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Ed Webb

Syria Comment » Archives » "Bush White House Wanted to Destroy the Syrian Sta... - 0 views

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US USA Cheney Blair Syria Lebanon Iraq analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10
     
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Ed Webb

AFP: Turkey, Armenia due to sign historic reconciliation deal - 1 views

www.google.com/...M5h8fKOw6YA_YVtyiONqERdRoKYstg

afp Turkey Armenia diplomacy USA Russia

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Turkey and Armenia will sign landmark deals this weekend to normalise ties, in a major step towards ending nearly a century of hostility over their bloody history, Russian and US officials said Thursday.
  • two protocols, agreed under Swiss mediation, to establish diplomatic ties for the first time and open their border which has been sealed for more than a decade.
  • on Saturday in Zurich
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  • Although both governments have the parliamentary majority for the adoption of the protocols, they are not expected to rush ahead due to domestic opposition.
  • Turkish officials have said that the border will remain closed unless Yerevan and Baku make progress towards resolving the conflict.
  • concessions on Nagorny-Karabakh would not sit well with Armenian public opinion and the influential diaspora that is already uneasy over the protocols
  • an eagerly anticipated a World Cup football qualification match between the two countries
Julianne Greco

AFP: Lebanon to defend Arab interests in UN Security Council - 0 views

www.google.com/...M5iZjhg8tK80Lh2CDG4Ob-BfjFw9KQ

Lebanon U.N. Security Council protecting Arab interests

shared by Julianne Greco on 16 Oct 09 - Cached
  • President Michel Sleiman said on Thursday his country will defend Arab interests, after Lebanon was elected to the UN Security Council for the first time since 1954.
  • His country would "be the spearhead for protecting its interests and those of the Arab nation, as well as the defence of human rights, and will work for the return of Palestinian refugees," he said.
Julianne Greco

AFP: Sadrists choose candidates for Iraqi poll - 0 views

www.google.com/...M5g2Xr8k-ksNbIM03bwwvBLgJfda-A

sadrists Iraq January election vote post-Saddam

shared by Julianne Greco on 18 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Large crowds of supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr voted on Friday to select candidates to run in Iraq's election in January, in the first such vote since the fall of Saddam.The bloc, which has 30 MPs in parliament, is allied with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, which will face off against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition in the election.
Julianne Greco

AFP: Top Saudi cleric warns against politicising hajj - 0 views

www.google.com/...M5ijaTrCMeAGVZw7Y4WvPDvwP4D-3A

Saudi cleric politicising hajj propaganda Iran pilgrimage

shared by Julianne Greco on 01 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Saudi Arabia's top cleric has warned against politicising the hajj amid a war of words between Riyadh and Tehran over the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on Saturday.
  • "Those who want to use the pilgrimage and spread falsehoods and propaganda for their personal goals and needs, doing this to take advantage of the occasion, are doing something forbidden by Islam," he told the newspaper.
  • Regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran are regularly at odds over Iran's claims of mistreatment of Shiite pilgrims to Mecca.Several times during the 1980s, Iranian pilgrims mounted demonstrations in the holy city in western Saudi Arabia, and in 1987 Iranian pilgrims rioted, leading to more than 400 deaths.
Julianne Greco

AFP: Yemen joins gas exporters' club - 0 views

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Yemen international club of gas exporters

shared by Julianne Greco on 08 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, joined the international club of gas exporters Saturday with pumping starting at a newly built liquefied natural gas plant in the Gulf of Aden.
  • Addressing the ceremony, the Yemeni president spoke of the tough situation his government is facing with Shiite rebels in the north and violent protests in the south, as well as attacks by the Al-Qaeda terror network."This is an important strategic project and it is good this project has not been disrupted," Saleh said in reference to inhabitants of the provinces and Shabwa and Maarib where gas is being extracted and processed.
Ed Webb

Gulf crisis sees new 'fake news' flurry online - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/s-flurry-online-070222817.html

