THE RETURN OF THE T* PARTY

Fight breaks out after protesters disrupt Rep. Katie Porter's town hall

CATHERINE GARCIA

JULY 11, 2021

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Police officers had to intervene during a Sunday afternoon town hall hosted by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), after a fight broke out between her backers and supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The town hall was held at Mike Ward Community Park in Irvine, and was Porter's first in-person town hall in over a year. Porter has three children, and said she made sure this was a family-friendly event because she knows how hard it can be to get child care. At the start of the town hall, Porter thanked everyone for "coming out to express your opinion," and said because there was a lot of wind, "I'm going to ask that everyone, regardless of your views, try to keep your voices down and be quiet so we can have a conversation."

As she spoke, a handful of Trump supporters began loudly interrupting her, the Los Angeles Times reports, shouting and calling her "Corrupt Katie Porter" and "Carpetbagger Katie." In response, there were chants of "Katie! Katie! Katie!" When several of the Porter supporters walked over to the protesters and confronted them, it sparked a fight, and punches were thrown, the Times reports. Porter ran over and put her arms around an elderly woman who was close to the scuffle, and officers from the Irvine Police Department quickly separated both sides. One Porter supporter was arrested and released on citation, Sgt. Karie Davies told the Times.

In a statement, Porter said that everyone was welcome to ask her questions, and it is "disappointing that a small but vocal group of attendees, who advertised a 'confrontation rally,' created unsafe conditions at a planned family-friendly event. While I absolutely respect their right to disagree, their disturbance disrespected all the families who attended and were ready to engage in a thoughtful, civil, and safe way." Porter's team is "evaluating next steps," she added, but her "promise to Orange County families is that I will continue to hold town halls and to be in conversation with them."

On Thursday, a man named Nick Taurus, who said he will run against Porter in 2022, posted on Instagram that people should go to the town hall with him to "CONFRONT KATIE PORTER!" the Times reports. Porter is the first Democrat to represent her district, and Taurus claimed she is "a far-left ideologue supported by Bay Area academics" whose policies are "awful...and we intend to voice our displeasure." The Times said Taurus was involved in the melee; he turned down the newspaper's request for comment.

*TRUMP

CHESS
The FIDE World Cup Begins!

Streamed live on Jul 12, 2021



Chess.com

It's Day 1 of the 2021 FIDE World Cup in Sochi, Russia! This marks the return of over-the-board chess on a global scale after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of many sporting events. Elite players from all over the world will compete for a part of the $1,892,500 prize fund and two spots in the 2022 Candidates Tournament. Full event details: https://www.chess.com/article/view/fi...

TOMB ROBBERS

Egypt repatriates 114 trafficked artifacts

Artifact trafficking in Egypt is back under the spotlight as Egyptian authorities recovered in Paris over 114 stolen antiquities in a case involving prominent figures.

Egypt's Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani attends the opening of an exhibition displaying ancient artifacts that were seized by authorities before being smuggled abroad, on Oct. 24, 2016, at Cairo's Egyptian Museum. - STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images

A correspondent in Egypt
July 12, 2021


CAIRO — “The Great Antiquity Smuggling Case” is how Egypt's media is referring to the latest incident of the large numbers of antiquities stolen and smuggled abroad.

Investigations indicate the involvement of several prominent Egyptian figures accused of illegal antiquity trafficking, including businessman Mohammad Baghdadi, who was arrested on July 2.

On June 27, Egypt's public prosecutor returned from Paris on a plane loaded with 114 artifacts Egyptian authorities recovered from France after more than two years of investigating the smuggling case.

Two days later, on June 29, prominent Egyptian businessman Hassan Rateb was arrested on charges of funding illegal antiquity excavations.

A few days earlier, on June 24, Egyptian security forces arrested Alaa Hassanein, a former member of the Egyptian parliament, on charges of illegally digging up artifacts and illegal possession of several antiquity pieces.

The coincidence of recovering the antiquities from Paris and the arrests of Rateb and Hassanein suggested the latter might have played a role in smuggling Egyptian artifacts to the French capital. More than 200 antiquity pieces were seized in Hassanein's warehouses.

But the prosecution’s official investigations have not yet announced a connection between Rateb and Hassanein, the smuggling of antiquities abroad and those that were officially recovered from Paris.

Commenting on the smuggling case, Alaa al-Kilani, a security expert specializing in combating artifact trafficking, told Al-Monitor, “This is a major case for the Egyptian security and antiquity sector. Dismantling the major smuggling networks would dry up the huge source of funding for this illegal trade and deter smaller smuggling groups.”

In a December 2020 report, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that artifact trafficking was the third-largest illicit trade after drugs and weapons, with an estimated worth of $10 billion annually.

