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Argos Media

Hardliner Avigdor Lieberman set to become Israel's foreign minister | World news | guar... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...avigdor-lieberman-israel

Israel Palestine Avigdor Lieberman Benjamin Netanyahu Yisrael Beiteinu

shared by Argos Media on 17 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Avigdor Lieberman, the outspoken far-right Israeli politician, is set to be appointed his country's next foreign minister in a new coalition deal.
  • Under the deal, agreed late on Sunday night, Lieberman would be both foreign minister and a deputy prime minister, giving him an important influence in shaping the new government's policies.
  • Both Netanyahu and Lieberman have stopped short of endorsing a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians, which may set them at odds with the international community, particularly the Obama administration which has promised to "aggressively" pursue a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
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  • His party would also have four other ministers in the cabinet, including national security minister, as well as the post of deputy foreign minister.
  • Lieberman, 50, a Russian-speaking immigrant born in Moldova, resigned from the government in January last year in protest at the restarting of peace talks with the Palestinians, saying: "Negotiations on the basis of land for peace are a critical mistake ... and will destroy us."He is an unashamed hardliner who campaigned on the promise of a new law aimed at the country's Arab minority which would require Israelis to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state or lose their citizenship.He also advocates carving out part of the Galilee that is home to Arab Israeli villages and handing it over to Palestinian control, stripping the residents of their Israeli citizenship. Those policies proved popular enough for him to come third at the polls, but the oath of loyalty is thought unlikely to come into law.
  • The agreement between Netanyahu and Lieberman gave a taste of the policies that would follow. "Toppling the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip will be an Israeli strategic goal," the agreement said. The new government would act "with determination" to stop rocket fire by militants in Gaza.It also said: "The government will not conduct political negotiations with terrorist organisations or terrorist elements."Settlements are likely to continue to grow – Lieberman himself lives in Nokdim, a settlement south-east of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
  • Netanyahu has said the current peace talks with the Palestinians will not succeed and that he would rather pursue an "economic peace", by which he means financial investment in the occupied West Bank.
  • He also intends to make Iran the centre of his foreign policy. The agreement said: "Israel will make every effort, especially with regard to the international community, to prevent the nuclear armament of Iran, while emphasising that a nuclear Iran, representing a danger to Israel, countries in the region and the entire free world, is unacceptable."
  • Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said: "We have to declare that sadly there is no partner on the Israeli side to negotiate with."
  • Lieberman, an immigrant and former nightclub bouncer from former Soviet Moldova, does not talk about Palestinian independence. Instead, his party's vision on the two-state solution states: "Israel needs to explain that the demand for a Palestinian state and the refugees' right of return is a cover for radical Islam's attempt to destroy the State of Israel." Lieberman was a member of the current Israeli government, but walked out in January last year as soon as peace talks restarted with the Palestinians.
  • Britain, in particular, is critical of Israel's settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, all of which are illegal under international law. But that cause might be harder to argue in future given that the almost 500,000 Israeli settlers include Lieberman and his family, who live in Nokdim, deep inside the West Bank.
  • Lieberman's main target has been his country's own Arab minority, who make up a fifth of the population, and of whom he has said: "Israel is under a dual terrorist attack, from within and from without. And terrorism from within is always more dangerous than terrorism from without."
  • It was this campaign, particularly his call for Arabs to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state, that won him so much support in the elections. He has even suggested that some elected Arab MPs in the Israeli parliament should be tried for treason and then executed.He also appeals to more secular Israelis, arguing in favour of civil marriages, as well as advocating a more presidential style of government.
Argos Media

In Pakistan, Guile Helps Taliban Gain - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...26buner.html

Pakistan Taliban Buner Malakand Swat Valley

shared by Argos Media on 26 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Initially, Buner was a hard place for the Taliban to crack. When they attacked a police station in the valley district last year, the resistance was fearless. Local people picked up rifles, pistols and daggers, hunted down the militants and killed six of them.
  • But it was not to last. In short order this past week the Taliban captured Buner, a strategically vital district just 60 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. The militants flooded in by the hundreds, startling Pakistani and American officials with the speed of their advance.
  • That Buner fell should be no surprise, local people say. Last fall, the inspector general of police in North-West Frontier Province, Malik Naveed Khan, complained that his officers were being attacked and killed by the hundreds. Mr. Khan was so desperate — and had been so thoroughly abandoned by the military and the government — that he was relying on citizen posses like the one that stood up to the Taliban last August.
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  • Today, the hopes that those civilian militias inspired are gone, brushed away by the realization that Pakistanis can do little to stem the Taliban advance if their government and military will not help them.
  • The peace deal the military struck with the Taliban in February in neighboring Swat further demoralized people in Buner. Residents and local officials said they asked themselves how they could continue to resist the Taliban when the military had abandoned the effort. The Taliban were emboldened by the deal: it called for the institution of Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran, throughout Malakand Agency, which includes Swat and Buner. It allowed the Taliban amnesty for their killings, floggings and destruction of girls schools in Swat.
  • Still, when the Taliban rolled into Buner from Swat through the town of Gokan on April 5, a well-to-do businessman, Fateh Mohammed, organized another posse of civilian fighters to take on the militants in the town of Sultanwas. Five civilians and three policemen were killed, he said. Some newspaper reports said 17 Taliban were killed.
  • At that point, the chief government official in charge of Malakand, Mohammed Javed, proposed what he called peace talks. Mr. Javed, an experienced bureaucrat in the Pakistani civil service, was appointed in late February as the main government power broker in Malakand even though he was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban, a senior government official in North-West Frontier Province said. The government had been under pressure to bring calm to Swat and essentially capitulated to Taliban demands for Mr. Javed’s appointment, the official said.
  • In an apparent acknowledgment that Mr. Javed had been too sympathetic to the Taliban, the government announced Saturday that he had been replaced by Fazal Karim Khattack.
  • In what some residents in Swat and now in Buner say had been a pattern of favorable decisions led by Mr. Javed on behalf of the Taliban, the talks in Buner turned out to be a “betrayal,” said a former police officer from the area, who was afraid to be identified.
  • To bolster their strength, and insinuate themselves in Buner, the Taliban also relied heavily on the adherents of a hard-line militant group, the Movement for the Implementation of the Shariah of Muhammad, which has agitated for Islamic law in Pakistan. Their leader, Sufi Mohammed, comes from the region around Swat and Buner and has whipped up local support and intimidated Taliban opponents.
  • early last week the Taliban showed their power by ordering the state courts shut. They announced that they would open Islamic courts, practicing Shariah, by the end of the month. The militants have also placed a tax payable to the Taliban on all marble quarried at mines, said a senior police officer who worked in Buner.
  • The police were so intimidated they mostly stayed inside station houses, he said. “They are setting up a parallel government.”
  • With their success in Buner, the Taliban felt flush with success and increasingly confident that they could repeat the template, residents and analysts said. In the main prize, the richest and most populous province, Punjab, in eastern Pakistan, the Taliban are relying on the sleeper cells of other militant groups, including the many fighters who had been trained by the Pakistani military for combat in Kashmir, and now felt abandoned by the state, they said.
  • It would not be difficult for the Taliban to seize Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, by shutting down the airport and blocking the two main thoroughfares from Islamabad, a Western official with long experience in the province said. At midweek, a convoy of heavily armed Taliban vehicles was seen barreling along the four-lane motorway between Islamabad and Peshawar, according to Mr. Sherpao, the former minister of the interior.
  • Across North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban are rapidly consolidating power by activating cells that consisted of a potent mix of jihadist groups, he said.
Argos Media