Qatar KSA Saudi UAE socialmedia intermediate propaganda disinformation

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Jun 20 - Cached
  • In recent weeks, pro-Saudi Twitter accounts have been systematically spreading rumours of unrest in Qatar, AFP analysis of hundreds of tweets and twitter interactions shows.Many of the accounts amplifying the rumours had profile images of the Saudi leadership, mentioned them in their handles and retweeted or liked material featuring the royal family or gave their location as inside the kingdom.
  • "Anyone spreading this news is technically breaking Saudi law, it's illegal to spread rumours," Owen Jones of Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa University told AFP."In order to be high-profile and get away with it, then it has to have the tacit approval of the regime."
  • Saudi observers say the kingdom itself is a victim of fake news alleged to originate from Qatar and its allies Turkey and Iran.The UAE, Saudi's principal ally, has also been the target of online disinformation campaigns, including one claiming Abu Dhabi's Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed had been assassinated, which Abu Dhabi blamed on Qatar.
Ed Webb

IS 'producing weaponised mustard gas': Watchdog | Middle East Eye - 1 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ns-use-syria-august-1866069973

Syria OPCW CBW WMD military ISIS

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • The global watchdog tasked with destroying chemical weapons is probing more than 20 reports of the alleged use of toxic weapons in Syria since August, its chief told the AFP news agency on Friday.And, in what he called an "extremely worrying" development, Ahmet Uzumcu revealed that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) believes the so-called Islamic State (IS) group has manufactured its own mustard gas for use in Syria and Iraq.
  • The OPCW is already "collecting information and analysing" it, the OPCW director general said, to see if the allegations "are credible or not in order to deepen our investigation"."The number (of allegations) is quite high. I counted more than 20," said Uzumcu, revealing that even on Thursday the Syrian authorities had sent to the OPCW fresh reports of chemical weapons use against them.
  • Samples of mustard gas taken from attacks in Syria and Iraq have now been analysed by the OPCW's dedicated laboratories and "the findings do suggest that this substance may have been produced by IS itself," said Uzumcu.It was "poor quality, but still harmful ... and it was weaponised so it's extremely worrying," the OPCW chief said."Especially given the fact that there are several foreign fighters in those countries who may go back to their countries of origin one day. This requires a high-degree of vigilance within our countries," he warned.
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  • "I don't think we will be able to investigate them all," Uzumcu said, highlighting the difficulties of working in a conflict zone.
Ed Webb

Iran nuclear scientists targeted in Tehran blasts - CSMonitor.com - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...ists-targeted-in-Tehran-blasts

Iran nukes Israel US USA proliferation diplomacy nuclear

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Both men targeted Monday worked with a regional non-nuclear scientific research unit called Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, or SESAME, reports The New York Times.Unusually, its nine-member council includes representatives from Israel along with Iran and several other Muslim countries. It was not clear whether the killings of the two Iranian scientists were linked to their association with the organization.Another scientist involved with SESAME was assassinated in January. Masoud Ali Mohammadi was also killed in a bomb attack, which Iranian officials also blamed on the US and Israel. But the AFP reports that Tehran’s deputy governor said the two attacks Monday were “different from previous assassinations.”
Ed Webb

JERUSALEM: Iran: Israeli air strike killed general advising Syrian government forces | ... - 1 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...israeli-air-strike-killed.html

Syria Iran Israel Lebanon hezbollah alqaeda

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A statement on the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said that Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was killed when Israeli planes bombed a convoy in southern Syria, where troops loyal to President Bashar Assad have been fighting rebels that include al Qaida’s Nusra Front.
  • Also killed were five Iranians, according to the AFP news agency, and six members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, including a prominent Hezbollah operative, Jihad Mughniyah, whose father, Imad Mughniyah, was the group’s military chief until he was assassinated in 2008.
  • The statement said Allahdadi had been helping the Syrian government “confront the takfiri Salafist terrorists,” using religious terms to refer to the Sunni Muslim rebels who’ve been trying to topple Assad for nearly four years.
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  • Israeli commentators said that with Hezbollah embroiled in the fighting in Syria, the group was unlikely to open a second front with Israel, which could wreak serious damage in Lebanon
Ed Webb

Qatar's agriculture push risks further groundwater depletion - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...er-environmental-concerns.html

