U.S. moving submersibles to Persian Gulf to oppose Iran

WASHINGTON — The Navy is rushing dozens of unmanned underwater craft to the Persian Gulf to help detect and destroy mines in a major military buildup aimed at preventing Iran from closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the event of a crisis, U.S. officials said.

The tiny SeaFox submersibles each carry an underwater television camera, homing sonar and an explosive charge. The Navy bought them in May after an urgent request by Marine Gen. James Mattis, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East.

Each submersible is about 4 feet long and weighs less than 100 pounds. The craft are intended to boost U.S. military capabilities as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program appear to have stalled. Three rounds of talks since April between Iran and the five countries in the United Nations Security Council plus Germany have made little progress.

Some U.S. officials are wary that Iran may respond to tightening sanctions on its banking and energy sectors, including a European Union oil embargo, by launching or sponsoring attacks on oil tankers or platforms in the Persian Gulf. Some officials in Tehran have threatened to close the narrow waterway, a  choke point for a fifth of the oil traded worldwide.

The first of the SeaFox submersibles arrived in the Gulf in recent weeks, officials said, along with four MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters and four minesweeping ships, part of a larger buildup of U.S. naval, air and ground forces in the region aimed at Iran.

The U.S. already has sent two aircraft carriers and a squadron of F-22 fighters to the Persian Gulf, and is keeping two U.S. army brigades in Kuwait. Though much of the buildup has been publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon, the deployment of the submersibles has not been publicly disclosed, apparently to avoid alerting Iran.

The SeaFox is small enough to be deployed from helicopters and even small rubber boats, but it also can be dropped off the back of a minesweeper. It is controlled by a fiber optic cable and sends live video back to a camera operator.

It can be used against floating or drifting mines, which Iran has used in the past. It operates up to 300 meters deep, and moves at speeds of up to six knots. But the $100,000 weapon is on a what amounts to a suicide mission. The “built-in, large caliber shaped charge” it carries destroys the mine but also the vehicle itself.

5 ‘real world’ signs of the coming Chinese apocalypse

By Pamela Heaven

From shrinking trade to stalling factories to surprise rate cuts, signs are mounting that China is headed for a hard landing.

Tuesday investors fretted as China’s imports in June grew at half the expected pace, entrenching concerns that domestic demand in the world’s second-largest economy is cooling quickly.

The news was also not a good harbinger for China first-half GDP data to be released later this week.

While economists crunch the latest numbers, Trefor Moss, writing for Foreign Policy magazine, provides “real-world signs of China’s economic malaise.”

The stimulus that China pumped into the economy during the 2009 downturn is coming home to roost for local governments.

Municipalities are being asked to repay their debts and local officials, who indulged in fancy fleets among other luxuries during the boom years, are feeling the pinch.

The city of Wenzhou is planning on auctioning off 80% of its vehicles this year, 1,300 cars, with similar fire sales being held nationwide.

About 30 people were hurt and two police cars were smashed last month when a riot broke out in Shaxi township in Guangdong province — known as the ‘world’s factory floor.’

As exporters go bust and factories cut shifts, tensions between migrant workers and locals over layoffs and wage cuts are mounting. Migrant workers are the elbow grease of China’s growth and their disaffection could be its undoing, writes Moss.

More than half of China’s millionaires are either considering emigrating or have already taken steps to do so, a survey by Bank of China and wealth researcher Hurun Report revealed. And if they haven’t moved yet they are spending their money elsewhere.

Another survey by Allianz China Life Insurance says China’s wealthy are losing confidence in the domestic market and socking money into cash and less into stock, real-estate and other investments. Sales of luxury goods inside China are down, but investment in high-end property overseas is up.

A ‘naked official’ is a term in China that refers to an official who has sent his family and money abroad and is poised to make a getaway himself. And their numbers are rising.