“I trust the Egyptian authorities’ keenness, under President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, to dismantle these networks — especially since several incidents at home and abroad showed that the huge revenues from this illegal trade are being used in money laundering and financing terrorists in many cases,” Kilani said.

In May 2019, some regional and international media outlets reported the Islamic State had made more than $100 million from selling antiquities from Syria and Iraq in several countries, using these funds to fund arms and recruits.

Meanwhile, there was talk about Rateb’s possible ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. According to businessman Ashraf al-Saad, a former friend of Rateb, the latter’s father was a leader and member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Office. The Muslim Brotherhood has been classified as a terrorist organization by Egyptian authorities since November 2013.

In a 2012 TV interview, when the Brotherhood was still in power, Rateb said he was friends with Mahdi Akef, the group’s former head.

According to Kilani, there are two challenges in the face of curbing antiquities trafficking and recovering artifacts smuggled abroad.

“First, it is difficult to monitor all sites where smugglers and dealers dig up artifacts, as these sites are spread throughout the country and some … remain unknown or undiscovered by the authorities. Second, there are several artifacts that remain stored in the [Egyptian] Ministry of Antiquities’ warehouses without being accurately registered — something that has been ongoing for several decades and makes it difficult to detect any theft from the warehouses,” Kilani explained.

He said in many cases Egyptian authorities were surprised to find Egyptian artifacts displaced in Europe or the United States. However, he said the Recovered Antiquities Department affiliated with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities had recently succeeded in properly registering and categorizing most of the stored artifacts and equipped all the discovered or potential archaeological sites with fences and surveillance cameras.

Smuggled Egyptian artifacts were sold in several prominent auctions, including those at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong and China over the last few years that saw the sale of five Egyptian antiquities. This is not to mention an auction at Christie's in 2019 where a statue of a Middle Kingdom wood funerary model of a boat was sold. In 2020, dozens of Egyptian artifacts were sold via video conference in an auction house in California.

Legal expert Mohammad Sadiq told Al-Monitor, “The Egyptian laws are still not sufficiently deterrent to limit illegal excavations, especially since the prison terms for this crime remain short. This traffic is extremely profitable to the extent that offenders could easily pay their bails or fines.”

He said the laws are more deterrent when it comes to smuggling antiquities abroad or stealing from stores and museums.

Under the Antiquities Protection Law No. 117 of 1983 and its 2020 amendments, illegal antiquity excavation is punishable by three to seven years in prison and a fine of no more than 1 million Egyptian pounds ($63,777). Meanwhile, the theft and smuggling of antiquities abroad is punishable with a lifetime in prison and fines exceeding 5 million Egyptian pounds ($318,885) in case of theft, and 10 million Egyptian pounds ($637,771) in case of smuggling abroad.

Sadiq said one of the main challenges is the absence of laws criminalizing the illegal antiquity trade and a law requesting countries to return stolen Egyptian artifacts when they enter their territories, except for the pieces that are discovered and registered in museums and stores, according to the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

He called on UNESCO to adopt an international law or convention obligating countries to return smuggled antiquities to their home countries, even if they were not registered on museum or warehouse lists.

In October 2019, the UNESCO Executive Council passed an Egyptian initiative to combat illicit artifact trade but it did not lead to any official and legally binding agreement at the international level.

MORE FROM A CORRESPONDENT IN EGYPT

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/egypt-repatriates-114-trafficked-artifacts#ixzz70OS8OX6u

Turkish sexologists attract following on social media

As the ruling AKP tries to shut down the conversation on sexuality, Turkey's public finds new ways to gather and speak openly about their lives and desires.

Spotify, Dec. 11, 2017. - Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Spotify

Kenan Behzat Sharpe
@kenan_sharpe
July 9, 2021


A brave group of digital activists in Turkey is using social media and podcasts to battle conservative taboos about sexuality. At a time when TV shows are fined for even hinting at sex between characters and women are often harassed in the streets for wearing shorts, these trailblazers use Instagram and Spotify to discuss everything from the orgasm gap to masturbation.

This digital activism shows that when conservative governments try to shut down the conversation on sexuality, citizens will find new ways to gather and speak openly about their lives and desires.

In Turkey, the situation for women often feels grim. According to UN data, 38% of women in Turkey experience physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lifetimes. In 2020 alone, at least 409 women were killed by men. Despite this epidemic of femicide and widespread gender inequality, the Turkish government on July 1 officially withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, known formally as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.

In this context of rising conservatism and increasing threats to women’s safety, many are finding refuge in social media and podcasts.

