Spying Blogger

Syria accused a blogger of 19 years held to be a spy, a Syrian official said on Monday the first to comment authorities in a case that has prompted calls by the New York-based Human Rights Watch the young woman at liberty.
Tal al-Mallohi was taken into custody last December. His blog, known for poetry and social commentary, focusing primarily on issues of Palestine and the suffering.
"She was detained on charges of spying for a foreign country," Has the Syrian said. "His espionage led to an attack against a Syrian army officer by the agents of that foreign country."
The official did not specify which countries would al-Mallohi spying for or details of the attack on the Syrian agent. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.
It was unclear whether the arrest of al-Mallohi was connected to the blog.
His father, al-Dosari Mallohi, told The Associated Press that he and his wife visited their daughter in prison Doma, last Thursday and was in good health.
It was the first time they saw their daughter or told of its location in nine months, he said, but declined to comment further.
Last month, Human Rights Watch has called for the release of al-Mallohi.
"Holding a high school student for nine months without charge is typical of the cruel, arbitrary conduct of the security of Syria," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said at the time.

They might not be dangerous but they are armed

Seeking an additional layer of protection, the most notable celebrities are seeking permits to carry guns in New York, the New York Daily News.
Among the big names of license to pack heat: Marc Anthony, Robert De Niro, Donald Trump, and his son, Donald Jr., third baseman David Wright of the Mets, and his daughter Martha Stewart radio host Alexis Stewart.
Anthony, 42, a special permit that allows him to carry a loaded gun in the city, and has a similar license for the county of Nassau, where he and Jennifer Lopez have a house of $ 2 million in Brookville.
One reason for the rise in interest seems to be famous feel vulnerable in the Internet age, where so much personal information can be accessed online. "They can get their own security, but with the Internet, it is much easier to find people," lawyer John Chambers Skylar tells the News. "They do not want to find someone on their lawn five o'clock in the morning. "
Gun licenses are not easy or cheap to obtain. Applicants must demonstrate that they often carry large sums of money or valuables, or they are threatened in some way. And the only non-refundable application costs $ 340.
Despite the increase in demand for celebrities, the number of permits issued in New York City is actually down 2.4 percent this year, 2,093.

aggressors

Iran has unveiled a prototype long-range bomber without a pilot on Sunday, the latest in a stream of announcements of new military equipment manufactured in Iran as tension mounts over its nuclear program.
On a stage in front of military officials, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has drawn a map away from the aircraft, called the Karrar, which Iran says is its first long-range UAV.
With the United States and Israel say they do not rule out a military strike to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic showed off a new mini-submarine and surface to surface missiles and announced its intention to launch high-altitude satellites in the next three years.
The presentation of the drone came one day after Iranian and Russian technicians began loading fuel in Iran's first nuclear power, what Israel calls "completely unacceptable".
In a speech at the inaugural ceremony, Ahmadinejad said that Iran should seek the ability to make preemptive strikes against any perceived threat, but he said he would never strike first.
"If someone ignorant or selfish or a tyrant who was simply making a violent assault while our Department of Defense should reach a point where it could cut off the hand of the aggressor before deciding to make an assault" he said.
"We should reach a point where Iran could serve as defense for all freedom-loving nations against aggressors world. We do not want to attack anywhere, Iran will never resolve attack anywhere, but our revolution can not sit idly in the face of tyranny, we can not remain indifferent. "
State television said the drone had a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and speed of 900 km / h (560 mph) and could be armed with four cruise missiles or a payload of 250 - Sterling or two (113 - kg) or a 500-pound bombs.
It could also be used for reconnaissance and test missile defense of Iran, the station said.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, has warned that any attack against its nuclear sites would be undermined by measures not limited to the Middle East. Ahmadinejad said on Saturday an attack against Iran would be "suicidal".
Iran has said it is ready to resume negotiations with world powers, but the exact nature of these negotiations has not yet been defined. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week Iran would not talk to the United States unless the sanctions and military threats have been removed.

