UK Lawfare Stymies Cooperation with Israel
The Israeli military is having to back off of military coordination trips to the UK over fears that lawfare-prosecuting glory-hounds are going to try to have them arrested under laws of universal jurisdiction.
The Israeli military has cancelled a visit by a team of its officers to Britain over fears that they risked arrest on possible war crimes charges.
It is the latest case in which high-profile Israeli politicians or army officers have pulled out of visits to Britain for fear of arrest over war crimes allegations under laws of universal jurisdiction.
Israeli leaders have grown increasingly frustrated about the threat of legal action against individuals and are pressing the British government to change the law.
Baroness Scotland, the attorney general, was in Israel today and due to meet with the Israeli justice minister, Yaakov Neeman, and deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, to talk about the issue.
A group of officers, reportedly from the rank of major up to colonel, were invited by the British army for a meeting on military co-operation but cancelled last week, the Guardian has learned.
Of course, the lawyers in these cases are definitely a "prosecute now - truth later" bunch:
Three weeks ago a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, at the request of lawyers acting for Palestinian victims of Israel's war in Gaza. The warrant was withdrawn when it became clear Livni was not in the country but it provoked a storm of protest in Israel.
Funny that no one is in a hurry to arrest any of the Hamas leadership.
Cyberwar Command Waiting on Congress
Congress is holding up the establishment of a cyber warfare command over privacy concerns.
The Pentagon's plan to set up a command to defend its global network of computer systems has been slowed by congressional questions about its mission and possible privacy concerns, according to officials familiar with the plan.
As a result, the Defense Department failed to meet an Oct. 1 target launch date and has not held a confirmation hearing for the command's first director.
Although officials stress that the cyber command, as it is known, is an effort to consolidate existing offensive and defensive capabilities under one roof and involves no new authorities or broadening of mission, its potential for powerful new offensive capabilities -- some as yet unimagined -- have raised questions on Capitol Hill about its role, according to national security experts familiar with the concerns.
Key questions include: When do offensive activities in cyberspace become acts of war? How far can the Pentagon go to defend its own networks? And what kind of relationship will the command have to the National Security Agency?
Are they legit privacy concerns? Or are we seeing turf wars under another name?
Navy Bids Out for LCS II
The Navy is incrementally expanding the LCS fleet.
The U.S. Navy expects to issue a request for proposals for 10 new shallow-water warships within weeks, a top Navy official said on Monday.
Rear Admiral Jim Murdoch, program manager for the Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship, acknowledged the Navy was running about a month late with its revised acquisition procedure, but said: "It'll be out soon. We are resolving a number of industry questions." He said the new terms for the competition to build more LCS ships should be out within weeks, not months.
Murdoch spoke during a tour of the USS Independence, the first LCS ship completed by General Dynamics Corp, which is due to be commissioned on January 16.
Lockheed Martin Corp has built a different design of LCS ship for the Navy. It went into service in late 2008.
The Navy initially intended to proceed with both designs, but decided last September to save money by picking a single design in 2010 and then allowing other shipyards to compete later to build that same design.
AQ Meets FARC; Initials Worldwide Take Notice
And there's an Al Qaeda connection to Colombian drug smugglers as crime and terror overlap yet some more.
Colombian guerrillas have entered into "an unholy alliance" with Islamic extremists who are helping the Marxist rebels smuggle cocaine through Africa on its way to European consumers, a U.S. official told Reuters.
Interdiction efforts have made it more difficult to send cocaine straight from Colombia and other Andean producer nations to the United States and Europe.
So criminal organizations including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are going through Africa to access the European market. And they are doing it with the help of al-Qaida and other groups branded terrorists by Washington, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Overlaps like these make it an admittedly gray area for intersection of law enforcement and military action against terror networks. Who has jurisdiction in clear criminal issues like these?
By: Brant
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