Qatar water food security agriculture sustainability environment

shared by Ed Webb on 31 Aug 19 - Cached
  • Qatar's leading news outlets recently reported that local agricultural production has jumped by 400% since a political and economic blockade was imposed on the emirate by its Arab neighbors in 2017. And within a few years, 40% to 50% of fresh products could be produced locally,
  • the blockade caused Qatar to realize its vulnerability when it comes to the food supply
  •  recently ranked as the most water-stressed country in the world. It is also one of the few countries with no permanent rivers as rainfall is extremely unpredictable and highly erratic
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  • Qatar’s fast-growing agriculture has been looking deep underground for its water.
  • Each year, 92% of the 250 million cubic meters (75,000 acre-feet) of groundwater withdrawn from the country's aquifers is given free of charge to farmers
  • At Baladna, Qatar's largest producer of fresh dairy products, 12,000 cows produce 400 tons of fresh milk and and other dairy goods a day. The company’s press officer, Saba Mohammed Nasser Al Fadala, acknowledges that "cows were not made for the desert."
  • Artificial recharges and irrigation return flows reduce this loss but also may be polluting the aquifers, in part because of chemical fertilizers used by farmers
  • Qatar withdraws nearly four times as much water from its aquifers than is replenished by rainfall each year
  • Half of the groundwater allocated to agriculture is utilized to grow fodder that feeds 60% to 70% of the 1.6 million head of livestock in Qatar.
  • groundwater depletion causes seawater intrusion into aquifers: In 2014, 69% of wells in Qatar were classified as moderately saline
  • To mitigate the depletion of Qatar’s aquifers, local authorities plan to ban the use of groundwater to grow fodder by 2025 and restrict it to vegetable crops. Treated sewage water that is currently allocated to the irrigation of green spaces, deep injection into aquifers and agriculture is to be used for fodder.
  • Freshwater reserves for Qatar are estimated at 2.5 billion cubic meters. However, an annual groundwater deficit of some 100 million cubic meters or more puts Qatar's future in a precarious situation
  • each Baladna cow requires an average of 700 liters of water a day, most of which is used for misting in Qatar's heat. The press officer said up to 80% of this water can be recycled
  • The Ministry of Municipality and Environment says it supports those who reduce their groundwater consumption and move toward hydroponic farming. A budget of $2.75 million to $3.3 million has been allocated to a program that aims to provide up to 140 farms with free greenhouses
Ed Webb

They can't sail for Europe - so what's happening to migrants trapped in Libya? | Middle... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...oast-guard-smuggler-1680789829

Libya migration refugees trafficking

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • the group were first taken to an official centre in Zawiya. “There were 1,200 of us, stacked in hundreds in each room,” she says. “We were so tight that we could not lie down, we had to take turns to sleep."
  • “Once we were inside the detention centre, they started to blackmail us. They used the phones they had taken away to contact our friends in Libya and ask for money in exchange for our release or else directly called our relatives, threatening to kill us if they did not find a way to send money."
  • Libya has become the preferred destination for migrants and refugees heading for Europe. In the first half of 2017, at least 2,030 people died or went missing while crossing the Mediterranean for southern Europe. The greatest number set off from Libya.
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  • armed Libyan groups are receiving payoffs to stop boats leaving Libya, in exchange for aid, aircraft hangars and money
  • Laura Thompson of the International Organisation for Migration told AFP on Wednesday that there “are somewhere around 31 or 32 detention centres, and around half are controlled by, or are in the areas controlled by, the government”. She said that nobody knew how many people were being kept in the facilities, where conditions were "extremely bad”.
  • illegal facilities, directly run by armed militias involved in human trafficking and fuel smuggling, often with the complicity of members of the coastguard service
  • Male captives are frequently beaten until they can somehow get relatives to send more money to Libya, or else set to work in factories or oil refineries. Women may end up being trafficked sexually.
  • a UNICEF report released in February, "detention centres run by militias are nothing but forced labour camps, armed robbery prisons. For thousands of migrant women and children, prison is a hell of rape, violence, sexual exploitation, hunger, and repeated abuses."
  • "Europeans think the problem in Libya is politics,” he says, “but we cannot build a government of national unity without a national army."
  • “When the centres are overflowing, migrants are taken out, there is no money to feed them all,” Ibrahim says. “Some guards are good people, but some of them are corrupt.”He hints at the tangled relationship which exists between centre personnel, smugglers, militia and human traffickers, which pass desperate migrants between themselves like a resaleable human commodity.The guards at detention centres may take money from the traffickers, then hand the migrants over.Or smugglers tip off the coastguard when their migrants are due to sail to Europe so that they will be captured and passed to militias.Or militias will seize migrants in the streets on the grounds that they do not carry the necessary documentation, a requirement in Libya. “They pretend to arrest illegal migrants and then keep them in their centres without food and water, take their money, exploit them, abuse women,” Ibrahim says.
  • The coastguard has repeatedly denied that its members are involved in the people-trafficking trade.But a UN report has found that:"Abuses against migrants were widely reported, including executions, torture and deprivation of food, water and access to sanitation. The International Organisation for Migration also reported enslavement of sub-Saharan migrants. Smugglers, as well as the Department to Counter Illegal Migration and the coastguard, are directly involved in such grave human rights violations."
  • Happiness and Bright's mother - I am never told her name - took all the money that their families could spare, then crossed the Sahara, reached the Libyan coast and paid smugglers to take them to Europe. It was then they were captured and brought to Surman.Happiness says that her friend became ill after Bright was born but received no medical aid. “Now her body is in the nearby hospital. It can’t be sent back to her family. She lost her documents at sea, and her family does not have the money to send the corpse.”
  • “They use us as slaves, and when we are no longer needed, they throw us away,” he says. "Humanitarian organisations do not come here. Sometimes some locals come to us with soap and bread. But no international."
  • She too crossed the Sahara, this time to escape Boko Haram. She was determined that her children would not grow up afraid, fearing every day that they would die."I do not care if they [the coastguards] have stopped me, I will try again," she says, looking at her newborn children. "I know it's dangerous. Nigeria is also dangerous. If war does not kill you, hunger will kill you, and here we are prisoners, the same hell. It's worth trying to cross the sea again.”Princess has yet to learn: she will be lucky to escape Libya.
Ed Webb

