Geopolitics Weekly

Jonathan Levy, one of the protest organisers, told the BBC: "All the non-rich people in Israel, no matter if they're secular or religious, old or young, realise that we've abandoned some really important battlefields in this country, that is economy, and we only dealt obsessively with security problems."

The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don't pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don't want to develop," she says. "The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer."

Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.

"One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians."

Turkey’s civilian leadership appointed four new commanders on Thursday, decisively strengthening its control over its armed forces less than a week after the military leadership abruptly resigned in frustration over the continuing prosecution of officers accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

The new appointments of a chief of general staff and commanders of the army, navy and air force reflected the Islamic-leaning civilian government’s increased assertiveness in its struggle with the country’s military establishment, which has orchestrated three coups since 1960 and forced another government from power in 1997.

In prior years, the council funneled military influence into the public sphere. But on Thursday, the meeting was led exclusively by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and a widely circulated photograph of the event seemed to illustrate his success in ensuring civilian supremacy in Turkish politics. The appointees resemble their predecessors in background and experience, but their rise is the start of what many see as a new era of civilian dominance here.

A busted bubble led to a massive Keynesian stimulus that averted a much deeper recession, but that also fueled substantial budget deficits. The response – massive spending cuts – ensures that unacceptably high levels of unemployment (a vast waste of resources and an oversupply of suffering) will continue, possibly for years.

even as Europe’s leaders promised that help was on the way, they doubled down on the belief that non-crisis countries must cut spending. The resulting austerity will hinder Europe’s growth, and thus that of its most distressed economies: after all, nothing would help Greece more than robust growth in its trading partners. And low growth will hurt tax revenues, undermining the proclaimed goal of fiscal consolidation.

The ECB argued that taxpayers should pick up the entire tab for Greece’s bad sovereign debt, for fear that any private-sector involvement (PSI) would trigger a “credit event,” which would force large payouts on credit-default swaps (CDSs), possibly fueling further financial turmoil. But, if that is a real fear for the ECB – if it is not merely acting on behalf of private lenders – surely it should have demanded that the banks have more capital.

A prominent Israeli politician, Isaac Herzog, has shrewdly suggested that Israel actually offer, with conditions, to vote in favor of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Yet the American House of Representatives voted 407 to 6 to call on the Obama administration to use its diplomatic capital to try to block the initiative, while also threatening to cut the Palestinians’ funding if they proceeded to seek statehood.

Similarly, when Israel stormed into Gaza in 2008 to halt rocket attacks, more than 1,300 Gazans were killed, along with 13 Israelis, according to B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights group. As Gazan blood flowed, the House, by a vote of 390 to 5, hailed the invasion as “Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Har Homa is one of the largest and most controversial Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. It is regarded, under international law, as occupied Palestinian land, but Israel says it is part of its territory.

The expansion of Har Homa, say campaigners, would effectively cut off the Palestinian town of Bethlehem from other Arab areas in East Jerusalem.

Previous announcements about building plans in Har Homa have been criticised by the US, UK and many other foreign governments.

An American former military contractor who claims he was imprisoned and tortured by the US army in Iraq has been allowed by a judge to sue the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally for damages.

Mike Kanovitz, the Chicago lawyer representing the plaintiff, says it appears the military wanted to keep his client behind bars so he would be unable tell anyone about an important contact he made with a leading sheik while helping to collect intelligence in Iraq.The plaintiff says he was the first American to open direct talks with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, who became an important US ally and later led a revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida before being killed by a bomb."The US government wasn't ready for the rest of the world to know about it, so they basically put him on ice," Kanovitz said. "If you've got unchecked power over the citizens, why not use it?"

this is the second time a federal judge has allowed a US citizen to sue Rumsfeld personally.

Ali Motahari, a prominent conservative MP who has previously threatened to impeach Ahmadinejad, spoke out against the involvement of the revolutionary guards in Iran's politics."The integration of the guard, as a military force, in political and economic power is not in the interests of the system," Motahari told the parliament. "In neighboring countries, military officials are distancing themselves from politics and power, while it's the opposite in Iran."

The appointment of Ghasemi as Iran's oil minister automatically makes him the head of Opec which has a crucial role in determining oil prices.As its second-largest crude oil exporter, Iran took the presidency of Opec after 36 years last October and Ghasemi's position will give the revolutionary guards a unique opportunity to influence an international organisation.

Islamabad makes no secret of its preference for China over the United States as a military patron, calling Beijing an "all-weather" ally in contrast to Washington's supposedly fickle friendship.

China is a major investor in predominantly Muslim Pakistan in areas such as telecommunications, ports and infrastructure. The countries are linked by a Chinese-built road pushed through Pakistan's northern mountains. Trade with Pakistan is worth almost $9 billion a year for Pakistan, and China is its top arms supplier.

China, like the United States, wanted Pakistan to help it control Islamist militancy. But it is frustrated by the chaotic nature of Pakistani governance, and its inability to control militants or militant-friendly elements in its security agencies.

the Clinton administration entered office in 1993 and proceeded to adopt a strategy of "dual containment." Until that moment, the United States had acted as an "offshore balancer" in the Persian Gulf, and we had carefully refrained from deploying large air or ground force units there on a permanent basis. We had backed the Shah of Iran since the 1940s, and then switched sides and tilted toward Iraq during the 1980s. Our goal was to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, and we cleverly played competing powers off against each other for several decades. With dual containment, however, the United States had committed itself to containing two different countries -- Iran and Iraq -- who hated each other, which in turn forced us to keep lots of airplanes and troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did this, as both Kenneth Pollack and Trita Parsi have documented, because Israel wanted us to do it, and U.S. officials foolishly believed that doing so would make Israel more compliant during the Oslo peace process. But in addition to costing a lot more money, keeping U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the long term also fueled the rise of al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden was deeply offended by the presence of "infidel" troops on Saudi territory, and so the foolish strategy of dual containment played no small role in causing our terrorism problem. It also helped derail several attempts to improve relations between the United States and Iran. Dual containment, in short, was a colossal blunder.

But no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse. And that is precisely what George W. Bush did after 9/11. Under the influence of neoconservatives who had opposed dual containment because they thought it didn't go far enough, Bush adopted a new strategy of "regional transformation." Instead of preserving a regional balance of power, or containing Iraq and Iran simultaneously, the United States was now going to use its military power to topple regimes across the Middle East and turn those countries into pro-American democracies. This was social engineering on a scale never seen before. The American public and the Congress were unenthusiastic, if not suspicious, about this grand enterprise, which forced the Bush administration to wage a massive deception campaign to get them on board for what was supposed to be the first step in this wildly ambitious scheme. The chicanery worked, and the United States launched its unnecessary war on Iraq in March 2003.

wrecking Iraq -- which is what we did -- destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and improved Iran's geopolitical position. The invasion of Iraq also diverted resources away from the war in Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban to re-emerge as a formidable fighting force. Thus, Bush's decision to topple Saddam in 2003 led directly to two losing wars, not just one. And these wars were enormously expensive to boot. Combined with Bush's tax cuts and other fiscal irresponsibilities, this strategic incompetence caused the federal deficit to balloon to dangerous levels and helped bring about the fiscal impasse that we will be dealing with for years to come.