By Neville Teller

July 30, 2013: “Our objective will be to achieve a final status agreement over the course of the next nine months” – John Kerry, US Secretary of State.

December 7, 2013: “It is possible over the next several months to arrive at a framework that does not address every single detail but gets us to a point where everybody recognizes it’s better to move forward than go backwards.” – Barack Obama, US President.

The aspirational target announced by Kerry back in July, at the start of the current round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, has proved wildly optimistic. And this in spite of the fact that, in the intervening six months, John Kerry has not spared himself in his prodigious efforts to achieve his objective. If the Nobel Peace Prize were awarded on the basis of sheer persistence in the pursuit of peace, John Kerry would be the number one candidate this year. A dozen visits to the Middle East by Kerry, 24 rounds of talks between the principal negotiators – and yet a final status agreement remains way beyond reach.

Is US diplomacy to admit defeat? Never! It has found a way to come to terms with the changed circumstances, and emerge smelling of roses.

“Rather than declare failure,” observes political analyst Herb Keinon, “what Kerry and US President Barack Obama have done is to change the name of the game.” So what is now being sought is “not an agreement, but a basis to allow continued negotiations toward an agreement.”

In short, they shifted the goalposts – and in so doing, they redefined the criteria by which “success” is to be judged. The desired outcome is now no longer a “final status agreement”, but what has been dubbed a “framework agreement”, defined as a critical first step towards a comprehensive Middle East peace accord. Kerry is currently heavily engaged in trying to win the concurrence of the two negotiating teams to a document encapsulating this framework. The statement will seek to achieve enough of a convergence on core issues to allow the two sides to proceed later, in a so-far unspecified time frame extending well beyond the original nine months, towards a formal peace agreement whose final outcome is to be a sovereign Palestinian state.

Informed sources indicate that the so-called “framework agreement” – which, rumor has it, is to be issued within the next few weeks – will be a short document, perhaps fewer than a dozen pages and without detailed annexes. It would not be signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and would most likely take note of reservations that the two sides have about some elements.

The mere prospect of this framework accord – to say nothing of a final status agreement, if or when it finally appears – is beginning to produce political ructions in both Jerusalem and Ramallah. Rejectionist voices in both camps are already loud in their condemnation of feared – though by no means confirmed – concessions being made by their leaders. On January 4 the leading Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told local media: “There’s no place to talk about interim agreements or extension of the negotiations, and that’s also what I told Kerry.” A few days later Israel’s Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, created an international furore by castigating Kerry’s efforts as an “incomprehensible obsession,” and “messianic”. Kerry’s spokesmen in Washington may have roundly condemned the comments, but Kerry himself, “undeterred” as he puts it, sails serenely on. “I will work with the willing participants who are committed to peace and committed to this process.”

The substance of the negotiations undertaken during those twenty-four, no doubt wearisome, sessions has not been revealed. The blanket of secrecy imposed by Kerry at the very start of the process has, by and large, been successfully maintained. A few self-styled “informed” leaks there have been, but how valid they are is anyone’s guess. Kerry insisted – and with some justification – that it was vital for the parties to be able to negotiate freely, and without the political and media pressure that would undoubtedly have built up if regular progress reports had been issued.

But there is an obverse to that particular coin. The absence of hard information provides a breeding ground in both camps for rumor, and for fear of where the talks are headed and what vital matters are being conceded. Even worse, with no indication of whether the negotiations are indeed leading the parties towards agreement, neither Israeli nor Palestinian public opinion is being prepared for a successful outcome. This is particularly obvious on the Palestinian side, where traditional anti-Israel, “anti-normalization”, demonstrations continue unabated. and where Kerry was met by hostile and vociferous protesters on his latest visit to Ramallah. Inside Israel, the free media do give voice to the wide range of political opinion – but even so, there seems only cynicism about the likely result of the current talks, and no groundswell of support for a successful outcome.

In short, while more extreme voices on both sides continue to express profound lack of confidence in the negotiations and in those undertaking them, any sort of countervailing body of opinion pushing for a successful outcome, organizing pro-agreement demonstrations, urging the leaders to reach an accord, preparing the public for peace, has so far been notably absent in both the Palestinian territories and Israel, although – a hopeful sign? – one such demonstration actually took place in Israel on January 17. Nevertheless it is pretty clear that neither side is yet ready to embrace the concept of peaceful co-existence, and that, following the framework agreement, substantive discussions are likely to extend well beyond April 2014 into an indefinite future, with no assurance of a successful outcome.

The situation leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. A horrid suspicion persists that, at the end of the day, the mountain will have laboured mightily and brought forth a mouse. If current reports are to be believed, the framework agreement will have been signed by neither of the prime movers – Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu or PA President Abbas. It will be, reports suggest, an American statement, setting out what the peace discussions have so far achieved, but also apparently detailing areas of remaining disagreement. A statement, in short, of the obvious. The reaction on all sides might well be: “Tell us something we don’t know.” If this is to be claimed by Washington as success, and a result commensurate with John Kerry’s intensive efforts to bring the parties to an agreement, then the shifting of the original goalposts will scarcely have been justified.

The article Israel And Palestine: Moving The Goalposts – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Iran Review

By Kayhan Barzegar

The Geneva nuclear agreement between Iran and P5+1 in November 2013 has entered its executive phase. During the past two months, the agreement has been evaluated from different angles. One way is also to ask what would have happened if the agreement had not been concluded?

First, the US Congress would have had more excuses to push for further crippling economic sanctions against Iran. Although hard-line US senators, under the heavy influence of pro-Israeli lobby, have still kept up their action plan, the implementation of the Geneva agreement will greatly defuse their efforts. At present, the main issue within the American policy circles is that new sanctions would break the existing fragile coalition among member states of the P5+1 group. With the current Iranian cooperation, it is rather unlikely that the European countries, as well as Russia and China follow suit with the US policy from this stage on. This per se could be a good reason for the suspension of the Senate’s new sanctions plan against Iran.

Second, continuation of the sanctions would have led to further weakening of the Iran’s national economy. Although some views maintain that given the spent costs for Iran further sanctions are unlikely to change Iran’s nuclear policy at this stage and that Iran has not initially accepted to engage in the nuclear talks as a result of sanctions, one should accept that continuation of the sanctions has already weakened the country’s national economy. Further prolongation of the current economic encounter between Iran and the West will consume Iran’s economic stamina and this situation will not be beneficial to Iran’s economic and political status as an emerging regional power. The damages arising from the continuation of sanctions against Iran are irreplaceable in certain fields i.e. the oil exports at the expense of Iran’s pocket and to the benefit of some opportunist rivals such as Saudi Arabia through adding to their production capacity and taking Iran’s traditional market.