Gizem Onay creates digital safe spaces to discuss women’s everyday problems and sex lives. She runs a New Age cafe in Ankara and works as a sex coach, leading workshops and classes. She moonlights by running a highly popular Instagram account. With women coming to discuss everything from their issues with sexual desire to vaginal lubrication, the account functions as a 100,000-person group therapy session.

“Sexuality is a topic that we can only embarrassedly share behind closed doors. Some of us don’t get the opportunity to talk about it at all, but we have an incredible need for safe and nonjudgmental places to speak,” Onay told Al-Monitor.

On Instagram, Onay’s goal is to create a place where her followers can also talk openly about sexuality. She seeks to break taboos, encouraging women to be vocal about their sexuality and prioritize their own pleasure. It is a radical message in a country where the president himself declares that “women are not equal to men” and encourages them to have “at least three children.”

Asuman is a 35-year-old office manager at a firm in Istanbul and an avid follower of Onay’s Instagram page. “It was in one of Gizem Onay’s live YouTube videos on women’s orgasms that I first realized how much these topics are repressed by society and how little knowledge we have of our bodies,” Asuman told Al-Monitor, preferring not to disclose her full name out of fear of negative professional consequences.

Asuman argues that there is a need for places where sexuality can be discussed. In public school, the extent of her sex education was a single session on menstruation.

“We can’t talk in school. We can’t talk with our families or in public. And so it requires talking with each other to become aware. After learning from Gizem Onay and other projects, I made peace with my sexuality. I began loving my body more and learned to put my own desires first,” she said.

Another project that Asuman follows is "Mental Klitoris." The podcast focuses on sex, sexual violence, gender and pleasure. With a total of 35 episodes since April 2020, it has developed a strong base of followers among Turkey’s feminist and LGBTQI+ communities, as well as others interested in frank and rigorous discussions of sex.

“People really want to be able to talk about sexuality,” the show’s producer and creator, Hazal Sipahi, told Al-Monitor.

"Mental Klitoris" has episodes on issues such as consent, sexually transmitted infections, sex toys as well as concepts like “slut-shaming,” “ghosting,” “rimming” and “dick pics.” Though trained as a journalist, Sipahi has spent years reading the international literature on sexuality. Her goal is to translate concepts discussed globally into Turkish. Taking a feminist and queer approach to sexuality, she seeks to provide an informative resource for people in Turkey.

“I think about myself at 16 years old when I didn’t know English. Sex education at school was surface-level. I think about what kind of content I wish I had access to at that age, and that’s what I create,” Sipahi said.

The title "Mental Klitoris" directly challenges censorship. A journalist, Sipahi initially wanted the project to be a radio show, but she realized that she would not be able to use anatomical terms like “penis” or “vulva” on the air. The streaming music and podcast platform Spotify represented an alternative for discussing sexuality without having to self-censor.

Yet even these relatively free spaces are under attack. In May 2021, Turkey’s media watchdog RTUK called on Spotify to “regulate its content” in accordance with local guidelines. In October 2020, Spotify followed Netflix and Twitter in applying for a license to continue operating in the country. Under Turkey’s social media regulations, licensed foreign companies can be asked to remove content that RTUK deems inappropriate.

Thus far, Spotify content remains uncensored and Sipahi can produce "Mental Klitoris" how she wants. Even if censorship increases, she believes there will always be other options. “If one app goes down, I’ll just move to the next one. There are always escape routes.”

According to Sipahi, the conversation on sexuality is finally changing in Turkey thanks to social media. She lists a podcast project on sex-positive parenting by sexual wellness expert Rayka Kumru, the "Umarim Annem Dinlemez" podcast offering frank discussions of women’s lives, and the queer/sex-positive Instagram page "Biricikseksuel."

Under growing conservatism and repression, women and LGBTQI+ people in Turkey face intense challenges. Yet Sipahi still sees a reason for hope.

“Despite the political pressure we face, this is one of the most progressive periods in terms of the topics that are finally being talked about openly,” she said.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/turkish-sexologists-attract-following-social-media#ixzz70ORkBGag

UN rights expert says Israeli settlements a 'war crime'

Israel blasted the report as “the latest one-sided and biased report against Israel."

The UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Michael Lynk, delivers a video message on May 18, 2018, in Geneva, during a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to discuss "the deteriorating human rights situation" in the Palestinian territories, after Israeli forces killed 60 Palestinians along the Gaza border. - FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

Al-Monitor Staff
July 9, 2021


A top human rights expert for the United Nations called Friday on the international community to designate the establishment of Israeli settlements as a war crime.

On Friday, Michael Lynk, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, called the settlements “the engine of Israel’s 54-year-old occupation, the longest in the modern world.”