Yemen Dispute Slows Closing of Guantánamo - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24yemen.html

Yemen US Guantanamo Ali Abdullah Saleh Terrorism

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The Obama administration’s effort to return the largest group of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen, their home country, has stalled, creating a major new hurdle for the president’s plan to close the prison camp in Cuba by next January, American and Yemeni officials say.
  • The Yemeni government has asked Washington to return its detainees and has said that it would need substantial aid to rehabilitate the men. But the Obama administration is increasingly skeptical of Yemen’s ability to provide adequate rehabilitation and security to supervise returned prisoners. In addition, American officials are wary of sending detainees to Yemen because of growing indications of activity by Al Qaeda there.
  • The Bush administration also failed to reach a deal with President Saleh, but the Obama administration had hoped to get increased cooperation from Yemen, which critics say has a history of coddling Islamic extremists and releasing convicted terrorists. Complicating the task is the fact that security in Yemen has been deteriorating for more than a year, with several terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing outside the American Embassy compound in September that killed 13 people.
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  • Some Republicans in Congress have mounted stiff resistance to closing Guantánamo, and officials in some American communities, fearing that terrorism suspects could be tried or held in their courts or prisons, said they would fight any such plans. Also, while some European governments have promised to resettle detainees, specific agreements have been slow in coming.
  • The Yemenis not only are the biggest group of detainees, but also are widely seen as the most difficult to transfer out of Guantánamo. Other countries are wary of many of the Yemeni detainees because jihadist groups have long had deep roots in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world and the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father. If the Yemenis are not sent home, there may be few other options for many of the 97 men, detainees’ lawyers and human rights groups say.
  • The developments are significant for the Obama administration because the 97 Yemeni detainees make up more than 40 percent of the remaining 241 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The question of what to do with them “is integral to the process of closing Guantánamo,” said Ken Gude, an associate director at the Center for American Progress who has written about closing the prison camp.
  • Perhaps a dozen or more Yemeni detainees could face prosecution in the United States, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was charged in the Bush administration’s military commission system with being a coordinator of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
  • David H. Remes, a lawyer for 16 Yemeni detainees, said it appeared that many of the men might remain in American custody. “Unless President Obama reconsiders his decision to close Guantánamo,” Mr. Remes said, “the Yemeni detainees would have to be brought to the U.S. and put in some sort of prison.”
  • The complexities of the issues surrounding the detainees are a reflection of Yemen’s tangled domestic and international problems. It is a state that often appears on the verge of chaos. A weak central government is fighting a persistent insurgency in the north, restive separatists in the south and a growing Qaeda presence.
  • Some Yemeni officials say President Saleh, a wily former army officer, has used the internal threats — and perhaps even nurtured them — to press the United States and Yemen’s neighbor Saudi Arabia for more aid.As a result, people who have discussed the detainee issues with Yemeni officials say the Obama administration’s frustration with the Yemeni government may be well founded.
  • One senior Yemeni official, she said, seemed to suggest that Yemen would require a huge payment from the American government to resettle the detainees. A proper rehabilitation program, the official claimed, could cost as much as $1 million for each detainee, totaling nearly $100 million.
Argos Media

EurActiv.com - Turkish Cypriot election dims reunification hopes | EU - European Inform... - 0 views

www.euractiv.com/...article-181393

Cyprus EU Demetris Christofias Mehmet Ali Talat Turkey Dervis Eroglu Alexander Downer

shared by Argos Media on 20 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Turkish Cypriot hardliners swept to victory in parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus on Sunday (19 April). The result could hamper reunification talks with Greek Cypriots, which are essential for Turkey's EU membership ambitions.
  • With 100% of the ballot counted, it emerged that the right-wing National Unity Party (UBP) had clinched 44.06% of the vote, provisionally giving it an outright majority in the 50-seat parliament.
  • It was a stinging defeat for the ruling Republican Turkish Party (CTP), a key ally of Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat. 
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  • Christofias is secretary-general of AKEL, a Marxist-Leninist party, and is the EU's first communist head of state. He has good personal relations with the leader of the unrecognised "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" Mehmet Ali Talat, who is also a left-wing leader. 
  • The CTP, which bore the brunt of public discontent over a faltering economy and continued international isolation of the breakaway territory, took 29.25% of the vote. 
  • As Christofias recently told EurActiv in an interview, his message to the international community is to advise Turkey to be constructive and to refrain from meddling in the talks. 
  • The UBP advocates an outright two-state settlement on Cyprus, at odds with the federal model now being discussed by Talat and Greek Cypriot leader, President Demetris Christofias. 
  • In an earlier interview with Turkey's Zaman newspaper, Eroglu was quoted as saying: "Everything will be easier if it is universally accepted that we [Turkish Cypriots] are a nation and that we have a state." 
  • Talat will retain his leadership of the territory, but his room for manoeuvre is likely to be limited by a parliament now dominated by the UBP.  The basis of the current talks is reuniting the island as a bizonal federation. The UBP says it wants a rethink of the process. 
  • "We will continue to support negotiations," said UBP leader Dervis Eroglu. "No-one should say we are against them. We will put forward our views and discuss them within the framework of Turkey's foreign policy on Cyprus." 
  • The Greek Cypriots represent Cyprus in the European Union and say they will block Turkey's admission to the EU as long as the island remains divided. Turkey is currently in entry negotiations, but there is strong resistance to Ankara's entry among several member-states.
  • Greek Cypriots refuse to discuss Turkish Cypriot sovereignty, and say a deal should see the evolution of the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus into a federation, rather than a loose association of two states.  Greek Cypriots issued a chilly response to the election result. "We will have bigger problems, that is my prediction," Christofias said, referring to the election. 
  • Analysts said Turkey, which supported a UN peace blueprint for Cyprus rejected by Greek Cypriots in 2004, would not want a disruption of settlement talks.  "Turkey is going to continue on its EU path and wants [Northern Cyprus] to do the same," said Ahmet Sozen, a lecturer in international relations at the Eastern Mediterranean University. "Turkey has sent a message to all political players in northern Cyprus that a no-solution policy is not a policy any more." 
  • The United Nations envoy for Cyprus, Alexander Downer, said last week the negotiations had been making "steady progress". 
  • Dutch MEP Joost Lagendijk  (Greens/European Free Alliance), who chairs the European Parliament's delegation to the EU-Turkey joint parliamentary committee, said EU member states have the ability to do "behind-the-scenes" work to make sure that there is a solution on the divided island of Cyprus as soon as possible, but that some of them are not willing to do this.  "Some countries like to hide behind the Cyprus problem - for example, the French government and the Austrians. The majority of the EU states who are in favour of Turkish accession should make it clear within the EU, to the French, to the Austrians and, of course, to the Cypriots, that it is in the EU's interest to have this issue solved," he said in an interview published by the Turkish daily Zaman. 
Argos Media