Third, the political-security role of Iran’s regional rivals would have increased. Such regional players as Saudi Arabia and Israel have traditionally perceived their increased regional role and influence at the expense of Iran’s regional role. They have regularly sought to stoke tension in relations between Iran and the West, especially America. In an optimistic scenario, counties such as Turkey and Qatar are endeavoring to keep the regional power balance in their own interests, being consistently concerned about Iran’s increased regional role. The Geneva nuclear deal and the subsequent increased Iran-West relations will strengthen Iran and its regional allies i.e. Syria, Iraq, Hezbollah’s role at the expense of its regional rivals. In the coming days, the world would witness Iran’s increased and constructive diplomatic efforts for solving certain regional issues, especially the ongoing Syrian crisis. This development would cause more divisions in the regional stances of Iran’s rivals.

Fourth, Iran’s international allies would have faced further passiveness in the P5+1. Some views inside Iran tend to believe that countries like Russia and China are actually benefiting from the escalation of sanctions against Iran and that they might not be very happy with a possible comprehensive deal as they think that the increased Iran-West relations will ultimately be at their expense. One of the positive effects of the Geneva deal is that closer relations between Iran and the West, bring up new competition and excitement in Iran’s international relations, leading Russia and China to move away from their traditional passiveness in context of the P5+1 negotiations, taking more supportive actions to get closer to Iran. While one expects that their role in any forthcoming negotiations should be more active to the benefit of Iran, the classic pattern of their economic and political relations with Iran will be maintained and even strengthened as a result of the removal of sanctions. For example, a great amount of financial resources belonging to Russian companies, currently frozen in Western banks, will be released. Some of these companies are stockholders of some Western oil giants. Or China will be under no further pressures for the reduction of oil imports from Iran and the subsequent money transfer.

Fifth, terrorism and extremism would have increased across the region. The failure of the Geneva nuclear deal would have continued the existing distrust and discrepancies between Iran and the West over the regional issues. A natural result of that situation would have been further prolongation of such regional crises as the ongoing conflict in Syria. Failure to find a political solution [to the Syria crisis] through a regional and trans-regional cooperation would certainly provide new breeding grounds for religious extremism and growth of violent Sunni and al-Qaeda related forces in the region, who are in nature anti-Iranian. If this situation continues, the crisis would spill over into the neighboring Iraq (as we are witnessing in recent days in al- Anbar province), ultimately bringing about precarious effects for Iran’s national security.

Sixth and finally, the possibility of waging a new war in the region would have increased. Perhaps, the most important aspect of the failure to reach an agreement would be the increased role of warmongering and anti-Iranian forces within the US power structure. Beyond the resistant and indomitable spirit of the Iranian nation, one should not forget that any war would have its own detrimental social, human and economic consequences for the nation, affecting a whole generation for many years to come. Avoiding a war is the fundamental task for any government.

The conclusion of the Geneva nuclear deal has changed the political and security equations at regional and international levels in favor of Iran, enabling the country, commensurate to its national power sources, to dictate its demands to the other side. This development is a first step on the long way to achieving a sustainable nuclear agreement which, if achieved, will release Iranian nation’s stamina for the sake of economic development and prosperity, as well as strengthening the country’s national and international statues. In its totality, therefore, the Geneva agreement has been so far a win for Iran.

Dr. Kayhan Barzegar, Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Science and Research Branch of the Islamic Azad University. He is also Director of the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran.

Source: Iranian Diplomacy (IRD)

http://www.irdiplomacy.ir/

Translated By: Iran Review.Org

The article What If Iran-P5+1 Disagreed On The Geneva Deal? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ria Novosti

Spain’s Javier Fernandez held off a strong Russian challenge to retain his European title in Budapest on Friday, nailing a jazzy free program to stake an unequivocal claim for a medal at next month’s Sochi Olympics.

To the musical backdrop of the finger-snapping Peter Gunn theme, Fernandez landed three quadruple jumps – albeit two messily – en route to a winning score of 267.11, seven points short of the personal best he set to win gold in Zagreb last year.

Behind him, Sergei Voronov nailed a confident free skate with two quads to score 252.55 for the silver medal. His fellow Russian Konstantin Menshov, who hadn’t impressed in the short program, turned it around with a strong free skate; also landing two quads for 237.24 points and bronze.

“It turned out the best skate of my life probably,” Menshov told R-Sport. “It was the maximum I’ve ever done.”

Michal Brezina of the Czech Republic was fourth with 236.98, ahead of disappointing Russian Maxim Kovtun.

Those Russian performances, both big personal bests, give the Olympic selectors an almighty headache, with Voronov and Menshov now joining Kovtun and veteran Evgeni Plushenko in looking to claim the one available Russian berth in the men’s singles event in Sochi next month.

Choosing which skater to send to Sochi is “a very difficult question,” Russian Figure Skating Federation president Alexander Gorshkov said. “There are a lot of opinions. We’ll listen to all these opinions at an expert council and take the decision.” He added that a final decision would be made Wednesday, a day after Plushenko skates for federation representatives behind closed doors.

Kovtun’s short program was a big disappointment in Budapest, and a shaky free skate that saw the 18-year-old bail out of quads to end up fifth on 232.37 points on Saturday may give selectors additional food for thought.

Kovtun, who left the ice visibly distraught, blamed pre-Olympic gossip and politicking over Russia’s Sochi selection. “If I go, then I go. I don’t care any more,” he said of the Olympics.

“If I hadn’t had to prove anything to anyone, I’d have gone out there and skated completely differently. But I’m constantly hearing all these conversations around me. Voronov and Menshov go out there and skate calmly, but I go out there knowing that there are people who are pleased by every mistake I make.”
Kovtun added he planned to take a break and “relax” following the European championships.

On Friday, Julia Lipnitskaia became the youngest European champion ever at the age of 15; leading a Russian 1-2 over overnight leader Adelina Sotnikova. Defending champion Carolina Kostner of Italy was third.

Italy’s Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte took the victory in the ice dance competition, with Elena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov second for Russia. Penny Coomes and Nicholas Buckland took the bronze, Britain’s first major competition medal since 2011.

On Sunday, Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov look to capture a third-straight European title after breaking their own world record in the short program.