“In my report, I conclude that the Israeli settlements do amount to a war crime,” Lynk said, adding that they violate the Rome Statute’s ban on transferring parts of a civilian population into an occupied territory.

In a statement provided to Reuters, Israel’s UN mission in Geneva dismissed the report as “the latest one-sided and biased report against Israel” and accused Lynk of ignoring rights abuses by the Palestinians.

The Palestinians envision the West Bank as part of a future state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The UN says more than 680,000 settlers now live in nearly 300 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Most of the international community views the settlements as violating international law and undermining the prospects for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"The time for criticism of the Israeli settlements has passed,” said Lynk, who is a Canadian academic. “A new approach grounded in international law is the only path to a just end to this perpetual occupation.”

In March, the International Criminal Court announced an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories, part of which will focus on settlement expansion in the West Bank. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the court, and has denounced the probe.

On Thursday, Israel’s highest court upheld a controversial nation-state law that defines settlements as “a national value” and Israel as the home of the Jewish people. Critics of the law say it discriminates against Israel’s Arab citizens.

MORE FROM A

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/un-rights-expert-says-israeli-settlements-war-crime#ixzz70ORNBiY6

Palestinian vaccine-gate investigation report out

The independent report about the deal between the Palestinian government and Israel that led to the PA's receipt of expired vaccines has been finalized and made public with leads on incompetence and oversight.

A worker unloads a refrigerated truck carrying the first delivery of the coronavirus vaccine via the United Nations Covax program, to be kept at the Palestinian Authority's storage facility in Nablus, West Bank, March 17, 2021. - Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

Daoud Kuttab
@daoudkuttab
July 9, 2021

An independent investigation committee charged with examining the modalities of a botched Palestinian-Israeli agreement to provide Palestinians with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has produced a scathing report that reflects incompetence by the Palestinian Health Ministry and government officials.

The committee headed by Ammar Dwaik, CEO of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, and his team of professionals presented Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh with a 30-page 7-annex report that detailed the problem and offered concrete recommendations.

According to the report, the state of Palestine had secured an excellent agreement with Pfizer signed in April and approved by the Palestinian Cabinet: The agreement provided over 4 million shots of the needed vaccines for a very low cost of $6.75 per shot.

However, because the delivery dates of the different tranches of the vaccine were not immediate, an offer was made to take some of the unused Pfizer vaccines from Israel, which would have provided a quicker availability of the badly needed vaccine.

Israel dragged its feet with providing an agreement that was given to the Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila to sign on June 17, with the vaccines being made available the next day. Unlike the original Pfizer contract, the agreement with the Israelis was totally skewed to the Israelis. The minister signed it with the hope of administering the vaccines as soon as possible. The following morning, the first batch of the vaccine was delivered four hours late thawed to around 2-9 degrees Celsius, instead of the -70 degrees Celsius as required, and without the data logger. After reviewing it and due to the numerous Israeli violations of a signed agreement, they returned the vaccines to the Israelis.

The report that provided specific and technical details of the above called on the government to further investigate if any violations or criminal acts were committed. Palestinian government spokesman Ibrahim Melhem told Al-Monitor that the government “will take all needed actions against anyone who is proven to have failed in carrying out their duties or were negligent when receiving the vaccines.”

Ammar Dwaik, head of the committee, told Al-Monitor that all Palestinian government officials and agencies were cooperative with the investigative committee and provided all needed documents. "The report is objective and placed everything in its proper perspective," he said.

But Dwaik was concerned about the lack of serious follow-up by the Palestinian government. He noted, “The official media was totally silent on the report and the prime minister has not acted yet in terms of beginning to implement the recommendations.”

The daily Al-Quds and Al-Ayyam newspapers ran the report of the investigation on their front pages, but the Wafa news agency, the government-owned Al-Hayyat al Jadida and both the voice of Palestine and Palestine TV ignored the entire story.

The American Axios media outlet said in a report from Tel Aviv that Netanyahu was behind the delay in the transfer of the vaccine to the Palestinians. “Bennett quickly approved a vaccine deal with the Palestinian Authority [PA] that Netanyahu had held up for months. He was disappointed when the deal collapsed, Israeli officials say, because he had seen a positive first step in relations.”

Bassem Khoury, CEO of a pharmaceutical company and a member of the investigative committee, told Al-Monitor that there is a huge gap between the Pfizer deal and the Israeli one. He said, “We were so impressed with the deal with Pfizer that was carried out with lots of input and finally approved by the Cabinet and the last-minute biased deal that the minister signed at the last moment. It leaves many questions still unanswered of why the agreement with the Israelis was not presented to the usual legal and other consultants and got the approval of the Cabinet.”