Divisions Arose on Rough Tactics for Qaeda Figure - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...18zubaydah.html

CIA US Torture Abu Zubaydah Al-Qaeda

shared by Argos Media on 18 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against a prisoner from Al Qaeda was ordered by senior Central Intelligence Agency officials despite the belief of interrogators that the prisoner had already told them all he knew, according to former intelligence officials and a footnote in a newly released legal memorandum.
  • The escalation to especially brutal interrogation tactics against the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, including confining him in boxes and slamming him against the wall, was ordered by officials at C.I.A. headquarters based on a highly inflated assessment of his importance, interviews and a review of newly released documents show.
  • Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.
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  • Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, “seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”
  • A footnote to another of the memos described a rift between line officers questioning Abu Zubaydah at a secret C.I.A. prison in Thailand and their bosses at headquarters, and asserted that the brutal treatment may have been “unnecessary.”
  • In March 2002, when Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan after a gunfight with Pakistani security officers backed by F.B.I. and C.I.A. officers, Bush administration officials portrayed him as a Qaeda leader. That judgment was reflected in the Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.The memo summarizes the C.I.A.’s judgment that Abu Zubaydah, then 31, had risen rapidly to “third or fourth man in Al Qaeda” and had served as “senior lieutenant” to Osama bin Laden. It said he had “managed a network of training camps” and had been “involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by Al Qaeda.”
  • The memo reported the C.I.A.’s portrayal of “a highly self-directed individual who prizes his independence,” a deceptive narcissist, healthy and tough, who agency officers believed was the most senior terrorist caught since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
  • His interrogation, according to multiple accounts, began in Pakistan and continued at the secret C.I.A. site in Thailand, with a traditional, rapport-building approach led by two F.B.I. agents, who even helped care for him as his gunshot wounds healed.
  • A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.
  • The legal basis for this treatment is uncertain, but lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters were in constant touch with interrogators, as well as with Mr. Bybee’s subordinate in the Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, who was drafting memos on the legal limits of interrogation.
  • Through the summer of 2002, Abu Zubaydah continued to provide valuable information. Interrogators began to surmise that he was not a leader, but rather a helpful training camp personnel clerk who would arrange false documents and travel for jihadists, including Qaeda members.
  • He knew enough to give interrogators “a road map of Al Qaeda operatives,” an agency officer said. He also repeated talk he had heard about possible plots or targets in the United States, though when F.B.I. agents followed up, most of it turned out to be idle discussion or preliminary brainstorming.At the time, former C.I.A. officials say, his tips were extremely useful, helping to track several other important terrorists, including Mr. Mohammed.
  • But senior agency officials, still persuaded, as they had told President George W. Bush and his staff, that he was an important Qaeda leader, insisted that he must know more.“You get a ton of information, but headquarters says, ‘There must be more,’ ” recalled one intelligence officer who was involved in the case. As described in the footnote to the memo, the use of repeated waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah was ordered “at the direction of C.I.A. headquarters,” and officials were dispatched from headquarters “to watch the last waterboard session.”
  • The memo, written in 2005 and signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, concluded that the waterboarding was justified even if the prisoner turned out not to know as much as officials had thought.
  • And he did not, according to the former intelligence officer involved in the Abu Zubaydah case. “He pleaded for his life,” the official said. “But he gave up no new information. He had no more information to give.”
  • Since 2002, the C.I.A. has downgraded its assessment of Abu Zubaydah’s significance, while continuing to call his revelations important. In an interview, an intelligence officer said that the current view was that Abu Zubaydah was “an important terrorist facilitator” who disclosed “essential raw material for successful counterterrorist action.”
Argos Media

G20: Gordon Brown brokers massive financial aid deal for global economy | World news | ... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...20-gordon-brown-global-economy

G20 Economy Gordon Brown Nicolas Sarkozy

shared by Argos Media on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • World leaders yesterday agreed on a $1.1 trillion injection of financial aid into the global economy,
  • The sprawling deal set out in a nine-page communique hammered out over two days of talks in London also contains tougher-than-expected measures to tighten financial regulation, including a clampdown on tax havens, the final part of the deal to be struck, after an impassioned call for compromise by Barack Obama.
  • British government officials lost their battle to include a commitment to spend a substantial share of the economic stimulus on low-carbon recovery projects.
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  • Vague low-carbon language and climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December were relegated to two paragraphs at the communique's end.
  • Some critics also pointed out that the summit failed to produce a co-ordinated plan to purge the global banking system of billions of dollars of toxic assets, and suggested that regulation of the financial industry should have gone further.
  • Brown said that the existing agreed fiscal stimulus will amount to $5tn by 2010, and the measures will raise world output by 4% by the end of next year.
  • The prime minister also won agreement from other G20 world leaders that the International Monetary Fund will monitor the existing stimulus,
  • Overall, the resources of the IMF will be trebled from $250bn to $700bn, following the lifting by the US of years of opposition. In a sign of the shift in world power, China agreed to provide $40bn of the new loans given to the IMF, with more to come from Saudi Arabia.
  • At the centre of the deal was a six-point plan:• Reform of the global banking system, with controls on hedge funds, better accounting standards, tighter rules for credit rating agencies, and immediate naming-and-shaming of tax havens that fail to share information.• A global common approach to dealing with toxic assets that impair the ability of banks to lend.• A $1.1tn package to supplement the $5tn stimulus to the global economy by individual countries. The $1.1tn will allow the IMF, the World Bank and others to increase lending to vulnerable countries. There will be a tenfold increase to $250bn in the IMF's facility allowing members to borrow from other countries' foreign currency reserves.• More power for leading developing countries within the IMF and World Bank, to end the stranglehold of the US and Europe on their top jobs.• $200bn of trade finance over two years to help reverse the steepest decline in world trade since 1945, with cash from a range of public and private sources.• A pledge that the fiscal stimulus, including the sale of gold by the IMF due to raise $6bn, will give help to the poorest nations and create green jobs.
  • Nicolas Sarkozy said the summit meant that the era of secrecy by banks was over; "great progress" had been made, he said, and the page had been turned on the economic model which had dominated since Bretton Woods in 1944 created the world's institutional framework."Since Bretton Woods, the world has been living on a financial model, the Anglo-Saxon model. It's not my place to criticise it, it has its advantages [but] clearly today a page has been turned," he said.
  • The summit's biggest loser may have been the fight against climate change. Diplomatic sources said China led the opposition to green language in the final communique. David Norman, the WWF campaigns director, claimed that the summit had been "a huge missed opportunity".
Argos Media