The article Spain’s Fernandez Holds Off Russians to Retain European Figure Skating Title appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have demonstrated broadband terahertz (THz) wave generation using metamaterials. The discovery may help develop noninvasive imaging and sensing, and make possible THz-speed information communication, processing and storage. The results appeared in the Jan. 8 issue of Nature Communications.

Terahertz electromagnetic waves occupy a middle ground between electronics waves, like microwave and radio waves, and photonics waves, such as infrared and UV waves. Potentially, THz waves may accelerate telecom technologies and break new ground in understanding the fundamental properties of photonics. Challenges related to efficiently generating and detecting THz waves has primarily limited their use.

Traditional methods seek to either compress oscillating waves from the electronic range or stretch waves from the optical range. But when compressing waves, the THz frequency becomes too high to be generated and detected by conventional electronic devices. So, this approach normally requires either a large-scale electron accelerator facility or highly electrically-biased photoconductive antennas that produce only a narrow range of waves.

To stretch optical waves, most techniques include mixing two laser frequencies inside an inorganic or organic crystal. However, the natural properties of these crystals result in low efficiency.

So, to address these challenges, the Ames Laboratory team looked outside natural materials for a possible solution. They used man-made materials called metamaterials, which exhibit optical and magnetic properties not found in nature.

Institute of Technology in Germany, created a metamaterial made up of a special type of meta-atom called split-ring resonators. Split-ring resonators, because of their u-shaped design, display a strong magnetic response to any desired frequency waves in the THz to infrared spectrum.

Ames Laboratory physicist Jigang Wang, who specializes in ultra-fast laser spectroscopy, designed the femto-second laser experiment to demonstrate THz emission from the metamaterial of a single nanometer thickness.

“The combination of ultra-short laser pulses with the unique and unusual properties of the metamaterial generates efficient and broadband THz waves from emitters of significantly reduced thickness,” says Wang, who is also an associate professor of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University.

The team demonstrated their technique using the wavelength used by telecommunications (1.5 microns), but Wang says that the THz generation can be tailored simply by tuning the size of the meta-atoms in the metamaterial.

“In principle, we can expand this technique to cover the entire THz range,” said Soukoulis, who is also a Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State University.

What’s more, the team’s metamaterial THz emitter measured only 40 nanometers and performed as well as traditional emitters that are thousands of times thicker.

“Our approach provides a potential solution to bridge the ‘THz technology gap’ by solving the four key challenges in the THz emitter technology: efficiency; broadband spectrum; compact size; and tunability,” said Wang.

Soukoulis, Wang, Liang Luo and Thomas Koschny’s work at Ames Laboratory was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Wang’s work is partially supported by Ames Laboratory’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funding.

The article Highly Efficient Broadband Terahertz Radiation From Metamaterials appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame and the Indiana University School of Medicine have revealed a putative role for the circadian clock in the liver in the development of alcohol-induced hepatic steatosis, or fatty liver disease.

Hepatic steatosis is the abnormal accumulation of fats in the cells of the liver, and is linked to disturbed control of fat metabolism. Alcohol-induced liver steatosis is produced by excessive alcohol consumption and is linked to hepatitis, or inflammation of the liver. It can be a precursor to an even more serious illness, liver cirrhosis, which includes scarring of the liver. Ten percent to 35 percent of chronic heavy drinkers develop alcoholic hepatitis, and it is the main cause of liver disease in Western countries.

The team, led by associate professors Giles Duffield, from Notre Dame’s Department of Biological Sciences and Eck Institute for Global Health, and Suthat Liangpunsakul from the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, is interested in the molecular genetic basis for the molecular clock and liver steatosis.

The study, using molecular biological approaches and long-term alcohol feeding of experimental mice, reveals that the development of liver steatosis produced by alcohol abuse is intertwined with disturbances of the normal operation of the 24-hour clock system located in the cells of the liver. Importantly, this change in the liver clock seems to occur independently from the master clock system located in the brain.

The circadian clock regulates 24-hour rhythms in biochemistry, physiology and behavior, and its normal operation and appropriate synchronization to the external world, especially the alternating cycle of day and night, is critical to maintaining a normal healthy state. Disturbances of the clock have been linked to mental health disorders, to metabolic disease including obesity and diabetes, and to the development of cancer.

The liver plays many roles in the body, and includes control of metabolism, storage and release of energy molecules, and detoxification.

“Liver function changes daily in a rhythmic manner and is coordinated with cycles of feeding-fasting and to the energy demands of the body, such as activity and rest,” Duffield said. “These daily rhythms are regulated by the circadian clock within those liver cells, and disturbances to the molecular clock mechanism or poor temporal coordination of the clock with the timing of eating, or the sleep-wake and rest-activity cycle, can lead to illness.”

The study suggests that either the circadian clock is important in the actual development of the liver disease or that the development of steatosis disrupts the normal pattern of the clock mechanism. The researchers’ findings also offer novel insights into how the disease might be manipulated for clinical purposes.

Interestingly, the mechanism by which chronic alcohol intake is thought to alter the control of fat metabolism in the liver is also a shared signal to the circadian clock mechanism, this being the ratio of production of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NADH, to NAD+. The authors suggest that this may be a key to the shared disturbance to the two biological mechanisms of lipid metabolism and the circadian clock.

The article Links Found Between Alcoholic Liver Disease And Circadian Clock appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Contrary to long-held misconceptions, trees never stop growing during their lifespans, a new study has found.

In fact, as they age, their growth accelerates, even after they’ve reached massive sizes. This means that older trees play a substantial and disproportionate role in the Earth’s carbon cycle — one of the cycles that makes Earth capable of sustaining life.

The groundbreaking findings are in a new study co-authored by University of Nebraska-Lincoln biologist Sabrina Russo and published today in Nature.

Researchers analyzed the compiled biomass growth measurements of 673,046 trees belonging to 403 species from various temperate and tropical regions across six continents.

They concluded that for most tree species, mass growth rate continues to increase with their size, with some species’ largest trees growing by a mass equivalent to a mid-sized tree in a single year.

“Looking at data from whole forests — that is, all trees in a forest considered together as a unit — it is often found that forest productivity declines with the age of the forest, but that does not mean that the growth of the oldest trees declines,” said Russo, a forest ecologist in UNL’s School of Biological Sciences. “What turns out to be key to understanding tree growth is to examine the growth pattern of each individual, not just the forest stand as a whole.”

In addition to discovering this property of tree growth, the conclusions also contribute to understanding the global carbon cycle because trees, like all plants, take up carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in their biomass.

“About 50 percent of a tree’s wood is carbon, so a rapidly growing, large, old tree can remove huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, through an enormous photosynthetic flux — far more than a younger, smaller tree can,” Russo said.