Khoury, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister in the Fayyad government, said the Israelis' irregularities were very stark. “Imagine they brought the first shipment that had the words Ofer camp [a reference to an Israeli prison where Palestinians are held] on them, which is a violation of the agreement that requires the sender’s name on the packages to match what is in the contract.”

Khoury said that everything was rushed in a way that violated the normal very careful process that exists in the Ministry of Health. Khoury revealed that at least one Ministry of Health official recommended that the deal with the Israelis should not be signed in the way it was written. Among other things, the Israeli-drafted agreement removes any responsibility from Israel and considers only the Tel Aviv courts as the legal reference of the agreement. But for Khoury the biggest violation was the absence of the data logger. “Every batch is supposed to have an acknowledgment of the temperature that the batch is at. We received thawed vaccines that were not even documented in the mandated data logger.”

The investigative report clearly states that the prime minister, the Cabinet and the Civil Coordination Authority are ultimately responsible, as they should have scrutinized the deal with Israel. Since the deal was an external agreement with Israel signed on behalf of the PA, it is, therefore, a collective responsibility. The routine procedure is that the minister of health should have been barred from signing international deals without prior scrutiny and approval.

While the investigative report is informative, thoroughly researched and well assembled with all necessary documentation, it leaves a number of crucial questions as to what was the reason for the pressure that was placed on the Palestinian minister of health to sign her name to an international document that should have gone through the Cabinet and was not shared with anyone. The process was totally lacking in any transparency both within the government and with the public at large, and in this sense, everyone including the prime minister is responsible for what had happened — and not just the minister of health.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/palestinian-vaccine-gate-investigation-report-out#ixzz70OQxvzED

Confrontation between US, pro-Iranian groups in Syria and Iraq poses challenges for Russia

While Moscow does not yet have the resources to eliminate Iranian influence in Syria, it would be in its interests to at least prevent the expansion of the activities of pro-Iranian paramilitary structures.

US soldiers stand near a Russian military vehicle in the Syrian town of al-Malikiyah (Derik), on June 3, 2020. - DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Kirill Semenov
@IbnRasibi
July 12, 2021

On the evening of June 27, the United States launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on targets of armed groups supported by Iran. Targets belonging to the Iraqi radical Shiite formations Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyed al-Shuhada were hit. The Pentagon reported that these measures were taken by order of US President Joe Biden in response to attacks by militants on American bases in Iraq.

In turn, a day later militants supported by Iran and part of the pro-government forces in Syria fired missiles at US military positions in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor, and US troops returned fire. Attacks by pro-Iran groups in Iraq continued against US targets in Iraq this week. In Deir ez-Zor, American servicemen supporting the activities of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are actually on the line of contact with pro-Iranian groups, including ones designated as terrorist groups by the United States, which are allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and control a large area of the country comprising the territory between the cities of Al-Bukamal and Al-Mayadin on the right bank of the Euphrates River.

The presence of pro-Iranian radical Shiite groups, primarily foreign ones, in Syria in the ranks of the Assad regime forces once again raises the question of the "toxicity" of such a presence for the Russian military performing their mission in Syria. This poses a threat to attacks on Syrian territory by the United States, which, in response to attacks in Iraq, will try to eliminate these militants wherever they are, including in Syria. In addition, attempts by pro-Iranian structures to carry out retaliatory attacks on Syrian territory in the form of shelling of American military facilities located in the trans-Euphrates region can create even more risks for the Russian military, which can often find themselves in close proximity to the targets of American attacks.

Russia, despite the often hostile rhetoric against the United States, does not really intervene in the confrontation between the American military and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and various pro-Iranian international structures under its control operating in Iraq and Syria. The same applies to the conflict between Syria and Iran on the one hand and Israel on the other. The latter is also viewed as a strategic partner of Moscow in the Middle East. On the contrary, Russia would like to avoid negative consequences for itself from such an escalation.

Although Russian officials refuse to acknowledge the differences with Iran in Syria, some high-ranking military personnel who served in Syria spoke directly about this. For example, Gen. Sergey Chvarkov, who was the head of the Center for Reconciliation of Warring Parties in Syria from May-September 2016, noted: “Iran's financing of Shiite groups and attempts to spread Shiism in the traditionally Sunni territories can lead to aggravation of relations with Sunnis and Kurds inside Syria. Further large-scale penetration of Iran into Syria will create a number of rather serious obstacles to the promotion of reforms and the development of the political process in Syria and will lead to complications in relations with Israel, the United States, Turkey and the Sunni Arab countries. This will further exacerbate the task of finding alternative foreign sources to rebuild the country, since the efforts of Iran and Russia will clearly not be enough."