Contracting Boom Could Fizzle Out - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009040604049.html

Robert Gates Pentagon CACI Boeing Lockheed Martin F-22 Joint Strike Fighter TSAT Future Combat Systems SAIC F-35

shared by Argos Media on 07 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The recent surge in the Washington area's defense-contracting workforce would begin to ebb under Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's latest budget proposal as the Pentagon moves to replace legions of private workers with full-time civil servants.
  • The budget would reverse a contracting boom, beginning after the 2001 terrorist attacks, in which the proportion of private contractors grew to 39 percent of the Pentagon's workforce. Gates said he wants to reduce that percentage to a pre-Sept. 11 level of 26 percent.
  • Roughly 7.5 percent of metropolitan Washington's labor force -- about 291,000 jobs -- is tied to Pentagon contracting. Defense analysts and government contracting experts said Gates's move could affect companies such as CACI and SAIC, which do large amounts of government contracting work, offering technical services, administrative support, database outsourcing and contract management.
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  • Local giants Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics also run substantial government-support operations and would see some weapons projects cut, while other programs would receive budget increases.
  • In particular, the proposed budget would sharply reduce the number of contractors who help the Pentagon oversee and manage its vast weapons-buying apparatus following a string of reports chronicling cost overruns and other problems.
  • A CACI executive said the company is waiting for further details before commenting. The Arlington company has 12,300 employees, half of whom are in the D.C. region. Ninety-five percent of its $2.4 billion in revenue last year came from federal contracts for technical services and information technology and contracting oversight for the Army and Navy, as well as such Pentagon offices as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Missile Defense Agency.
  • Overall, the budget Gates proposed calls for major cuts to the weapons programs of some of the largest contractors.
  • One of the hardest-hit defense firms was Boeing. The Chicago company's $150 billion Future Combat Systems, a family of Army vehicles linked by high-tech communications, came under criticism from Gates for being costly and plagued by development problems. He proposed canceling the $87 billion vehicle part of the system -- a move that would hurt Boeing, SAIC and their subcontractors, BAE and General Dynamics.
  • Gates also proposed canceling some of Boeing's missile defense programs, including one to equip a modified 747 aircraft with a laser that can shoot down missiles soon after they're launched, saying the program "has significant affordability and technology problems and the program's proposed operational role is highly questionable."
  • Boeing would also be hurt because it makes one-third of the F-22 fighter jet and the Pentagon plans to stop ordering additional aircraft. Gates would also cancel the Air Force's program to build a new search-and-rescue helicopter, which had been awarded to Boeing. And it would not order more of Boeing's C-17 cargo planes. Boeing could also see a military satellite program, known as TSAT, end.
  • Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, the biggest defense contractor in the world, also took hits on several of its major programs.
  • Gates said he would kill the company's bid to build the presidential helicopter, known as the VH-71, citing the fact that the program is six years late and has gone from initial estimates of $6 billion to $13 billion.
  • Lockheed was also hit by the move to not order more F-22 fighter jets. Perhaps hoping for support in Congress, the company has taken out newspaper ads explaining how its F-22 supports roughly 25,000 jobs around the country.
  • But the Pentagon proposed ordering more of Lockheed's F-35 known as the Joint Strike Fighter, and it would increase from two to three the number of littoral combat ships being built by Lockheed and General Dynamics to patrol near enemy coastlines.
Pedro Gonçalves

Why we lean to the political right in Israel | Yoaz Hendel | Comment is free | guardian... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...is-lean-political-right-voters

Israel

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 21 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The forthcoming elections are significantly different from all the previous ones. The projected victory of the right, according to the polls, is not the result of the satisfaction of the voters with Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister, but primarily a result of the perceived reality of Israel and the Middle East. The cumulative effect of both internal and regional changes has led most Israelis to be sceptical about the possibility of achieving peace in the region.
  • The more the Israeli left persisted in embracing the slogans of Peace Now in the face of these acts of terror, the more the public distanced itself from the left. As a result, the right once again came to power, led by Ariel Sharon. During this period, the reign of terror was successfully suppressed by the military.
  • Then came a major strategic turning point in the Israeli political map. In 2005 Sharon, one of the original proponents and builders of the settlements, carried out Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, fulfilling one of the left's long-held dreams.The disengagement from Gaza, which involved moving Jews from their homes, caused national trauma. But it was nonetheless carried out successfully, complying with a legitimate decision taken by a democratic state.The vast majority of the Israeli public accepted Sharon's justification for disengaging from Gaza. The public also accepted his argument that following the disengagement it would be possible to cut relations with the Strip, and thereby benefit from relative calm. Israelis were attracted to the idea that "they are there and we are here".The reality was different. Hamas came to power and Gaza became a permanent terrorist threat. Most Israelis were forced to conclude that there is a serious flaw with the idea of "land for peace".
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  • Although throughout the world there has been criticism of Netanyahu's policies, most of the Israeli public accepted the unresolved situation.
  • Israelis are keenly aware of the harsh reality of the Arab spring, the spread of radical Islam, and the infiltration of Iranian forces into Gaza.Given all this, it hardly surprising that the Israeli public leans to the right. The two-state solution remains a vision; and peace an Israeli aspiration. Meanwhile, reality chooses to differ.
Argos Media

US pro-Israeli group attempts to stop shift in White House Middle East policy | World n... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...srael-palestinians-middle-east

US Israel AIPAC J-Street Steny Hoyer Eric Cantor Israel Lobby

shared by Argos Media on 07 May 09 - Cached
  • US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House's Middle East policy.The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
  • he Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel's reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.
  • The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.
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  • The letter calls for the maintenance of the status quo, with an emphasis on Palestinian institution-building before there can be an end to Israeli occupation.It says the US "must be both a trusted mediator and devoted friend of Israel".
  • Aipac's move to put pressure on members of Congress came at the end of its annual conference in Washington this week.Some of the loudest applause at the gathering came in response to calls for military attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities – something Netanyahu has attempted to portray as a more urgent issue than the Palestinian question.
  • But Aipac delegates were told by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, that the administration favours "mutual respect" in dealing with Iran.Biden said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strengthened Iran's strategic position and Israel must take concrete steps – including fulfilling often-broken commitments to stop the expansion of Jewish settlements – towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
  • Last week, General James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, told a European foreign minister that the new administration would be "forceful" with Israel, according to a classified Israeli memo reported by the Ha'aretz newspaper.
  • Jones was quoted as saying that Obama believes Washington, the EU and moderate Arab states must define "a satisfactory endgame solution"."The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question," he was quoted as saying. "We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush."
  • During his election campaign, Obama alarmed Israel's hardline supporters by saying he regarded the lack of a resolution to the conflict as a "constant sore" that "infect[s] all of our foreign policy".
  • Aipac has moved to counter any new White House initiative by trying to mobilise Congress against it through the letter, written by two people seen as extremely close to the lobby group – Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives, and Eric Cantor, the Republican whip.
  • The two men addressed an Aipac banquet attended by more than half the members of Congress on Monday, each standing in turn at a "roll call" of support for Israel.On the face of it, the letter is a call for a peace, but its specifics urge Obama to maintain years of US policy that has tacitly accepted Israeli stalling of peace negotiations.The letter says that "the best way to achieve future success between Israelis and Palestinians will be by adhering to basic principles that have undergirded our policy".These include "acceptance that the parties themselves must negotiate the details of any agreement" as well as demanding that the Palestinians first "build the institutions necessary for a viable state" before gaining independence.
Pedro Gonçalves