Whistle-blower hopes new film will redress Bush-Blair legacy | News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ir-legacy-191012142539284.html

US USA UK Britain Iraq war intelligence film

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • A British woman responsible for a dramatic intelligence leak in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq has said she hopes a new film about her efforts will refocus attention on the flawed evidence that led to war.
  • Katharine Gun, a former employee of the United Kingdom intelligence agency GCHQ, believes that the film, called Official Secrets, could cause a reassessment of the partially-repaired reputations of the UK and US leaders behind the military action
  • She and some of the film's creators hope it will highlight once again that the invasion of Iraq was carried out on the false premise that the country had illegal weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). "There's no rehabilitating two leaders who have had to admit that the whole WMD thing was an absolute fabrication and a manipulation and a lie," director Gavin Hood told AFP. 
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  • The UK government eventually opted not to prosecute Gun after she pleaded not guilty as it would have been forced to disclose key documents and decision-making related to the war.
  • Gun said she was initially hesitant to get involved in the film after numerous attempts to make a movie about the events had failed. But after spending several days recounting it all to Hood, a South African-born director known for politically-driven films Tsotsi and Eye in the Sky, both were convinced of the importance of telling the story. "I think it raises interesting questions about loyalty ... to what and to whom do we owe our loyalty?," Hood said
  • sees a link between this and the prevailing political culture in the UK and US, whose leaders are frequently accused of dishonesty. "If they see that other people haven't been held to account, it sets an extremely bad example,"
Ed Webb

India navy rescues two hijacked vessels off Somalia coast in two days - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-india-68091830

India Somalia piracy navy shipping maritime RedSea Yemen

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Jan 24 - No Cached
  • The waters off the Somali coast were previously a hotbed for piracy, but it had all but stopped after international forces stepped up patrols.India, for example, has helped patrol the area constantly since 2008.However, many of those naval forces have moved up into the Red Sea, AFP news agency reports, where the Houthi rebel group, based in Yemen, have been attacking ships. Experts now fear the gap will be exploited by pirates in the region, the news agency said.
Ed Webb

No end in sight to Libya crisis after UN envoy quits - 0 views

uk.news.yahoo.com/ht-libya-crisis-185436368.html

Libya UN diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Apr 24 - No Cached
  • The abrupt resignation of the United Nations special envoy for Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, is the latest sign of the failure of reconciliation efforts in the war-torn North African country, analysts told AFP.The Senegalese diplomat, who on Tuesday tendered his resignation after only 18 months at the helm of the UN support mission UNSMIL, has repeatedly accused rival leaders of perpetuating divisions to serve their own interests.
  • the diplomat decried a "lack of political will and good faith by the major Libyan actors who are comfortable with the current stalemate".
  • Bathily's efforts have been undermined by Egypt, which alongside the United Arab Emirates is the main power supporting the Haftar-backed administration.
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