In addition, concerns about the deployment in Syria of radical Shiite groups associated with Tehran cannot be ignored, as there have already been incidents that have resulted in the deaths of Russian troops or private military contractors as a result of attacks by the United States and Israel on IRGC bases and pro-Iranian militants in Syria.

An attempt to seize the oil and gas fields of Hasham (Khusham) and At-Tabiya (Deir ez-Zor province), which are in the SDF control zone, by pro-Iranian formations Liwa al-Baqir and Fatemiyoun in February 2018 led to the deaths of several dozen Russian private military contractors and fighters of the pro-Russian Syrian formation Hunters for ISIS, who were at the site of this operation and were hit by American aircraft and artillery.

Another episode was the destruction in September 2018 of the Russian military aircraft Il-18 in northwest Syria by Syrian S-200 anti-aircraft missiles. While the missiles were intended for Israeli fighter jets, they went off course and hit the Russian aircraft. At the same time, the root cause of this incident was the location of the bases of the IRGC and Shiite radical militants in the immediate vicinity of the Russian military facilities of Khmeimim and Tartus, in the direction of which the Russian aircraft flew, which turned out to be in the area of operations of Israeli jets seeking to hit IRGC and pro-Iranian groups.

In turn, the leadership of the IRGC, in order to "disguise" its foreign fighters in Syria, is pursuing a policy aimed at integrating them into the ranks of the regular units of the Syrian Arab Army. Such formations are, first of all, the elite formations of the 4th Panzer Division of Maher al-Assad and the Republican Guard, which serve as a cover for international Shiite structures in Syria. In the region of Deir ez-Zor, the last two years have also seen the building up of the potential of the 4th division, including through the involvement of various pro-Iranian groups in its ranks.

Also at the end of 2020, the IRGC command tried to use the Russian military to cover their formations from the actions of American and Israeli aircraft. For example, Iranian-backed militias controlling al-Bukamal have allowed and even helped Russian military police establish several checkpoints at the western entrance to the city. At the same time, there were reports, for example, about the transfer — which in some media reports was described as "desertion” — of individual groups of pro-Iranian militants from among the local Syrians into the ranks of the pro-Russian 5th corps and the abandonment of certain positions by the forces of Shiite groups that, allegedly, were again handed over to various pro-Russian formations. This most likely was deliberate disinformation aimed at the United States and Israel — to give the impression that Russia is gradually taking control of these areas, and local groups are passing under Russian control instead of Iranian control. The logic was that the United States and Israel would thus be less likely to carry out strikes on these areas. However, it appears the attempts were unsuccessful, did not prevent US strikes in February 2021 on pro-Iranian forces in eastern Syria and forced the Russian command itself to stay away from them. In particular, in March 2021, the Russian military police abandoned their positions in al-Bukamal and withdrew to the city of al-Mayadin.

The Russian military as a whole is probably aware of the risks of the presence of the IRGC units on the right bank of the Euphrates. Therefore, work is underway to reduce Iranian influence in the region through the support of local formations of the National Defense Forces (NDF), which serve in the region as a counterbalance to Iran's deployed Local Defense Forces (LDF). Also, the militias of local tribes are involved in the pro-Russian units.

The next American strikes on pro-Iranian groups in Syria and the exchange of fire between them and the American military in Syria should probably push the Russian side to further intensify efforts to create zones free of pro-Iran militants. In fact, if Moscow is talking about the need for Turkey to "demarcate" terrorists and moderate opposition groups in Syria’s Idlib province, then in the east of the country the Russian military will also have to more carefully monitor so that there is no "mixing" of pro-Russian forces with the pro-Iranian ones.

At the same time, some regular Syrian army units, which serve as a cover for the activities of foreign Shiite militants, can also be considered "pro-Iranian." Russia does not yet have the resources to minimize Iranian influence in Syria, but it would be in Russia's interests to at least prevent the expansion of the activities of pro-Iranian paramilitary structures in this country, limiting their presence only to certain isolated areas, which would not allow them to "flow" to others regions of Syria. This is extremely important, given the aggravation of the contradictions between Iraqi Shiite militants and the United States, and given the presence of branches of these Iraqi groups in Syria.

Yet this situation could also open up new opportunities for interaction between Russia and the United States on the Syrian track. After all, President Vladimir Putin's contacts with former US President Donald Trump began with a discussion of the situation in southwestern Syria, where Russia and the United States tried to prevent the deployment of pro-Iranian radical groups near the borders with Israel.