News Analysis - Ahmadinejad Reaps Benefits of Stacking Key Iran Agencies With His Allie... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25tehran.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ali Khamenei Mojtaba Khamenei

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 25 Jun 09 - Cached
  • But analysts said the crackdown now taking place across Iran suggested that Mr. Ahmadinejad had succeeded in creating a pervasive network of important officials in the military, security agencies, and major media outlets, a new elite made especially formidable by support from one important constituent, Iran’s supreme leader himself.
  • Mr. Ahmadinejad has filled crucial ministries and other top posts with close friends and allies who have spread ideological and operational support for him nationwide. These analysts estimate that he has replaced 10,000 government employees to cement his loyalists through the bureaucracies, so that his allies run the organizations responsible for both the contested election returns and the official organs that have endorsed them.
  • There is a pattern to the way Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has selected allies throughout his career, said Said A. Arjomand, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has just finished a book analyzing the rule of the supreme leader. The ayatollah has repeatedly surrounded himself with men lacking an apparent social or political base of their own, men who would be dependent on him, Mr. Arjomand said.
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  • During the presidential campaign of 2005, the supreme leader endorsed Mr. Ahmadinejad because the humble son of a blacksmith appeared to be just such an obscure candidate. But he entered the presidency with a coterie of veterans and ideologues shaped by the Iran-Iraq war who were conservative, religious, largely populist and disdainful of the old guard from the 1979 revolution.
  • Today, these allies, many of them former midlevel Revolutionary Guard officers in their 50s, run the Interior, Intelligence and Justice Ministries. They also include the commander of the Basij popular militia, the head of the National Security Council and the head of state-run broadcasting. They are aligned with another member of their generation who has emerged as the most important figure in the Khamenei camp, the spiritual leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei.
  • Mr. Ahmadinejad has also changed all 30 of the country’s governors, all the city managers and even third- and fourth-level civil servants in important ministries like the Interior Ministry. It was Interior that announced that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won the June 12 election with just 5 percent of the votes counted, analysts pointed out, and it is the Intelligence Ministry that has been rounding up scores of supporters of the reform candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and other dissidents.
  • At the same time, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor, runs three powerful educational institutions in the holy city of Qum, all spun off from the Haqqani seminary, which teaches that Islam and democracy are incompatible. The ayatollah favors a system that would preserve the post of supreme leader and eliminate elections. The Ahmadinejad administration has provided generous government subsidies to the seminary, and its graduates hold significant government posts nationwide.
  • Perhaps the most important media organization to spread the government’s message is the hard-line Kayhan newspaper. Its general director, Hossein Shariatmaderi, in recent days has resurrected a standard accusation: that foreign governments were manipulating the demonstrations on Iran’s streets.
Pedro Gonçalves

Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...05iran.html

Iran Iran Elections 2009 Mir Hossein Mousavi Qom Association of Researchers and Teachers

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jul 09 - Cached
  • The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.
  • A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final.
  • “This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University.
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  • The announcement came on a day when Mr. Moussavi released documents detailing a campaign of fraud by the current president’s supporters, and as a close associate of the supreme leader called Mr. Moussavi and former President Mohammad Khatami “foreign agents,” saying they should be treated as criminals.
  • The documents, published on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site, accused supporters of the president of printing more than 20 million extra ballots before the vote and handing out cash bonuses to voters.
  • The association includes reformists, but Iranian political analysts describe it as independent, and it did not support any candidate in the recent election. The group had earlier asked for the election to be nullified because so many Iranians objected to the results, but it never directly challenged the legitimacy of the government and, by extension, the supreme leader.
  • The clerics’ statement chastised the leadership for failing to adequately study complaints of vote rigging and lashed out at the use of force in crushing huge public protests.It even directly criticized the Guardian Council, the powerful group of clerics charged with certifying elections. “Is it possible to consider the results of the election as legitimate by merely the validation of the Guardian Council?” the association said.
  • Many of the accusations of fraud posted on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site Saturday had been published before, but the report did give some more specific charges. For instance, although the government had announced that two of the losing presidential contenders had received relatively few votes in their hometowns, the documents stated that some ballot boxes in those towns contained no votes for the two men.
Argos Media

Delegates Walk Out of Racism Conference as Ahmadinejad Speaks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...21geneva.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Israel Zionism UN Ban Ki-moon Navi Pillay

shared by Argos Media on 21 Apr 09 - Cached
  • President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran on Monday used the platform of a United Nations conference in Geneva on combating racism to disparage Israel as a “cruel and repressive racist regime,” prompting delegates from European nations to desert the hall and earning a rare harsh rebuke from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
  • As Mr. Ahmadinejad began to speak, two protesters wearing rainbow-hued clown wigs — their statement on the tenor of the proceedings — pelted him with red foam noses. Hustled out the door by security agents, they were soon followed by lines of stony-faced diplomats from the 23 European nations attending the conference. They walked out to the sound of some other delegates applauding Mr. Ahmadinejad.
  • The United States and more than a half-dozen other nations had already boycotted the gathering out of concern that it would focus on maligning Israel rather than on the global problems of discrimination, replaying the disputes that marked the first United Nations conference on combating racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
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  • Member states, who wrangled for months over the draft document for the Geneva conference, had ultimately removed controversial statements about Israel; about what constitutes defamation of religion, a position pushed by Muslim states; and about compensation for slavery.
  • Besides the United States, the countries staying away included Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia. Canada and Israel announced months ago that they would not attend.
  • “Following World War II they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, grinning as he spoke, his remarks coincidentally falling on the day that Jewish communities mark the Holocaust. “And they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine.”
  • The speech prompted the normally mild-mannered Mr. Ban and other top United Nations officials to voice uncommon criticism of the leader of a member state. “I have not experienced this kind of destructive proceedings in an assembly, in a conference, by any one member state,” Mr. Ban said.“I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite,” he said, urging members to “turn away from such a message in both form and substance.”
  • Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for “grandstanding” from a United Nations dais and said his performance should not be an excuse to derail the important topic of the conference. She also made a not-so-subtle dig at Iran’s treatment of its own minorities, after noting that the president’s remarks were outside the scope of the conference. “This is what I would have expected the president of Iran to come and tell us: how he is addressing racial discrimination and intolerance in his country,” Ms. Pillay said.
  • Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland to protest both the conference and meeting Sunday between the Swiss president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, and Mr. Ahmadinejad.
  • Not everyone at the conference was critical of the speech, which also wandered through topics like the economic collapse and Iraq and Afghanistan. “If we actually believe in freedom of expression, then he has the right to say what he wants to say,” the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Zamir Akram, told The Associated Press. “There were things in there that a lot of people in the Muslim world would be in agreement with, for example the situation in Palestine, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, even if they don’t agree with the way he said it.”
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: The Idiot's Guide to Pakistan - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...cms.php