“While they are alive, these giant elders of the forest play a disproportionately important role in a forest’s carbon dynamics.”

While 38 researchers from 29 institutions collaborated on the study, Russo was instrumental in the research. She contributed to development of the data analysis methods, as well as the analysis and interpretation of the results.

Russo’s principal research site in Lambir Hills National Park in Malaysia on the island of Borneo also lent data to the study for 76 Southeast Asian tree species.

The article Large, Older Trees Keep Growing At Faster Rate appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Randall G. Holcombe

President Obama has recently promoted inequality as a fundamental threat to our way of life, saying, “The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American Dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe.” You can read the rhetoric here. Let’s look at the reality.

The president suggested policy initiatives to address these issues, so presumably, the president’s policies can make a difference. What has he done so far?

He has presided over corporate bailouts, not only declaring the Wall Street banks too big to fail, while a multitude of small businesses did fail, his policies continue to support the banking industry through low interest rates and the payment of interest on reserves held at the Fed. Banks holding bad mortgages were bailed out while individual homeowners were evicted from their homes.

While the president does not directly determine Fed policy, Bernanke was all-in on the president’s agenda, and now the president has appointed Janet Yellen as Fed chair because she supports a continuation of those policies.

The low interest rate policy has hurt small savers, who tend to keep their savings in fixed-interest assets, but has propped up the stock market where the wealthier tend to invest.

The president’s support for extended unemployment benefits has taken away some of the incentive for people to find work, which is the best way to escape poverty.

After campaigning against them, the president worked hard to preserve the “Bush tax cuts,” with ultimately just a small increase in rates for the highest-income individuals.

Then there is Obamacare, which provides financial incentives for employers to convert full-time jobs to part-time jobs to avoid the health insurance penalties, further eroding opportunities for those at the bottom of the income scale.

What has been the effect of the president’s economic policies? The unemployment rate remains high, at 6.7%, and long-term unemployment has spiked to its highest level in history, largely because of the extended unemployment benefits. The labor force participation rate has fallen from 66% in 2008 to below 63% today, so fewer people are even looking for the jobs that could help them escape poverty.

In 2008 13.2% of Americans fell below the official poverty line. By 2012 the poverty rate was 15%. The president’s policies have increased poverty.

How about the rich? The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which hovered around 8,000 when the president took office in 2009 has more than doubled to top 16,000 today.

Despite the rhetoric, the reality is that the president’s policies have created more inequality. They have hurt the poor, but Wall Street has done well.

The article President Obama On Inequality: Rhetoric Vs. Reality – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Dr. Bibhu Prasad Routray

Beginning of 2014 could not have been any worse for the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). The outfit lost one of its trusted lieutenants. On 13 January, spokesperson of Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, GVK Prasad alias Gudsa Usendi, who not only was in charge of issuing press statements on behalf of the outfit, but was also responsible for some of the its military successes in Chhattisgarh, surrendered to the Andhra Pradesh police. He complained of ill health and disillusionment with the outfit’s excessive reliance on violence. He would receive the Rupees 20 lakh which was the bounty on his head. Usendi’s surrender was followed by few other surrenders of low and middle ranking cadres in Chhattisgarh.

The CPI-Maoist came out with an audio statement trivializing the impact of Usendi’s surrender. Calling him a ‘traitor’, a ‘morally flawed’ individual; criticising his ways with the women cadres and the fact that Usendi chose to abandon his wife and surrender with another woman cadre, the statement noted that such surrenders, which is ‘not a new phenomenon for the revolutionary movement’ would have no impact on the revolution that the Maoists are waging.

At one level, the statement appears to be a natural reaction of the outfit, which has suffered from a series of splits and surrenders, and has also lost a number of senior leaders to arrests and killings in the past years. While deaths and arrests are unavoidable parts of its military campaign, the outfit is most perturbed by the possible impact of the public denouncement of its ideology by its erstwhile lieutenants. By criticising the surrendering cadres and idolising the ones who got killed in encounters with the security forces, the Maoists want to keep their flock together.

Recent history of left-wing extremism in India bears testimony to the damaging impact of neutralisation of key leaders on the outfit’s overall activity. Kishenji’s killing in November 2011 led to the marginalisation of the Maoists in West Bengal. Sabyasachi Panda’s in August 2012 rebellion in Odisha was a serious setback for the outfit’s plan of expansion in that state. The September 2009 arrest of Kobad Ghandy and the July 2010 killing of Cherikuri Rajkumar alias Azad constituted blows to the outfit’s policy making apparatus as well as to its expansion strategy in southern India. Usendi’s sudden departure from the scene would certainly affect the outfit. That the outfit would find a leader to replace him and would eventually overcome his loss is, however, a different debate.

At the other level, the satisfaction expressed in the official circles, post Usendi’s surrender that the CPI-Moist would eventually crumble because of its excessive reliance on violence and disenchantment of its cadres from the party’s ideology, may be misplaced. That Usendi’s surrender and fair treatment accorded to him by the state would lead to a stream of surrenders of top cadres is far fetched. That Maoist violence would die a natural death without any substantial effort from the state is an unreal expectation.

Ground reality in the Maoist conflict theatres may be different. While the level of violence orchestrated in 2010, so far the worst year of Maoist violence, resulting in the deaths of over 900 civilians and security forces would possibly remain unmatched, an upswing in violence, albeit marginal, was recorded in 2013 over the previous year. 270 civilians and security forces were killed in 2013 in various states compared to 250 deaths in 2012. In spite of the killing of 151 Maoist cadres in 2013, the outfit’s level of violence did not show much signs of abatement. States like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha remained affected by significant amount of extremist mobilisation as well as violence.

Although deployment of about 150 companies of security forces minimised violence during the state assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, there was little to suggest that the state is in the process of developing its wherewithal to replicate the Andhra Pradesh success on its soil. Bihar’s unique approach towards the problem has merely translated into its diminishing ability to neutralise the Maoists, where as the extremists continue to kill, abduct and snatch weapons. While Maoist inroads into the northeast remains mostly an exaggerated claim by the Assam government, the CPI-Maoist appears to have made concerted efforts for expansion into the southern states.

In 2013, small victories were scored by the security forces against the Maoists. But the year also witnessed setbacks in the form of the Darbha attack in Chhattisgarh in which 27 people including some senior politicians were killed and the killing of an Superintendent of Police in Jharkhand. Moreover, the security forces in Chhattsgarh were also involved in at least two encounters in which civilians rather than extremists were killed, highlighting the persistence of intelligence collection problems. It is the continuing ability to inflict damages on the state, which would keep the CPI-Maoist relevant in the eyes of its sympathisers.