Perhaps under the Biden administration, Moscow and Washington will be able to find common ground and solutions will be found to reduce the escalation on the Syrian right bank of the Euphrates, along the border with Iraq, where pro-Iranian formations are now deployed. A consultation process similar to the negotiations in Amman (2017-2018) could be held, attended by Russian, American and Jordanian military and diplomats who are able to find the right solution for the Syrian southwest.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/07/confrontation-between-us-pro-iranian-groups-syria-and-iraq-poses-challenges#ixzz70OPYLliW

 

How bitcoin and Putin are enabling the ransomware crime spree

John Naughton

A combination of cyber attackers’ increased sophistication, the availability of cryptocurrencies and the activities of Russian security agencies has created a perfect storm

When Joe Biden met Vladimir Putin last month he must have realised that the chances of Russia extraditing ransomware beneficiaries were small. Photograph: Peter Klaunzer/Gett

Sat 10 Jul 2021 

I’ve just visited the Kaseya website. “We Are Kaseya,” it burbles cheerfully. “Providing you with best-in-breed technologies that allow you to efficiently manage, secure and back up IT under a single pane of glass.

“Technology,” it continues, “is the backbone of all modern business. Small to mid-size businesses deserve powerful security and IT management tools that are efficient, cost-effective, and secure. Enter Kaseya. We exist to help multi-function IT professionals get the most out of their IT tool stack.”

Translation: Kaseya produces remote management software for the IT industry. It develops and sells this software to remotely manage and monitor computers running Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems. As many organisations will grimly confirm, managing your own IT systems is a pain in the arse. So Kaseya has lots of happy customers in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

Or, rather, it did have. On 2 July it was the victim of a ransomware attack that affected between 800 and 1,500 of its small business customers, potentially making it the largest ransomware attack ever. Such attacks are a form of kidnapping: intruders gain control of an organisation’s systems, encrypt its data, and demand payment (in cryptocurrency) in return for a key to decrypt the hostage data. In an impressive YouTube video posted on 6 July, Kaseya’s chief executive, Fred Voccola, said that the company had shut down the compromised program within an hour of noticing the attack, potentially stopping the hackers from hitting more customers. By industry standards, that was an agile and intelligent response. Other victims – such as the pipeline operator Colonial, and the Irish hospitals that were struck recently – have been much more traumatised.

So what is going on? Basically, what has happened is that, in a relatively short time, ransomware has become the new normal for organisations that are dependent on IT – which is basically every organisation in the industrialised world. And the fact that it happened to Kaseya, as Voccola put it, “just means it’s the way the world we live in is today”.

The attack on Kaseya affected between 800 and 1,500 of the businesses to which it provides services. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

It is. So how did we get here? Three major factors were involved. The first was the invention and development of cryptocurrencies. Kidnapping in the old days was a risky business: the family might pay the ransom, but bundles of £20 notes were relatively easy to trace. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are designed to be near-impossible to trace, so there’s no paper trail for police to follow.

“Ransomware is a bitcoin problem,” says the Berkeley researcher Nicholas Weaver, and doing something about it “will also require disrupting the one payment channel capable of moving millions at a time outside of money-laundering laws: bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies”

The second factor is that ransomware has changed from being an exploit for lone cybercriminals into an industrialised business. We saw this earlier with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks: once upon a time if you wanted to bring down a server you first had to assemble a small virtual army of compromised PCs to do your bidding; now you can rent such a “bot army” by the hour.

Much the same applies for ransomware: there are a number of criminal gangs, such as REvil, that operate like companies providing what is essentially ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). Criminals select a target and use REvil’s services in return for giving it a slice of the proceeds. Ross Anderson, professor of computer security at Cambridge University, regards this is “a gamechanger for the cybersecurity business” and he’s right.

The third factor is geopolitics. We live in a world that was created by the peace of Westphalia, which in 1648 brought to an end the thirty years’ war and established the system of sovereign states, which essentially ensures that rulers can do what they like within their own jurisdictions. The RaaS “firm” REvil operates in Russia, a jurisdiction ruled by an autocratic kleptocracy which has – as a state – brilliantly exploited digital technology for propaganda, disruption of democratic processes at home and abroad, and for cyber-espionage on a grand scale. The other day, for example, the NSA revealed that since 2019 Russian security agencies had been using a supercomputer cluster for “brute force” password-guessing on millions of western online services. Since these machines can perform millions of guesses every second, the chances of any normal password remaining safe are pretty poor.

And so are the chances of US, EU or UK law-enforcement agencies getting to arrest and extradite the beneficiaries of ransomware attacks on western organisations – as Joe Biden doubtless discovered when he met Vladimir Putin in Geneva the other week. So the only thing the REvil crowd have to worry about for the time being is making sure they pay up when Putin’s goons come looking for his share of the crypto-loot.

New Website Aims To Shine A Light On Where Ransomware Payments Go

Lee Mathews
Senior Contributor
Cybersecurity
Observing, pondering, and writing about tech. Generally in that order.