Pakistan Federal Administered Tribal Areas Swat Valley Therik-e-Taliban Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud South Waziristan Maulvi Nazir TNSM Sufi Mohammed Maulana Fazlullah Therik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi

shared by Argos Media on 31 Mar 09 - Cached
  • In December 2007, the smattering of bearded, black-turbaned, AK-47-toting gangs in FATA and NWFP announced that they would now answer to a single name, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban Movement. For decades, Pakistani jihadists have used such fancy names to declare splinter groups (many of which go unnoticed), but some analysts latched onto the TTP as gospel and postulated that, overnight, the Talibs had become disciplined and united. In the process, such analysts have overlooked important distinctions and divisions within the pro-Taliban groups operating in Pakistan.
  • n 1996, Mullah Mohammed Omar and his band of “Taliban” -- defined in Urdu, Pashto, and Arabic as “students” or “seekers” -- conquered Afghanistan.
  • Pashtuns ignore the border separating Afghanistan and Pakistan, named the Durand Line after the Englishman who drew it in 1893; the Pashtun “nation” encompasses wherever Pashtuns may live. Fighting the Americans, therefore, was seen as self-defense, even for the residents of FATA.
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  • Baitullah Mehsud, the man accused by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence of masterminding the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Although Mehsud is the nominal chief of the TTP, he has plenty of rivals, even in his native South Waziristan. Two major tribes populate South Waziristan: the Mehsuds and the Wazirs. The Wazirs dominate Wana, the main city in South Waziristan. But the ranking Taliban leader from the Wazirs, Maulvi Nazir, is a darling of Pakistan’s military establishment.
  • You’re probably scratching your head right now, a bit confused. You see, Nazir is only interested in fighting U.S., Afghan, and NATO forces across the border. He is not part of the TTP and has not been involved in the wave of violence sweeping Pakistan of late. Therefore, in the minds of Pakistani generals, he is a “good” Taliban versus Baitullah Mehsud, who is, in their mind, unequivocally “bad.” That’s just one example of Talibs living in Pakistan who do not necessarily come under the title “Pakistani Taliban” or the “Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan” moniker.
  • In Swat Valley, where Islamabad recently signed a peace treaty with the Taliban, the fissures among the militants are more generational. Swat, unlike South Waziristan, is part of NWFP and shares no border with Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, TNSM or the Movement for the Establishment of the Law of Mohammed, launched a drive to impose Islamic law in Swat and its environs.
  • After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the leader of TNSM, Sufi Mohammed, organized a group of madrasa students and led them across the border to combat the Americans. But only Sufi Mohammed returned. The legions who had followed him were “martyred,” or so he told their parents. Sufi Mohammed was thrown in jail by then president and Army chief Pervez Musharraf, and so he named his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, to run TNSM in his stead. But Fazlullah had wider ambitions and assembled a several-hundred-man army vowing to fight the Pakistani government. The senior leadership of TNSM soon disowned Fazlullah, who happily embarked on his own and is now Mehsud’s deputy in the TTP. For the past year and a half, Fazlullah’s devotees have bombed, kidnapped, and assassinated anyone who’s dared to challenge their writ in Swat.
  • By 2008, Sufi Mohammed looked like a moderate in comparison to his son-in-law. So the Pakistani government asked him to mediate. Perhaps he could cool Fazlullah down. The recent treaty you’ve heard about in Swat is between the Pakistani government and Sufi Mohammed, who has pledged to bring Fazlullah on board. So far, the treaty has held, unless you count the soldiers who were killed by Fazlullah’s Talibs for not “informing the Taliban of their movements.”
Argos Media

Gaza war crime claims gather pace as more troops speak out | World news | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...stinian-territories-war-crimes

Israel War Crimes Palestine Gaza Break the Silence

shared by Argos Media on 22 Mar 09 - Cached
  • An investigation by a group of former Israeli soldiers has uncovered new evidence of the military's conduct during the assault on Gaza two months ago. According to the group Breaking the Silence, the witness statements of the 15 soldiers who have come forward to describe their concerns over Operation Cast Lead appear to corroborate claims of random killings and vandalism carried out during the operation made by a separate group of anonymous servicemen during a seminar at a military college.
  • "This is not a military that we recognise," said Mikhael Manekin, one of the former soldiers involved with the group. "This is in a different category to things we have seen before. We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given."
  • Manekin described how soldiers had reported their units being specifically warned by officers not to discuss what they had seen and done in Gaza.
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  • The outlines of the evidence gathered comes hard on the heels of the disclosure by the Oranim Academy's pre-military course last week of devastating witness accounts supplied by soldiers involved in the fighting, including the "unjustified" shooting of civilians.
  • With Israeli newspapers threatening new disclosures, the New York Times has weighed in with an interview with a reservist describing the rules of engagement for the Gaza operation. Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old military reservist, told the newspaper that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training talks before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. "Shoot and don't worry about the consequences" was the message from commanders, said Marmor. Describing the behaviour of a lieutenant-colonel who briefed the troops, Marmor added: "His whole demeanour was extremely gung-ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said that in this operation, we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later."
  • Last Thursday, the special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council, Richard Falk, said that the assault on Gaza appeared to be a "war crime of the greatest magnitude" and called on the UN to establish an experts' group to investigate potential violations.
  • Attempts by the Israeli media to publish the rules of engagement for the Gaza campaign have been blocked by the military censor, but in the past couple of weeks the contents of those rules have begun to to emerge in anecdotal evidence - suggesting strongly that soldiers were told to avoid Israeli casualties at all costs by means of the massive use of firepower in a densely populated urban environment.
  • An investigation by reporter Uri Blau, published on Friday in Haaretz, disclosed how Israeli soldiers were ordering T-shirts to mark the end of operations, featuring grotesque images including dead babies, mothers weeping by their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques. Another T-shirt designed for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex" next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A shirt designed for the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion depicts a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills".
Argos Media

News Analysis - Deal Over Justice Chaudhry Sets Pakistan on New, Uncertain Path - NYTim... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17pstan.html