Chinese prosecutors say 18,487 officials, including executives from state-owned companies, have been caught during the last 12 years while allegedly trying to flee overseas with ill-gotten gains, the Los Angeles Times reports.

As Moss points out, China’s wealthy are often members of the same family, and if China really does go into recession, a lot of rich people may decide to cut and run.

China’s ports are piled high with surplus coal as businesses and citizens try to save on electricity bills. Factory production cuts have contributed to the slump in demand.

The national price of coal is down 10% since late last year, a drop that will hit the global economy and in turn cut demand for Chinese exports.

Last year pork prices skyrocketed 57% in response to the growing Chinese appetite for meat, but over the past four months that demand has slipped. So much so that the hog-to-corn price ratio which measures whether rearing pigs is profitable dipped into the red and the government had to step in. At the same time the price of eggs has shot up so quickly that shoppers now call them ‘rocket eggs’ and Chinese consumers, shaken by the faltering economy and food safety scares, are opting to grow their own food.

Former CIA spy advocates overthrow of Iranian regime

Reza Kahlili, living in the shadows with a fake name and disguise, worked from inside the Revolutionary Guard. He warns of terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. and a plot to destroy Israel.

By David Zucchino

ARLINGTON, Va. — His disguise consists of a blue surgeon's mask, sunglasses and a baseball cap that reads "Free Iran." A small modulator distorts his voice. He uses a pseudonym, Reza Kahlili.
He lives in fear, he says, because his years as a paid spy for the CIA inside Iran have made him an assassination target of Iran's government. He worries about his wife and children, who live with him in California.

 At the same time, implausibly, he has become one of the most influential and outspoken voices in the U.S. advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government.

 For the last two years, Kahlili has gone semipublic with a memoir, a blog, op-ed pieces and invitation-only speeches at think tanks. He warns that Iran operates terrorist sleeper cells inside the United States and is determined to build nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. The U.S. should respond, he argues, by supporting the opposition inside Iran.

 He travels furtively between appearances, working as a Pentagon consultant and as a member of a domestic security task force.

 "There's probably nobody better on our side in explaining the mind-set of those in power in Iran," said Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA military analyst who directs the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. "He understands the ideological sources of Iran's nuclear program."

 U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Kahlili has convinced him of the importance of supporting the opposition and hardening sanctions against Iran.
 "I thought I knew a lot about Iran until meeting with him," King said on a New York political radio program in January. At the time, Kahlili was a guest and King was a guest-host, but the two had previously met in the congressman's office.

 "If you're going to take this issue seriously, the one person you have to consult with and read his writings is Reza Kahlili," King said.

 In a quiet hotel lounge in Arlington, Kahlili is not wearing his disguise or using his voice modulator for a meeting with a reporter.

 "You'd be shocked by how easily agents from the Revolutionary Guard come and go inside the United States every day," Kahlili says in a near-whisper, bent over a table in a dark corner.
 A soft-spoken man in his mid-50s, Kahlili is wearing jeans, a sports shirt and a black coat. He's of average height and weight, with a smattering of facial hair.

He made certain he wasn't followed, he says, and performed a quick security check of the hotel.
 "They'd kill me if they could find me," he says of Iranian agents.

 Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer in Washington, D.C., said he had confirmed that Kahlili was a longtime operative of a U.S. intelligence agency, adding: "He has insights on Iran most people in the U.S. intelligence community don't have."

 For covert operatives, clearance agreements with the CIA often prohibit public acknowledgment of the agreement itself or of the CIA. A CIA spokesman, Todd D. Ebitz, said the agency had no comment on Kahlili.

 Brian Weidner, program coordinator for Iran instruction at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy, confirmed that Kahlili is a paid lecturer for the Pentagon agency. Other instructors are videotaped, Kahlili says, but his lectures are audio-only to protect his identity.

 ***

 Kahlili says he lived a double life until the mid-1990s, passing along secrets to the CIA and recruiting Revolutionary Guards for the agency. In a sense, he resumed his double identity after publishing his 2010 memoir; he was now a former covert agent who had thrust himself into the public eye.