Image: GETTY


Cleverly called Ransomwhere, the site is the creation of security researcher Jack Cable. Cable worked with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as security advisor for the 2020 elections. He’s also spent years hunting bug bounties and working as a red team hacker — acting as an adversary to help organizations discover and mitigate weaknesses in their cyber defenses.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Cable states that he was inspired to create Ransomwhere after reading a tweet from Red Canary Director of Intel Katie Nickels. Responding to a question about whether the infosec community could estimate total losses tied to the notorious TrickBot malware, Nickels noted that “No one knows the real impact.” She added that it’s therefor difficult to know whether specific victim actions — like paying or refusing to pay ransoms — makes a difference.

Cable chimed in, adding that it “would be awesome to have raw data or a dashboard tracking payments by strain.” Since no such thing existed he set about creating one... and Ransomwhere was born.

To date, Ransomwhere has tracked over $56 million in ransomwhere payments. So far, Netwalker dominates the leaderboard with more than 520 payments made. That includes several payments of hundreds of Bitcoin — the two biggest converting to $7.4 and $8.6 million at today’s exchange rate.

The largest single payment: 413 Bitcoin — or just shy of $14 million — sent to the operators of the RagnarLocker ransomware in July of 2020.

The data that powers Ransomwhere is crowdsourced, and all reports must include a screenshot of the ransom demand for verification purposes. Currently, Cable is verifying submissions personally.

All of the information that is entered into the Ransomwhere database is made freely available for other security professionals to download and analyze. No data about the victims is ever shared.

Not all ransomware gangs demand Bitcoin, so Ransomwhere won’t be able to paint a complete picture on its own. Because other cryptocurrencies like Monero can be nearly impossible to track we may never know the full impact of ransomware attacks.

Nevertheless, insights like those that Ransomwhere provides will help make the seemingly impossible goal of reining in ransomware gangs — a top priority the Biden administration — that much more achievable.



Lee Mathews
Lee started writing about software, hardware, and geek culture around the time that the Red Wings last won the Stanley Cup. The two aren't related in any way, however. When he's not catching up on tech news or blogging about it, you can find him watching or playing baseball and doing his part to ensure the next generation of geeks is raised properly.

 

Riverford: the organic veg box delivery firm that is owned by its staff

INTERVIEW

Guy Singh-Watson, founder of Riverford, talks about juggling the impacts of the pandemic, Brexit and trade deals while remaining a sustainable company

Guy Singh-Watson founded Riverford in 1987, where he started delivering organic vegetables to 30 local homes. (Photo: Riverford)

By David Parsley

July 12, 2021 

How did the pandemic affect you?

Within a few days of the first national lockdown our sales more or less doubled, and we had to close our website to new customers. Our staff and supplying farms were responsive and pulled out all the stops to the rising demand. Fifteen months on, we’re getting back to some sort of normal. The good news is that we had a very profitable year and were able to share those profits with our co-owners.

How has being a staff-owned business changed Riverford?

We are more successful commercially, staff turnover has halved, and wages levels have increased so that from this autumn we will not only pay the voluntary living wage but will routinely share a minimum of 15 per cent of profits between our co-owners. Overheads have reduced as more responsibility and decisions are taken locally, reducing the need for management, improving quality and reducing waste. In general, there is more creativity and flexibility, making us more responsive to a changing world.

What about the impact of Brexit?

It has added substantially to our costs in many ways and I’m yet to see any clear benefits. The level of paperwork required to import and export is huge and largely unseen and uncosted, but it will inevitably contribute to food inflation in the longer run.

There is a loss of flexibility and responsiveness in trading relationships as they become bound by forms rather than the desire to simply deliver what your customer wants to buy in the most efficient manner possible. We used to export a small number of vegetables to Denmark to a box scheme there that is certainly no longer feasible. We own a farm in France which grows vegetables which I am now trying to sell.

How do you feel about the Australian trade deal and the agricultural elements of that? 

We are told this is a flagship agreement; a sign of things to come. I despair partly of the lowering of farming, food, and environmental standards and partly of the utter shameless lying of our current government. In my 60 years never have I seen such abysmally low moral standards in public life.

Where do you think the business will be in five years’ time? 

Most importantly I feel very confident that we will stick to our values; indeed, all the signs are that we will become more ardent in following and living up to our professed beliefs. 
I do expect there to be substantial growth, though personally at the age of 61 I now have limited appetite for that; there are many younger more ambitious voices within the business who would like to see us exerting our influence to change a larger part of the world.

We will be patient and aim to under promise and overdeliver; in the long run that’s how you build trust. In short, we want to be part of a quiet revolution that improves food standards, farming practices and the norms of business.