Pakistan Nawaz Sharif Asif Ali Zardari Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

shared by Argos Media on 17 Mar 09 - Cached
  • It was a signal moment in Pakistan’s political development: A huge demonstration forced the restoration of a dismissed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a symbol of democracy and the rule of law. The army did not stage a coup, but insisted that the government accept a compromise.
  • President Zardari has been severely weakened by his efforts to squelch a national protest and faces defections from the usually cohesive Pakistan Peoples Party. His opponent, Mr. Sharif, emerged as a leader in waiting, but with no clear path to power.
  • Mr. Sharif, often held in suspicion in Washington because of his leaning toward Islamic conservatives, was more cooperative than had been thought, some United States officials suggested. In Washington, there was an awareness that Mr. Sharif’s reputation from the Bush administration of being too close to the Islamists might be overdrawn, and that his relationships with some of the Islamic parties and with Saudi Arabia could be useful, said a foreign policy expert familiar with the thinking of the Obama administration on Pakistan.
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  • Pakistani analysts, too, said Mr. Sharif could prove to be a useful partner as Washington tried to talk to what it considered reconcilable elements in the Taliban. “Who from Pakistan can talk to a faction of the Taliban? It’s Nawaz,” said a senior Pakistani politician
  • But Mr. Sharif has to play a delicate game because if he is seen as doing Washington’s bidding, he will be discredited among much of his constituency, the politician said.And Mr. Sharif could also turn out to be unwilling to back some of the tough steps that Washington wants.
  • One encouraging sign for Washington was the role played in the crisis by the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who let Mr. Zardari know that he could not rely on soldiers to confront the protesters who were threatening to descend on Islamabad to demand the return of Chief Justice Chaudhry.
  • Another positive sign was the nature of the support Mr. Sharif garnered after he drove out of his house in a suburb of Lahore on Sunday through barbed-wire barriers, in defiance of a detention order.
  • The support of such a broad range of people is considered a first for Mr. Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, which has generally ceded street power to the Pakistan Peoples Party, and it underscored Mr. Sharif’s political instincts, said Farrukh Saleem, a columnist for The News, a daily newspaper. “He understood the pulse of the country,” Mr. Saleem said.
  • Under the deal announced Monday, Mr. Kaira said, the Pakistan Peoples Party would embark on discussions with Mr. Sharif’s party on a range of political reforms proposed under the Charter of Democracy, a document signed by Mr. Sharif in 2006 with Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, who was assassinated in 2007.
Argos Media

Hamas Head, Meshal, Says Rocket Strikes on Israel Have Halted - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...05meshal.html

Hamas Khaled Mashaal Iran Gaza Israel Benjamin Netanyahu

shared by Argos Media on 05 May 09 - Cached
  • The leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas said Monday that its fighters had stopped firing rockets at Israel for now. He also reached out in a limited way to the Obama administration and others in the West, saying the movement was seeking a state only in the areas Israel won in 1967.
  • “I promise the American administration and the international community that we will be part of the solution, period,” the leader, Khaled Meshal, said during a five-hour interview with The New York Times spread over two days in his home office here in the Syrian capital.
  • He repeated that he would not recognize Israel, saying to fellow Arab leaders, “There is only one enemy in the region, and that is Israel.”
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  • But he urged outsiders to ignore the Hamas charter, which calls for the obliteration of Israel through jihad and cites as fact the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Mr. Meshal did not offer to revoke the charter, but said it was 20 years old, adding, “We are shaped by our experiences.”
  • the Obama administration, which has decided to open a dialogue with Iran and Syria, but not with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and accepts previous Palestinian-Israeli accords.
  • Regarding President Obama, Mr. Meshal said, “His language is different and positive,” but he expressed unhappiness about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, saying hers “is a language that reflects the old administration policies.”
  • He said his group was eager for a cease-fire with Israel and for a deal that would return an Israeli soldier it is holding captive, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, in exchange for many Palestinian prisoners.
  • Apart from the time restriction and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan and what the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas says it is seeking. Israel rejects a full return to the 1967 borders, as well as a Palestinian right of return to Israel itself.
  • Regarding recognition of Israel, Mr. Meshal said the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Mr. Abbas had granted such recognition, but to no avail. “Did that recognition lead to an end of the occupation? It’s just a pretext by the United States and Israel to escape dealing with the real issue and to throw the ball into the Arab and Palestinian court,” he said.
  • In April, only six rockets and mortar rounds were fired at Israel from Gaza, which is run by Hamas, a marked change from the previous three months, when dozens were shot, according to the Israeli military.
  • Mr. Meshal made an effort to show that Hamas was in control of its militants as well as those of other groups, saying: “Not firing the rockets currently is part of an evaluation from the movement which serves the Palestinians’ interest. After all, the firing is a method, not a goal. Resistance is a legitimate right, but practicing such a right comes under an evaluation by the movement’s leaders.”
  • On the two-state solution sought by the Americans, he said: “We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.” Asked what “long-term” meant, he said 10 years.
  • Mr. Meshal, one of the founders of Hamas, barely escaped assassination at the hands of Israeli agents in 1997 in Jordan. He was injected with a poison, but the agents were caught. King Hussein, furious that this was taking place in his country, obliged Israel to send an antidote. Mr. Meshal ultimately went to Damascus, the base for Hamas apart from its leaders inside Gaza. The Israeli prime minister during that assassination attempt was Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been returned to that post. Mr. Netanyahu has said that Hamas is a tool of Iran and that Iran is the biggest danger to world peace and must be stopped.
Pedro Gonçalves

News Analysis - Iran's Leader Emerges With a Stronger Hand - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...15assess.html

Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ali Khamenei Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 15 Jun 09 - Cached
  • When he was first elected president in 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad showed his fealty to the leader, gently bending over and kissing his hand. On Saturday, the leader demonstrated his own enthusiasm for the re-elected president, hailing the outcome as “a divine blessing” even before the official three-day challenge period had passed. On Sunday, Mr. Ahmadinejad flaunted his achievement by mounting a celebration rally in the heart of an opposition neighborhood of Tehran
  • In many ways, his victory is the latest and perhaps final clash in a battle for power and influence that has lasted decades between Mr. Khamenei and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who, while loyal to the Islamic form of government, wanted a more pragmatic approach to the economy, international relations and social conditions at home. Mr. Rafsanjani aligned himself and his family closely with the main reform candidate in this race, Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former prime minister who advocated greater freedom — in particular, greater freedom for women — and a more conciliatory face to the West. Another former president and pragmatist, Mohammed Khatami, had also thrown in heavily with Mr. Moussavi.
  • The three men, combined with widespread public support and disillusionment with Mr. Ahmadinejad, posed a challenge to the authority of the supreme leader and his allies, political analysts said. The elite Revolutionary Guards and a good part of the intelligence services “feel very much threatened by the reformist movement,” said a political analyst who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “They feel that the reformists will open up to the West and be lenient on the nuclear issue,” he said. “It is a confrontation of two ways of thinking, the revolutionary and the internationalist. It is a question of power.”
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  • Unless the street protests achieve unexpected momentum, the election could cast the pro-reform classes — especially the better off and better educated — back into a state of passive disillusionment, some opposition figures said. “I don’t think the middle class is ever going to go out and vote again,” one Moussavi supporter lamented.
  • Although his first election was marred by allegations of cheating, Mr. Ahmadinejad was credited with being genuinely street smart. He roused crowds with vague attacks on the corruption of the elite, with promises of a vast redistribution of wealth, and with appeals to Iranian pride. By playing to the Muslim world’s feelings of victimization by the West and hatred of Israel, he won adulation on the Arab street even as Arab leaders often disdained him, and that in turn earned him credibility at home.
  • As president he has presided over a time of rising inflation and unemployment, but has pumped oil revenues into the budget, sustaining a semblance of growth and buying good will among civil servants, the military and the retired. More important, he has consolidated the various arms of power that answer ultimately to the supreme leader. The Revolutionary Guards — the military elite — was given license to expand into new areas, including the oil industry and other businesses such as shipbuilding.
  • The Guardian Council, which oversees elections, had its budget increased 15-fold under Mr. Ahmadinejad. The council has presided over not only Friday’s outcome, but over parliamentary majorities loyal to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
  • The president seemed to stumble often. He raised tensions with the West when he told a United Nations General Assembly that he rejected the post-World War II order. He was mocked when he said at Columbia University in 2007 that there was not a single gay person in Iran. In April, nearly two dozen diplomats from the European Union walked out of a conference in Geneva after he disparaged Israel.
  • But political analysts said that back home, the supreme leader approved, seeing confrontation with the West as helpful in keeping alive his revolutionary ideology, and his base of power.
Argos Media