Cold War spy mission in China

the CIA is engaging in one of the most devastating episodes in its history, missed a flight swashbuckling China has stolen two decades of freedom for a pair of fresh-faced American agents and the cost of the lives of their two drivers.
In open about the debacle of 1952, the CIA is to find ways to use it as a teaching tool. The errors of the past can serve as cautionary tales for today's spies and the paramilitary leaders taking on Al Qaeda and other terrorist targets.
At the center of the story are two CIA paramilitary wishing their overseas assignment first, John T. Downey of New Britain, Connecticut, and Richard G. Fecteau, of Lynn, Mass., whose plane was shot down in the night sky a Chinese ambush.
The mission was quickly nipped in the refusal of the U.S. government, sealed in official secrecy and sent to the darkest corner of the roof of the spy agency Affairs unpleasant.
Downey was the youngest of four. At 22, with one year of service of the CIA, he was destined to spend the next 20 years, three months and 14 days in Chinese jails. His partner of the CIA, Fecteau, was 25. He was behind bars for 19 years and 14 days.
Both survived. Their pilots, Robert C. Snoddy, 31, originally from Roseburg, Oregon, and 29 years, Norman A. Schwartz, of Louisville, Ky., did not.
Pieces of the story resurfaced over the years. But the cover was largely intact until a series of revelations - some required by the CIA, some not - has revealed a story of tragedy, a calculation error, misery and personal triumph, and the misplaced confidence of the agency could manipulate events in China.
Three years ago, the CIA has declassified an internal history of the case. Now, he was hired a director to produce an hourlong documentary. The CIA did not intend to leave the film to the public. But the agency he created for employees on Tuesday at its Langley, Va., headquarters, and an AP reporter attended.
Downey and Fecteau decreased by CIA agents to be interviewed for this article. They watched the film and have been flooded by applause and autograph seekers agency.
Their story is part of the backdrop of uneasy US-China relations today, especially anger Beijing on U.S. military support for rival anti-communist China on Taiwan.
In the early years of the Cold War, the CIA had a rudimentary paramilitary force - those who have specialized skills to conduct high risk operations behind the lines -.
Downey and Fecteau were assigned to a secret program called "third force", to create a network of resistance. Small teams of Chinese non-communist exiles were airdropped into the area of Manchuria from China to engage with disaffected Communist generals.
The aim was to destabilize the new government of Mao Zedong and away from the Korean War, where Chinese forces have concluded two years earlier.
The plan failed - badly.
"The CIA has been" a, "the late James Lilley, who helped train teams of agents for inclusion in China, wrote in his memoir of 2004," China hands. " There was no dissenting Communist Chinese generals are, and Chinese Taiwan and Hong Kong who sold the idea turned out to be crooks, Lilley wrote.
"The whole program felt amateurish," the CIA historian Nicholas Dujmovic said.
Donald Gregg, who entered the CIA with Downey in 1951 and had dined with him the night before his fatal flight, those flaws of the CIA who oversold the program.
"It was a moment swashbuckling wild and woolly in the history of the agency," Gregg said in an interview. "There was pressure from presidents to a regime change here and there, and there was a time very damaging."
On November 29, 1952, above the foothills of the Changbai Mountains, Downey and Fecteau flew into Chinese airspace in a C-47 Skytrain disarmed. They planned to melt a bit more pickup point marked with three small fires and use a hook line to pick up a Chinese agent on the ground without landing. Downey was the coil in the agent with a winch on board the aircraft.
As they descended, the sky suddenly exploded in bursts. It was an ambush Chinese. The agent had betrayed the Americans, attracted by promising to provide important documents from a dissident leader.
After the C-47 slammed by a grove of trees, bursting into flames and the cockpit skidded to the stop near the village of Sandao.
Downey and Fecteau, dazed and bruised but alive, were captured on the field. They were transported out of the prison - first in the city of Mukden, then Beijing - examined and isolated in separate cells. Each spent long stretches in isolation, alone with their fears.
It was a wealth of information for the Chinese. The two Americans, after a beat psychological, the wick, to varying degrees.
There was one lesson: Agency officials close ties with a program of covert action should not fly such missions.
Another blunder: When a CIA base on the Pacific island of Saipan, the Chinese agent teams lived and trained together, inevitably, learning each other's missions. Thus, the capture of a team threatened the rest.
In addition, Downey was well known to the Chinese workers, because he has trained. When Downey was captured, a Chinese security officer has done and said in English, "You are Jack. Your future is very bleak."
For two years, until China announced that Downey and Fecteau were convicted of espionage and sentenced - for 20 years Fecteau, Downey's life - neither the CIA nor the families of the men knew their fate. The families have received letters in December 1953 saying that the two men were "presumed dead."
The CIA has concocted a cover story, the families say the four had disappeared on a routine commercial flight from Korea to Japan on December 3, four days after the shootdown.
After China announced that Downey and Fecteau were held as spies, Washington publicly denied, saying they were civilian employees of the army.
China did not mention Snoddy and Schwartz until 1975, when officials said President Gerald R. Ford missing pilots were found dead and "burned badly" at the accident site, and it would be impossible to find the bodies.
Fecteau has been published by China in December 1971 and March Downey in 1973, shortly after President Richard Nixon publicly acknowledged Downey CIA connection.
Both said that their return to face their detention they have remained strictly a daily schedule.
Downey, for example, said he got up every morning and begin a series of activities in his cell the gym, cleaning, eating, reading, listening to radio and discuss an occasional packet of letters, books and magazines . Fecteau has a similar approach but varied his routine by the day of the week.
Remarkably, once home, they resumed a normal life. Downey earned a law degree from Harvard and became a judge. Fecteau returned to his alma mater, Boston University, as assistant athletic director.
The pilot, Snoddy and Schwartz are not CIA agents, but flew missions that employees of Civil Air Transport, an airline secretly purchased by the CIA in the late 1949 to support its operations in secret East Asia.
In June 2004, a research team from the Pentagon, with the approval by China, has excavated the crash site and found remains later identified as Snoddy's. Schwartz's remains were not found.
Downey and Fecteau have said little publicly. But the intriguing details of their experience were revealed by Dujmovic, based on files of the Agency remained secret. His 2006 account has been declassified in three stages next year.
Dujmovic wrote that the head of the CIA unit that approved the mission apparently made misjudgments crucial for which he has never been held accountable. For starters, the head of the unit ignored a warning that the Chinese agent team - codenamed STAROMA - had been compromised shortly after his arrival in Manchuria.
The CIA historian said Downey told a debriefing after his release, he felt no bitterness towards his CIA boss.
"I felt for him," said Downey. "It turned out to be such a fucking disaster point of view."