The surrender is an ominous beginning, but not the end game.

This article appeared at IPCS and is reprinted with permission.

The article Surrender Of Gudsa Usendi: An Ominous Beginning In The Naxal Conflict? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By IPCS

By Manpreet Sethi

In Pakistan’s nuclear strategy, the primary task of its nuclear weapons is not to deter India’s nuclear weapons, but to avoid an engagement with a superior military capability. Rawalpindi is aware of the risk of having to confront India till such time as it supports terrorism. But, it believes that its nuclear weapons constrain India from militarily punishing it. India has responded to this strategy by suggesting and illustrating (with Kargil) that there is space to fight a conventional war even in the presence of nuclear weapons. Over time, India has also tweaked its military doctrine to make this viable. This has obviously disturbed Pakistan. If an Indian conventional response could still be tailored to remain below Pakistani redlines, then its nuclear weapons become useless.

Pakistan cannot afford this. It has to keep its nuclear weapons relevant and in-the-face of India, and the world, if it has to prevent a military offensive provoked by self-sponsored terrorism. It is in this context that the tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) – small yield nuclear weapons delivered by very short range ballistic missiles over military targets — come in handy. The objective is to reclaim the space that India maintains exists for a conventional war even in the presence of nuclear weapons.

In playing this game, Pakistan is not seeking to exploit the military utility of the TNW. It has no illusions about the military effectiveness of the weapon on the battlefield. And, it is aware that by using them, it would invoke a nuclear response triggering tragic consequences. But, in its plan, it would not really have to use the TNW because the inherent risk of nuclear escalation would deter.

The threat implied by Pakistan’s TNWs is based on two assumptions. One, Pakistan believes that the use of TNW would bring about such a material and psychological shift in hostilities as to stun India into a halt. Confronted with the prospect of further escalation, the nature of Indian polity and the ‘softness of the state’ would make India choose war-termination over escalation. So, Pakistan believes that India would be deterred from using its superior military capability since it would not have the will or the motivation to act. He doubts whether India, with a strategic culture of military restraint, would find it prudent to inflict damage (and risk more on itself) in response to a threat that is not itself mortal. Second, Pakistan assumes that the battlefield use of a small nuclear weapon would not be seen as provocation enough by India, or the rest of the world, to merit massive retaliation. It tends to assume that the international community will stop India from continuing its conventional campaign or undertaking nuclear retaliation. Therefore, in Pakistani perception, the TNW is a deterrent at best, and a war termination weapon at worst.

India’s response to Pakistan’s TNW must address these assumptions. In fact, India does not need to develop TNW of its own, but to focus on measures that convince Pakistan of an inevitability of nuclear retaliation to any nuclear use, irrespective of yield, target or damage. Having based its deterrence on the threat of punishment, it is imperative that the certainty of retaliation to inflict unacceptable damage be credibly conveyed.

This could be achieved by raising the public profile of the nuclear command and control at both the military and the political levels. There is need for greater transparency of knowledge of structures and processes that ensure nuclear retaliation. Measures being taken to guarantee survivability of the chain of command at the primary and secondary levels, as well as of the communication systems, should be more visible. In this context, strengthening the profile of the Strategic Forces Command in public perception is necessary. The knowledge of the existence of the organization and a level of transparency on its role and mandate would send a signal of intent and purpose to the adversary.

Secondly, it should also be widely known that Indian troops have the ability to fight through tactical nuclear use. This would send a message of preparedness to handle battlefield use of nuclear weapons without bringing conventional operations to a halt or even confronting the political leadership with the choice of war termination, as assumed by Rawalpindi.

Thirdly, better evidence and communication of political resolve to undertake retaliation is necessary. Periodic statements from authoritative levels like the National Security Advisor or Commander-in-Chief, SFC, or even occasional news reports about meetings of the National Command Authority would signal the seriousness of government’s attention to the nuclear backdrop that confronts India.

Pakistan may have introduced a new element with TNW, but India must let it be known that it would play the nuclear game according to its own rules.

Manpreet Sethi
ICSSR Senior Fellow affiliated with the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS)

The article Responding To Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons: A Strategy For India – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Observer Research Foundation

By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan

Japan is clearly the flavour of the season as far as India is concerned. Japanese defence minister Itsunori Onodera was in New Delhi last week for consultations with his counterpart on how to strengthen and coordinate relations between the two sides in the security arena. In one of their rare visits, the Japanese Emperor and Empress were in Delhi in December. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be the guest of honour at this year’s Republic Day function on January 26, 2014.

With both India and Japan acknowledging the need to strengthen bilateral defence and security ties, a major chunk of the attention is likely to be on maritime security and anti-piracy efforts. While these are by no means unimportant facets of bilateral cooperation, more significant will be the role of India and Japan in shaping the Asian strategic order. Both the countries have a common and shared perspective on the Asian framework, even as it is an emerging one.

Having said that, Defence Minister Onodera’s visit focused on some of the tactical and policy issues for enhancing the level and pace of India-Japan bilateral cooperation. Cooperation between the two navies has been an on-going affair, but what has been low on the radar until now have been the links between the air forces of the two sides. This was given some emphasis during the recent visit with the two sides agreeing to encourage more staff exchanges and coordinate the possibility of staff talks between the Indian Air Force and the Japan Air Self Defence Forces as well as exchanges of test-pilots, professional exchanges in the field of flight safety and between two transport squadrons of the two air forces. Also agreed upon was promotion of exchanges on UN Peace Keeping operations between various Japanese agencies (such as the Japan Peacekeeping Training and Research Centre, Joint Staff College (JPC), Central Readiness Force of Japan Ground Self Defence Forces and the Indian Army’s Centre for UN Peacekeeping (CUNPK), and expert-level engagements on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and counter-terrorism between Indian Army and Japan Ground Self Defence Force. On the naval front, there were agreements on joint exercises between the Indian Navy and the Japan Maritime Self Defence Forces on a regular basis (with the Indian Navy to visit Japan this year). Some of the other aspects that were decided during Onodera’s visit included visit to Japan by India’s defence minister later this year and a decision to undertake high-level visits on an annual basis, conducting of the third 2+2 dialogue and the fourth Defence Policy Dialogue (Defence Secretary level).