Icelandic caretaker government wins general election | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...iceland-election-government

Iceland EU Johanna Sigurdardottir!

shared by Argos Media on 27 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Iceland stepped into terra incognito today, veering left for the first time to hand a parliamentary majority to social democrats, socialists and greens and humiliating the rightwingers who have dominated for generations.
  • Venting their fury at a government that presided over Iceland's transformation from one of the world's wealthiest countries into the biggest victim of the global financial meltdown, voters in an early election gave strongest support to the social democrats, who are pushing for Iceland to enter the European Union.With 30% of the vote for the 63-seat Althingi or parliament, the Social Democrats emerged as comfortable winners under Johanna Sigurdardottir, the 66-year-old lesbian caretaker prime minister. The Left-Greens, an alliance of old-style socialists and younger environmentalists never previously voted into power, got 21.5% of the vote.
  • The leftwing coalition is assured of a three-seat majority and will need to embark on an austerity drive, swingeing spending cuts, and probably tax rises for the rich to try to rescue an economy that came crashing down last October when the three main banks collapsed and the country teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
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  • Unemployment, inflation, and mortgage repayments are soaring as a result of the crash, which has saddled Iceland with levels of debt running to tens of thousands for each of the population of 320,000 and necessitating a 10bn-dollar bailout programme led by the International Monetary Fund.
  • The rightwing and anti-EU Independence party has been in power for 18 years and has dominated Icelandic politics for 70 years. Its vote fell to 23% - its lowest tally ever - taking 16 seats as opposed to 25 two years ago.
  • The result leaves the country run by a former air stewardess and a former lorry driver - Sigurdardottir and the Left-Greens' leader, Steingrimur Sigfusson, who is expected to be finance minister. Both have been heading an interim government since February.
  • Public bitterness at the sudden collapse of a quality of life that was among the highest in the world fuelled fears that voters would stay at home on Saturday in protest at the entire political system. "I don't care who's in charge, right or left. If things don't work out, we'll be back on the streets," said Hordur Torfason, a leader of the January protests that brought down the previous centre-right government. But turnout, at 85%, was higher than in 2007's election.
  • Sigurdardottir promptly claimed the poll triumph as a mandate for negotiating entry to the EU - a central campaign pledge. Brussels would welcome Iceland's application and the country could join quickly since it already applies about 75% of EU law. However, Sigurdardottir's junior coalition partner is anti-EU and coming up with a coherent joint policy on the issue will be a key test of the coalition.
  • For decades, Iceland has staunchly rebuffed talk of joining the EU, fearful of handing control of its vital fishing sector to the European Commission, which sets member states' catch quotas. But Brussels admitted last week that decades of fisheries policy had resulted in failure and pledged to devise a new system.
Argos Media

Foreign Policy: The Axis of Upheaval - 0 views

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Geopolitics Axis of Upheaval Niall Ferguson

shared by Argos Media on 13 Apr 09 - Cached
  • The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval.
  • The bad news for Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis—an axis of upheaval. This axis has at least nine members, and quite possibly more. What unites them is not so much their wicked intentions as their instability, which the global financial crisis only makes worse every day. Unfortunately, that same crisis is making it far from easy for the United States to respond to this new “grave and growing danger.”
  • When Bush’s speechwriters coined the phrase “axis of evil” (originally “axis of hatred”), they were drawing a parallel with the World War II alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, formalized in the Tripartite Pact of September 1940. The axis of upheaval, by contrast, is more reminiscent of the decade before the outbreak of World War II, when the Great Depression unleashed a wave of global political crises.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • ultimately I concluded, in The War of the World, that three factors made the location and timing of lethal organized violence more or less predictable in the last century. The first factor was ethnic disintegration: Violence was worst in areas of mounting ethnic tension. The second factor was economic volatility: The greater the magnitude of economic shocks, the more likely conflict was. And the third factor was empires in decline: When structures of imperial rule crumbled, battles for political power were most bloody.
  • In at least one of the world’s regions—the greater Middle East—two of these three factors have been present for some time: Ethnic conflict has been rife there for decades, and following the difficulties and disappointments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States already seems likely to begin winding down its quasi-imperial presence in the region. It likely still will.
  • no matter how low interest rates go or how high deficits rise, there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in most economies this year and a painful decline in incomes. Such economic pain nearly always has geopolitical consequences. Indeed, we can already see the first symptoms of the coming upheaval.
  • In the essays that follow, Jeffrey Gettleman describes Somalia’s endless anarchy, Arkady Ostrovsky analyzes Russia’s new brand of aggression, and Sam Quinones explores Mexico’s drug-war-fueled misery. These, however, are just three case studies out of a possible nine or more.
Muslim Academy

Muslim American Society - 0 views

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Muslim American Society

shared by Muslim Academy on 17 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 17 Dec 12
     
    The Muslim American Society (MAS) is an Islamic reform and revival movement founded in 1993. The efforts of Ahmed Elkadi and Mohammed Mahdi Akefi were quite remarkable. This organization sees jihad as a holy legal right in the defense and spreading of Islam. The Muslim American Society freedom foundation is an affiliate of this great nonprofit organization, and is being championed by its executive director, Mahdi Bray. On many occasions, the Muslim American Society has participated in diplomatic dialogues with the U.S. college of Bishops and the U.S. government. MAS describes itself as, "religious, charitable, social, educational, non-for-profit, Islamic and cultural organization." Its secretary general describes this organization as members of the great Muslim Brotherhood. The sole mission of the Muslim American Society is to promote Islam as a supreme way of life. Islam is essential in building and encouraging a moral and virtuous society, to provide veritable Islamic alternatives to the prevailing problems of the society, to promote family values in line with the teachings of Islam and to promote the humane values of equality, brotherhood, mercy, justice, peace and compassion. Also, to encourage coordination, unity, and cooperation among Muslims and Muslim organizations.
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