 He rarely leaves home — "my bunker," he jokes — and shuns social situations.

 For years, his mother in Iran berated him for working for a regime she despised; she died never knowing about his CIA spy work, he says. His children know nothing of his background. His Iranian wife was unaware of his spying for years, and was hurt, angry and terrified when he finally told her.
 "It took a long time for that to heal, and for her to understand why I did it," Kahlili says. Though his wife is pleased that he has publicized Iran's human rights abuses, he says, she has begged him to go back into hiding.

 He is pained by regrets. "I put my family in danger without giving it much thought," he says. "They didn't know what I'd done, but they were in as much danger as I was."

 The spy story Kahlili tells in his book, and in several interviews with The Times, features coded messages, disinformation, clandestine meetings and international intrigue.

 After graduating from USC, Kahlili returned to Iran just before the 1979 revolution toppled the Shah. A childhood friend recruited him into the Revolutionary Guard, where he gained an insider's access to the new Islamic government — and where he was to turn against the regime.

Like father like son … only worse: Tun Razak, Najib and hunger strikes

By Tan Pek Leng / Aliran

While Tun Razak at least had the gumption to meet up in with representatives of ISA detainees on a hunger strike in 1967 to try and end their fast, what have we got from his son Najib, asks Tan Pek Leng.

History sometimes has a cruel way of repeating itself – the acts of cruelty rendered the more revolting because they are first perpetuated by the father, then the son.

The two rounds of hunger strikes at Kamunting over the past three months bring to mind the same form of protest carried out by political prisoners at the Batu Gajah and Muar detention centres – the precursors to Kamunting – from 26 May to 10 June 1967, almost exactly 45 years ago.

The hunger strike was launched by 39 detainees in Batu Gajah – members of the Labour Party of Malaya (LPM) and the Parti Rakyat Malaya (PRM) – to call for unconditional release or be brought to open trial; an end to torture while under police custody; improved conditions at the detention centre, etc. On 29 May, 30 detainees in Muar – also members of the LPM and PRM – joined the hunger strike.

The families of the detainees, who were refused visitation rights, decided to picket outside the Batu Gajah detention centre and camped in front of it for three nights, until they were dispersed by the Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) with tear gas.

Do most of the above sound eerily familiar?

But at least in those somewhat better days 45 years ago, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Acting Home Minister Tun Abdul Razak agreed to meet with family members of the hunger strikers – after the appeal and intervention of opposition leader Tan Chee Khoon. In the course of a 60-minute meeting on the 13th day of the hunger strike, a four-person delegation was set up, comprising the Principal Assistant Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Assistant Secretary-General of the LPM, the wife of one of the detainees and one of the detainees who was an LPM leader and medical doctor.

This delegation met with the hunger strikers for five hours the following day, 10 June, and the latter agreed to end their protest action on the assurance of Tun Razak that he would look into the recommendations of a committee set up to investigate the grievances of the detainees as soon as the committee’s report was ready.

But before we congratulate Tun Razak on his magnanimity, it would be wise to recall that it was he, as Deputy Prime Minister, who tabled in Parliament, on 22 April 1960, the constitutional amendment that would enable the promulgation of the Internal Security Act (ISA). He also had a big hand in incarcerating under the ISA those who did not agree with him politically during his watch as Deputy Prime Minister and then Prime Minister.

While we are at it, let’s bury this myth that there were any golden days of democracy under the Tunku-Razak regime.

So are we to congratulate current Prime Minister Najib son of Tun Razak for his magnanimity in repealing that draconian law that his father has put in place? Hardly, for the Security Offences Act that replaced it is deemed more dangerous by many.

And while Tun Razak at least had the gumption to meet up with the representatives of the detainees to try and end the hunger strike, what have we got from Najib?

That deafening inelegant silence one has come to expect whenever issues of public concern surface.