While a rising China factor is undoubtedly an important consideration for both India and Japan as they strengthen their cooperation, the two have been careful not to invite Chinese wrath and thus have not made a mention of China in any of their statements. However, as mentioned above, there are any number of areas including freedom of navigation, anti-piracy, uninterrupted commerce, safe energy corridors and an inclusive Asian strategic framework that are becoming important to both India and Japan.

One of the key areas of potential cooperation is an arms trade relationship between the two sides. Japan’s lifting of a historic ban on export of arms under the policy guidelines issued in December 2011 has provided abundant opportunities for India and Japan to strengthen defence cooperation. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s decision is something that came about with a lot of prodding from Japanese industry, which have been keen on getting its share of the growing defence market pie. Given that Japan is a sophisticated naval power in the region with advanced technologies and weapon systems, the reversal of the ban will make it free to enter into agreements for joint production and co-development of systems with their select partners. Obviously, the decision has had its share of domestic criticism in Japan, with many viewing it as Tokyo potentially moving away from its post second world war pacifist posture.

As for India, even prior to the decision by Prime Minister Noda on lifting the ban, there was a Japanese proposal to sell New Delhi a multi-role amphibious aircraft, the US2, suitable for SAR (Search and Rescue) operations. The aircraft is significant for both the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard to undertake humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations in addition to more important search and rescue missions. A Joint Working Group (JWG) was put in place in May last year to work out the modalities of cooperation and the possible induction by the Indian Navy. The JWG is also studying the possibility of joint production, operation and training on the US-2i aircraft. Despite the Japanese inclination and the Indian interest, the deal has not been signed yet. Discussions on this were expected to be stepped up, with hopes that a deal would be announced during Prime Minister Abe’s visit, but this now seems unlikely. Sources now suggest that the second meeting of the JWG will take place in Japan this year and no decision is likely beforehand.

Meanwhile, there are other systems and platforms on the offer list, including electronic warfare equipment and patrol vessels among others. Given India’s general aversion to buying defence items off the shelf, Japan has gone the extra mile offering India the option of establishing joint ventures with Indian partners, both in the public and private sector. However, the Indian reaction so far has been subdued.

India has to get much more long-term and strategic in its defence diplomacy. While Tokyo made its intentions clear and official, New Delhi’s reaction has been less than forthcoming. On the US-2, India responded to Japan’s offer to supply the aircraft by asking the Japanese company to follow the usual route of tenders. Accordingly, in response to the Indian Navy’s Request for Information (RFI), there are three companies in the fray – Japan’s ShinMaywa, Canada’s Bombardier and Russia’s Beriev. While open tendering and transparent processes are to be encouraged, this is not how strategic ties are built. Japan’s offer of the US-2 was a strategic message that India missed, just as it did earlier with the MMRCA decision.

Even as the alliance relationship with the US is key to Japan, Tokyo has understood and acknowledged the need to strengthen relations with India and other like-minded democracies. The idea of an ‘arc of democracies’ has been a pet theme of Prime Minister Abe. The quadrilateral initiative among India, Japan, Australia and the US was also an initiative to forge closer security ties among these countries. A diamond initiative was talked about by Abe during his campaign days last year.

What do all these mean for India-Japan relations and the larger Asian strategic framework? Japan’s interest in defence trade with India is not entirely driven by commercial angles. While commercial factors are an incentive, a closer strategic partnership with Asian neighbours has become an important priority for Japan. In addition to the general concerns over the rise of China, Tokyo also has unresolved border and territorial issues with China. In the current context, the simultaneous rise of three powers – India, Japan and China – is a perfect design for conflict and rivalry. It does not help that China has had prior disputes with both Japan and India.

Both Tokyo and New Delhi want to create a stabler Asian order by redefining partnerships in the region. Can India and Japan take the lead in this regard and form a concert of nations that would bring about balance of power in the Asia-Pacific? The role of small and medium powers such as Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, and South Korea is significant. India and Japan have to be able to offer stable options to an aggressive China.

(Dr. Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi. She specialises on security and space)

The article India, Japan Should Focus On The Asian Strategic Framework – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Rare in history are moments like the 1960s civil rights movement, in which members of a majority group vocally support minority groups in their fight against prejudice. New research not only confirms the power of speaking up for those facing prejudice but also underlines the importance of exactly what is communicated. Looking at YouTube video messages, researchers found that homosexual youth found the most comfort in messages that both supported them and advocated social change.

The new work takes a closer look at the “It Gets Better” YouTube campaign. “Like many people, I was fascinated and inspired when I saw the grassroots online movement that started in late 2010 of people posting video messages to teenagers who faced prejudice and harassment based on their actual or presumed sexual orientation,” says Aneeta Rattan of London Business School. “I was not just moved as an individual, but as a researcher because this behavior – publicly addressing prejudice toward another group and communicating support for members of that group – is so rare that there is not a clear body of psychological science on it.”

Rattan along with collaborator Nalini Ambady of Stanford University decided to use the YouTube videos as a window into the content and impact of such “intergroup” communication. “Social media is a new frontier for communicating intergroup attitudes,” Rattan says. In contrast, past research has shown that majority group members rarely confront prejudice in person.

First, Rattan and Ambady analyzed the content of the 50 most viewed videos with the #ItGetsBetter hashtag, which together were viewed more than 15 million times. “We wanted to capture the complexity of people’s naturalistic communications, but we also wanted to be able to test for systematic differences in what people said,” Rattan says.

They “coded” the messages in the videos as either: messages of comfort, of social connection, or of social change. “Just saying, ‘it gets better,’ would be counted as a message of comfort,” Rattan explains. Social connection messages focused on the idea that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) teenagers targeted by prejudice would find social acceptance in the future. Social change messages focused on the idea that the situation can, should, or will change.

As published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Rattan and Ambady, who passed away in October, found that while all the messages communicated comfort, and many included messages about social connection, only 22 percent mentioned social change. An additional analysis of university student’s written messages confirmed that social change messages were least frequent. These findings conform to a body of previous research showing that majority group members focus more on interpersonal relationships rather than empowerment in their interactions with stigmatized minorities.

Merely knowing the content of the messages was not enough, however; the researchers also wanted to understand how the messages were perceived both by the targets of the prejudice and majority group members. They asked self-identified LGBQ participants to evaluate either a social connection-focused or a social change-focused message, as well as examined heterosexuals’ perceptions of the two messages.

“Our findings showed that intergroup support messages that included ideas about social change were more comforting to LGBQ participants than those that included ideas about social connection,” Rattan says. “This suggests that there is a benefit to communicating ideas about social change more often.”

