge against the defendant, disclosing that information to her could further jeopardize national security. If defense counsel believe that they must disclose specific information provided in discovery to the defendant, that should be the subject of a subsequent motion.

Winners attorneys are also seeking permission to quote from records already in the public domain, including newspaper articles. Prosecutors have pointed to case law that says disseminating classified information that has already been made public could harm government intelligence sources and operations. Further, Winners defense team is objecting to proposed requirements that they identify expert witnesses they ask to review classified evidence, saying that would amount to an unfair advantage for prosecutors.

The government has a legitimate interest in knowing who is accessing classified information, the prosecutors said. The defense has not identified any prejudice that would result from disclosing experts identities to the government. Accordingly, the government should receive advance notice of all personnel for whom the defense seeks access to classified discovery and an opportunity to submit objections to the court if necessary.

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Accused NSA leaker's supporters ask feds to drop charges against her - MyAJC

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Chinese President Xi meets NSA Ajit Doval, hails security heads for building cooperation – Economic Times

Posted: at 6:56 pm

NEW DELHI: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday said enhancing BRICS cooperation not only protects and expands the interests of BRICS countries, but also helps explore ways to build a new type of international relations in what could be viewed as a remark that the platform could be used by both India and China for global cooperation across wide range of areas including security challenges.

Xi made the remarks during his meeting with Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, South African minister of state security David Mahlobo, Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, and Brazilian Institutional security minister Sergio Etchegoyen, who were in Beijing to attend the seventh meeting of BRICS High Representatives for Security Issues.

Xi, in his address to the BRICS NSAs, praised them for building a mutual trust and cooperation among the member nations.

Doval's meeting with Xi comes amid high tensions between India and China owing to Doklam standoff. Xi, according to state-run news agency Xinhua, congratulated all NSAs on the success of the two-day meeting, saying that it has made important preparations for the upcoming BRICS summit in China's southeastern coastal city of Xiamen in September.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the summit with the two sides looking forward to end the standoff at border ahead of that. Doval and his Chinese counterpart had discussed the issue in their standalone bilateral meet on Thursday and the possible way forward to end the stalemate.

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Chinese President Xi meets NSA Ajit Doval, hails security heads for building cooperation - Economic Times

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