There was no word from him when detainees launched their first hunger strike on 10 May 2012 to draw attention to the fact that the abrogation of the ISA had left them in the cold.

No word from him either when harrowing torture notes smuggled out of Kamunting documented gross violations of human rights.

Not a word when it was reported that the hunger strikers were threatened with longer terms of detention if they did not end the protest action.

Not a squeak when against all previous conventions, schoolteacher Bakar Baba was issued with a letter of termination of employment. Previous detainees in the public service had always retained their positions and continued to receive their salaries while under detention because they were considered political prisoners, not criminals.

He waited it out in total silence until the detainees had to call off their hunger strike under duress – having been put in solitary confinement and subjected to continuous harassment.

Perhaps he thought it was for his cousin Hishammuddin Hussein, who is after all the Home Minister, to handle the situation. He should have known better. The first time Hisham opened his mouth, he demonstrated his idiocy by claiming that the May hunger strike was an attempt to hijack the transformation programme.

Then, he also followed his Prime Minister cousin’s example and kept quiet for the first 11 days of the second hunger strike. When he broke his silence, it was only to tweet that he would provide all the clarifications the following week. But the clarifications never came.

Instead, he demonstrated his callousness with a tweet five days later to the effect that while the detainees’ choice might be a hunger strike, his was a lamb chop.

Is it not time the citizens exercise their choice and chop off these gangrenes from our body politic? Is it not time we strike where it hurts them most – at the ballot box – to reclaim the freedom and justice we hunger for?

Is Google Finally Getting That Design Matters? First Look at the 2012 Android Development Kit

By Tim Maly

You may think of Android as an OS for phones and tablets, but Google’s ambitions run deeper. They’re pitching it as a platform that could run on all kinds of devices. To get developers on board with that plan, the company announced an update to the Android Accessory Development Kit (ADK) 2012 at Google I/O.

The ADK allows makers to quickly get up to speed on the platform’s function, but we were much more impressed with how great the form looked, especially when compared to the bare-bones 2011 edition. Has Google finally been bit by the design bug? We spoke with Android Communications’ Gina Scigliano to find out more.

The ADK 2012 comes out of the box as a working alarm clock and audio dock that’s compatible with your Android devices. Why an alarm clock? “Because it’s the last thing you see at night and the first thing you see in the morning!” says Scigliano. By making an object that fits into your life, Google hopes that you’ll be more likely to think about it when you’re deciding what to hack up next.

If you do decide to go deeper, Google has made that as easy as possible. The box is held together by magnets — there’s not a screw in sight. Squeeze it in the right place, and it pops open, revealing an Arduino-compatible board attached to an army of sensors.

The board can be detached if you want but with the included abilities to measure light, color, proximity, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, acceleration, and the local magnetic field, to say nothing of the capacitive buttons, an SD card reader, USB, Bluetooth, LEDs and a speaker, there’s plenty to do using the kit.

“We ended up putting in a bunch of sensors without really knowing what we would use them for,” says Scigliano, “hopefully [they] will inspire people to make all kinds of interesting accessories, especially ones that nobody has made before.”

The kit you see here is a limited edition reference design. Only people who made it to Google I/O will get the boxes, but the schematics are available online. “We want people to copy the ADK,” Scigliano says, “both direct copies and heavily modified derivatives.”

The point is to lure makers and designers into giving the platform a try, at all levels of skill. The kit is very user-friendly, even for beginners. It’s designed to be easy to set up and customize out of the box. Interested in going deeper? Google will share all the details, right down to the source code and hardware schematics.

To get hackers fired up, Scigliano offers some possible uses the kit: “a smarter homebrew robot, picosatellite, hotel room alarm, irrigation controller, motorized remote controlled drapes, smart thermostat, egg timer with atmospheric pressure compensation, talking clock, data logging weather station, and did I mention robots? It’ll be really fun to see what people build.”