In contrast to Greenwald’s claim, the Long War Journal has a series of posts dating back to mid-2013 detailing the existence of the cell now labeled the Khorasan Group, naming its key operative, and describing its ambitions. In fact, everything about the group is there except the name Khorasan.
The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria →
After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.
The unveiling of this new group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S. officials to warn of this new shadowy, worse-than-ISIS terror group...
The way "Khorasan" was announced, seemingly out of nowhere, felt dodgy. A bad sleight-of-hand; a clumsy way of nudging the American public to war, with what may be an easily pronounced (and therefore easily repeated on air) name. That may not be the case, though, given simple incentives of the US administration, and a hungry press.
From Jack Goldsmith's piece in Lawfare, On Glenn Greenwald’s Skepticism on Threat Claims About the Khorasan Group:
When one faces terrorist threat information, and is responsible for the consequences of that threat, and for building support for the President, one sometimes over-reads the threat facts. And in the short run, journalists, desperate for access and scoops, sometimes report this information uncritically.
Remain skeptical of everyone's fervor.
Hong Kong's unprecedented protests and police crackdown, explained →
On Wednesday, student groups led peaceful marches to protest China's new plan for Hong Kong's 2017 election, which looked like China reneging on its promise to grant the autonomous region full democracy...
...in August, Beijing announced its plan for Hong Kong's 2017 elections. While citizens would be allowed to vote for the chief executive, the candidates for the election would have to be approved by a special committee just like the pro-Beijing committee that currently appoints the chief executive. This lets Beijing hand-pick candidates for the job, which is anti-democratic in itself, but also feels to many in Hong Kong like a first step toward eroding their promised democratic rights.
Air strikes said to hit Islamic State oil refineries in Syria →
Air raids believed to have been carried out by U.S.-led forces hit three makeshift oil refineries in northern Syria on Sunday as part of a campaign against Islamic State, a human rights group said.
...
"The price went up from 9,000 Syrian pounds to 21,000 in Aleppo. Hitting these refineries has affected ordinary people, now they have to pay higher prices," he told Reuters.
Securing Phones – and Securing US →
Fourteen years ago the US government, with NSA’s concurrence, ended export controls on products including strong forms of cryptography. The result was the flourishing of Internet commerce. And — at least a decade later than they should have — US companies began putting security protections into software and hardware products.
The FBI opposed the ending of cryptography controls in 2000, and it now opposes the widespread use of cryptography. But the crime-fighting agency has never really understood that the widespread use of cryptography is essential in a world for which, increasingly, the most important assets are electronic.
Re-energizing the Electrical Grid →
Peter Sinclair and Cathy Kunkel discuss emerging possibilities for fighting climate change: a combination of locally-owned affordable solar and utility scale wind energy to replace the electrical grid.
And some energy companies are trying to stop that.
The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes →
In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)The job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming, the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the regulator replied, "You didn't hear that."
THE FARCE IN ADDIS →
On South Sudan's "Peace Process":
One problem is that the talks led by regional block IGAD are technically a “mediation” rather than a facilitation. That means IGAD diplomats take an active role in proposing a settlement and pushing the parties to adopt it, rather than merely bringing them together.
That sounds ok until you realize a leading IGAD member, Uganda, has thousands of its soldiers stationed in South Sudan and actively sides with one of the warring parties – the government. Is it any wonder then that the rebel side perceives the mediator as openly aligned with the government side?