Tension in S.F. over anti-Israel resolution

Tensions have risen in the town hall on Tuesday a nonbinding resolution calling for the condemnation of the murderous attack of the Israeli army on a fleet headed for the Gaza Strip.
At least nine people were killed by Israeli naval commandos in the May 31 raid on ships carrying aid to the isolated Gaza, which is under an Israeli blockade.
The bill, sponsored by Supervisors Sophie Maxwell and John Avalos, has more than two dozen "expected". It attempts to locate the attack which took place a half a world away from San Francisco, noting "the recognition and understanding of the unique relationship of our people to international struggles and the general principle that human life, whether here or abroad, has value and dignity. " Dozens of people waited hours to testify at the Commission of Supervisors weekly meeting, where the measure was considered. The witness went on late into the night.
Although the legislation has no legal weight, it has gained importance in the world of public relations, providing a forum for debate on Israeli-Palestinian dispute to be heard. Both sides flooded the supervisors of e-mails, phone calls and personal visits.
Most supervisors hoped the issue would simply disappear. And legislation is just what might happen. The council was expected to send the resolution to committee, where critics hoped he would die. Avalos has recognized that there are "so many different things, so many different sides, but was not ready to back the legislation he helped write. "I was told that this resolution is the division," he said. "But he really recognizes the disproportionate power the State of Israel must create and enforce a blockade on the high seas, even to the extent where attacks against civilians in the middle of the night. " Everything that happened on the high seas and what led to the fatal confrontation is a matter of debate, with conflicting accounts continue to be addressed.
The proposed resolution had included San Francisco in the conflict.
San Francisco is a very important symbol, it represents freedom and idealism, and nobody wants to see the symbol hijacked, "said Akiva Tor, Israel's consul general for the Pacific Northwest, which stood on a bench outside the room supervisors, pending the resolution to be heard.
"It may be a nonbinding resolution, but people pay attention," he said.
Lubna Morrar, who works with the Network of Palestinian youth and Arab resources and organizing center, acknowledged that much to look at what San Francisco did with what quickly turned into a divisive issue. "It is very important for the city of San Francisco take a position on this point," she said. "This resolution can be a springboard for human rights around the world."
Before the council meeting, the two sides clashed during the debate dueling rallies outside City Hall twelve o'clock. At times, sheriffs deputies in uniform had to intervene to separate people when in-your-face arguing got dangerously close to physical confrontation. A man blew a shofar, a horn used for Jewish religious purposes, to try to stifle debate condemning Israel.