Interestingly, the heterosexual participants did not note a difference between the social connection and social change messages. That they saw the messages as equally comforting suggests that YouTube messages were not skewed toward social connection because people thought that would be more effective. It also highlights the difference in the impact of the messages on targets of prejudice versus non-targets. “Because LGBQ participants reacted differently to the two messages while heterosexuals did not, we know that the psychological dynamics have to do with the difference in perspective between targets and non-targets, rather than the speaker vs. listener difference,” Rattan says.

In the end, all the messages comforted the LGBQ youth. “The act of speaking out to address anti-LGBQ prejudice directed at teenagers mattered,” Rattan says. “What was really amazing was that LGBQ youth were maximally comforted when support messages raised the possibility of social change.” In future work, Rattan would like to investigate the other potential benefits of social change messages.

Asked about historic examples of intergroup support, such as when substantial numbers of White Americans joined in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Rattan says: “We might consider that their presence may have had the benefit not just of showcasing their positive beliefs and providing support for the movement, but also of providing immediate comfort to Black Americans facing prejudice.”

The article What Comforts Targets Of Prejudice The Most appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Arab News

By Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg

I write this week from Beijing, where the third round of “GCC-China Strategic Dialogue” was held on Jan. 17 at the opulent Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in the western part of the city. China, in particular, made great efforts to make this meeting happen, because of the importance it attaches to its relationship with the GCC.

High-level interest in China’s GCC ties was expressed by China’s President Xi Jinping, who met with the GCC delegation at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Chinese TV and newspapers gave the meeting top billing. China Daily, the main English language newspaper, led with news of the meeting on its first page, as did other official media.

China has for some time made it clear that it considered the GCC, as an organization, one of its top priorities, in addition to its interest in GCC member states individually. With its keen advocacy of Third World capabilities, it considers the GCC an effective regional organization composed and run by developing nations, like China itself.

Former President Hu Jintao twice made that point during his visits to Saudi Arabia, to express his support and interest in the organization. I noticed in my meetings with Hu during his official visits to Saudi Arabia in April 2006 and February 2009 how much he knew about the GCC and how keen he was to cement that relationship. His knowledge of the minute details of GCC-China relations was unusual and duly impressive.

Based on that interest, China and the GCC launched their strategic dialogue in the signing of an agreement setting up the parameters and mechanisms for strategic cooperation, in Beijing in June 2010. Prior to that time, relations were dominated by trade and investment concerns, as was evidenced by the Framework Agreement for Economic, Investment and Technical Cooperation, which was signed in 2004, to pave the way to free trade negotiations, which started in 2006.

FTA negotiations stalled in 2009 because of China’s protective policies and were later suspended by the GCC pending an overall evaluation. China sought to limit access of GCC petrochemical exporters to its markets. While China was always interested in pursuing FTA negotiations, it could not agree to open its markets to GCC petrochemical and chemical products, seeking to shield its own producers from competition.

In his meeting with the GCC delegation, President Xi Jinping called for the speedy conclusion of the FTA deal, and emphasized the importance of China-GCC trade. In a statement issued after the meeting, Xi Jinping said, “Negotiations on the China-GCC FTA have been in the works for a decade. Both sides have done extensive planning for the agreement. I hope both sides can sign the agreement at an early date.”

Chinese officials have recently reassured the GCC that they were ready to provide the utmost flexibility on outstanding FTA issues, if FTA negotiations were to resume.

The FTA is significant for China for several reasons. First, it would provide treaty guarantees for the already thriving GCC trade. Two-way trade has steadily and rapidly multiplied, from a mere $9 billion in 2001 to $151 billion in 2012. In particular, China is interested in safeguarding oil supplies from the GCC, which is currently its main source of energy imports. As such the GCC is key to China’s “economic security,” according to Chinese experts at the China Institute of International Studies.

Second, China hopes to plug the trade deficit it has experienced with the GCC since 2010. In 2012, for example, GCC exports (mainly crude oil) were valued at $90 billion, compared to $60 billion of Chinese exports to GCC countries. China would like to increase its exports to the GCC to reduce that gap.

Third, over the past few years, China has negotiated free trade agreements with its neighbors and far-away partners, including Japan, Korea, and Australia, in addition to the ASEAN group and Pacific Rim countries. Although China is somewhat of a late believer in free trade, now it appears to be eager to engage in free trade agreements with most of its key partners, recognizing that is the way to the future.

Fourth, the GCC figures prominently in the new “Silk Road” initiative China is promoting its external trade. This is such a fascinating venture with wide strategic implications that I would like to devote my next week’s column to it.

But trade, where they largely agree, does not define the whole GCC-China relations. Although China has expressed great interest in its GCC ties, the two sides have not always seen eye to eye on some issues, mainly the Syria question. China has avoided the boisterous Russian style of publicly and aggressively defending the regime of Bashar Assad. Nevertheless, it has twice joined ranks with Russia to veto United Nations Security Council resolutions related to the Syrian conflict. The GCC supported both resolutions.

Partly due to disagreement over Syria and partly because of the recent transition in Chinese government and party leadership, a fully-fledged strategic dialogue meeting had been postponed for over two years. The last such meeting was held in Abu Dhabi in May 2011. Since then, ministerial meetings were scheduled and postponed, except for meetings held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, and technical meetings that were held in the context of economic and technical cooperation.

It was thus quite significant that the Jan. 17 meeting was held at all after a 32-month hiatus. Since the meeting was held just a few days prior to Geneva 2, the Syrian issue was high on the meeting’s agenda. The GCC is counting on China to support a robust outcome of the conference that would allow Syria to have a new transitional governing body with full powers, to rid Syria of the Assad regime and enable Syrians to have their own freely chosen government.

Email: aluwaisheg@gmail.com

The article China-GCC Strategic Dialogue Resumes – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By MINA

Vladimir Putin has promised gay visitors to the Sochi Olympic Games they will have nothing to fear in Russia, but warned them to “leave children alone” as he defended a controversial ban on promoting homosexuality to juveniles.

The Russian president’s comments came during a meeting with Olympic volunteers.

When asked how the rainbow design – widely used by gay rights groups around the world – of volunteers’ uniforms at Sochi could be compatible with a controversial ban on “homosexual propaganda”, he responded: “We do not have a ban on non-traditional sexual relationships.

“We have a ban on the propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia. I want to emphasise this. Among children. These are completely different things — a ban on something, or a ban on such relationships or a ban on propaganda of such relationships.”

He went on to claim Russia was much more liberal than other countries, claiming that several American states still criminalize homosexual relationships.