Iranian Hackers Bring Twitter Down

IRANIAN fanatics launched a hack attack on Twitter in REVENGE for the website's role in anti-government protests, experts warned last night.
The trendy micro-blogging site - used by dozens of celebs - was broken into by a group calling itself the "Iranian cyber army".
Twitter users trying to log on were directed instead to a page of political slogans. They were unable to post their messages, or Tweets, for hours.
In June Twitter was used to mobilize protests in Tehran after Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi nejad was declared the winner in disputed elections.
And experts believe the Iranian government was behind yesterday's attack on the site.
Tory MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of Parliament's counter terrorism sub-committee, said: "Iran is one of the most predatory governments in terms of using the internet and e-attacks.
"It seems this was a revenge attack for Twitter's role in unsettling the country's elections."
One message in Arabic left by the hackers read, "Hezbollah is victorious" in a reference to the Islamic terror group.
Terror expert Neil Doyle said: "This attack is a display of power and it shows what can be achieved by penetrating and paralysing technology."
Twitter fans logging on early yesterday were greeted by a black screen with a green flag and a message in Arabic that said "The feast of peace".
A message in Iran's main language Farsi was below the flag.
The hackers also wrote in English: "THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY .
"U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To...
Embarrassed Twitter bosses blamed the hijack on a DNS attack, where a web address is diverted to another site.
It was fixed a few hours later. But critics slammed Twitter for lax security.
Web commentators Mashable.com said: "This is unacceptable for one of the world's top 20 websites. Twitter must ensure it never happens again."

Democrats plan nearly $2 trillion debt limit hike

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats plan to allow the government's debt to swell by nearly $2 trillion as part of a bill next week to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The amount pretty much equals the total of a year-end spending spree by lawmakers and is big enough to ensure that Congress doesn't have to vote again on going further into debt until after the 2010 elections.
The move has anxious moderate Democrats maneuvering to win new deficit-cutting tools as the price for their votes, igniting battles between the House and the Senate and with powerful interest groups on both the right and the left.
The record increase in the so-called debt limit - the legal cap on the amount of money the government can borrow - is likely to be in the neighborhood of $1.8 trillion to $1.9 trillion, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday.
That eye-popping figure is making Democrats woozy but is what is needed to make sure they don't have to vote again before next year's midterm elections. The government's total debt has nearly doubled in the past seven years and is expected to exceed the current ceiling of $12.1 trillion before Jan. 1.
Democratic leaders say they will try to raise the ceiling to nearly $14 trillion as part of a $626 billion bill next week to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other military programs in 2010. The bill doesn't include the additional $30 billion President Obama is expected to seek early next year to pay for his 30,000-troop buildup in Afghanistan but it might carry an added $50 billion to pay for a six-month extension of unemployment benefits and health care insurance subsidies for the long-term jobless.
The entire strategy, however, is teetering because of brinksmanship involving moderate Senate Democrats who are demanding a bipartisan deficit reduction task force with special powers to recommend spending cuts or tax increases that would be guaranteed House and Senate votes. That idea is a total no-go with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Playing tit for tat, moderate House "Blue Dog" Democrats announced Friday that their votes for any debt limit increase depend on winning a "pay-as-you-go" budget law aimed at ensuring that new tax cuts or new spending programs don't increase deficits.
Under a pay-as-you-go regime, if offsetting cuts or revenue hikes are not found to pay for new policies, across-the-board spending cuts would hit selected programs such as farm subsidies and Medicare.
Minority Republicans, meanwhile, are refusing to provide any support for raising the debt ceiling.
"Instead of reducing the size of government and controlling spending, Democrats are planning to raise the debt limit by $1.8 trillion, putting American taxpayers in even deeper debt to countries like China," said Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan.
Vice President Joe Biden, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Blue Dog leaders and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., were involved in several sets of negotiations Friday in an effort to break the impasse between House and Senate Democrats.
If a deal can't be found, Democrats might have to move on to Plan B, which would be to have the Senate pass a smaller, $925 billion increase that's already available to them. That bill passed the House because of a quirky rule that automatically passes debt limit legislation - without an up-or-down vote - when Congress ratifies its annual budget blueprint. That was done last April.
Under the second scenario, the House would adjourn, leaving the Senate no choice but to pass the $925 billion increase in order to avoid a first-ever default on U.S. government obligations.
"We're going to have to face the moment of truth at some point," said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who is one of about a dozen Senate Democrats pressing for the special deficit task force as the price for voting for an increase in the debt limit.
The debt limit conundrum comes as Congress is wrapping up its annual appropriations bills, including a $1.1 trillion omnibus measure pending in the Senate. A vote to cut off a GOP filibuster of that measure is scheduled for Saturday morning with a final vote likely on Sunday.
The omnibus appropriations bill is opposed by most Republicans. It awards domestic programs and foreign aid considerable funding boosts and also provides money for more than 5,000 home-state pet projects pushed by lawmakers.
The omnibus bill comes on top of an infusion of cash to domestic agencies in February's economic stimulus bill and a $410 billion measure in March that also bestowed budget increases well above inflation.
The measure survived a test vote Friday that demonstrated it should receive on Saturday the 60 votes needed to overcome the GOP stalling tactics. Three senior Republican members of the Appropriations Committee joined forces with all but three Democrats to keep the measure from effectively being killed.

Dec 11, 5:48 PM (ET)

By ANDREW TAYLOR
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