“We haven’t banned anything and no one is being grabbed off the street unlike in some countries,” said Mr Putin, who also claimed that some US states still consider homosexual relations a crime.

“So you will feel quite secure, at ease, but leave kids alone, please,” he said.

The article Putin: Gays Welcome, But Please Leave Children In Peace appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Trend News Agency

By Rahim Zamanov

Iran has produced 59.181 million cubic meters of machine-made carpets in the first three quarters of the current calendar year, which started on March 21, 2013, Iran’s IRNA News Agency reported on January 18.

The figures show a 4.9 percent increase compared to the same period of the previous year.

“Iran has exported 80 percent of its hand-made carpets to the international markets, Director of the Coordination Department of the Carpet Management Organization Lotfi Afshar said on January 12, the Fars News Agency reported.

“Some 80 percent of the country’s hand-made carpet has so far been exported to the international markets,” Afshar said.

“Hand-made carpet is an absolute advantage for Iran,” he said. “Iran is the leading exporter of hand- made carpet in the world.”

Hand-made carpet exports currently accounts for 1.2 percent of Iran’s total non-oil exports, deputy governor of Isfahan province, Hamedanian said on January 14, the ISNA News Agency reported.

“It is while the figure stood at 16.5 percent in the Iranian calendar year 1379 (ended on March 20, 2001),” he said.

He went on to note that Isfahan province’s share in the country’s total hand-made carpet production is about 10-12 percent.

Persian rugs are highly sought out for their intricate design and skilled craftsmanship, and that’s why Iran exports carpets to more than 100 world countries.

Carpet-weaving is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished features of the Persian culture and art, and dates back to ancient Persia.

There is an estimated population of 1.2mln weavers in Iran producing carpets for domestic markets and international export.

The country produces about 5mln square meters of carpets annually of which 80 percent are sold in international markets.

The United States, Europe (especially Germany and Italy), China, Brazil, South and Central Africa, along with neighboring countries are the most important markets for Iranian made Persian Carpets.

The article Iran Produces Over 59 Million Cubic Meters Of Machine-Made Carpets appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jim Kouri

The Washington State campaign to cut off all utilities and services to the National Security Agency (NSA) facilities in that state achieved its first success on Wednesday, according to a national think-tank based in Los Angeles.

According to officials at the Tenth Amendment Center, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which was written and proposed specifically to make life extremely difficult for the powerful and super-secret spy agency.

In a bipartisan move, State Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and State Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition, it would make it the policy of Washington “to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant.”

The bill, if passed and signed into law, would prohibit state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes prohibiting state government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity.

It also makes “intelligence” gathering by NSA agents without a warrant — that may eventually be shared with law enforcement — inadmissible as evidence in a state criminal proceeding. In addition, the law would block public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds.

According to the Tenth Amendment Center’s communications director, Mike Maharrey, legislators in California, Oklahoma, and Indiana have already introduced similar bills, and a state senator in Arizona has committed to running with it in his state, but Washington counts as the first state with an actual NSA facility within its borders to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act.

The NSA operates a listening center on the U.S. Army’s Yakima Training Center in Washington and that NSA facility is in Rep. Taylor’s district. When asked why he is so adamant about HB2272, he said he could not idly sit by while a secretive facility in his own backyard violates the rights of people everywhere.

“We’re running with this bill to provide protection against the ever increasing surveillance into the daily lives of our citizens,” the Republican lawmaker said. “Our Founding Fathers established a series of checks and balances in the Constitution. Given the federal government’s utter failure to address the people’s concerns, it’s up to the states to stand for our citizens’ constitutional rights.”

If the bill passes, it would set in motion actions to stop any state support of the Yakima center as long as it remains in the state, and could make companies doing business with the NSA facility ineligible for any contracts with the state or its political subdivisions.

Tenth Amendment Center’s Mike Maharrey says the bill’s prohibition against using unconstitutionally gathered data in state court would probably have the most immediate impact. In fact, lawmakers in Kansas and Missouri will consider bills simply addressing this kind of data sharing.

“We know the NSA shares data with state and local law enforcement. We know… that most of this shared data has absolutely nothing to do with national security issues. This bill would make that information inadmissible in state court,” he said. “This data sharing shoves a dagger into the heart of the Fourth Amendment. This bill would stop that from happening. This is a no-brainer. Every state should do it.”

The article Washington State Considers Cutting Off Electricity, Water For NSA appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By VOR

The Russian Ministry of Defence reports that Russian and Chinese sailors taking part in the international operation of providing safe transportation for Syrian chemical weapons may carry out joint tactical exercises in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Russian Ministry of Defence reports on Sunday that a group of commanders of the Russian Navy permanent contingent in the Mediterranean Sea who are stationed aboard the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky has visited the Chinese patrol ship Yang Chen.

According to the report, aboard the Chinese patrol ship the Russian sailors and their Chinese colleagues discussed the prospects of joint tactical exercises in the Mediterranean Sea. They agreed that such exercises can be carried out in the near future to raise the level of operative compatibility between Russian and Chinese ships during joint operations in the eastern Mediterranean.

The main elements of the exercises will be training operational teamwork, combatting the current terrorist threat and carrying out joint rescue operations at sea, the Ministry of Defence specifies.

The article Russia And, China To Hold Joint Exercises In Mediterranean appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Uri Avnery

In the middle of the 70s, Ariel Sharon asked me to arrange something for him – a meeting with Yasser Arafat.

A few days before, the Israeli media had discovered that I was in regular contact with the leadership of the PLO, which was listed at the time as a terrorist organization.

I told Sharon that my PLO contacts would probably ask what he intended to propose to the Palestinians. He told me that his plan was to help the Palestinians to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, and turn Jordan into a Palestinian state, with Arafat as its president.

“What about the West Bank?” I asked.

“Once Jordan becomes Palestine, there will no longer be a conflict between two peoples, but between two states. That will be much easier to resolve. We shall find some form of partition, territorial or functional, or we shall rule the territory together.”

My friends submitted the request to Arafat, who laughed it off. But he did not miss the opportunity to tell King Hussein about it. Hussein disclosed the story to a Kuwaiti newspaper, Alrai, and that’s how it came back to me.

Sharon’s plan was revolutionary at the time. Almost the entire Israeli establishment – including Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres – believed in the so-called “Jordanian option”: the idea that we must make peace with King Hussein. The Palestinians were either ignored or considered arch-enemies, or both.

Five years earlier, when the Palestinians in Jordan were battling the Hashemite regime there, Israel came to the aid of the king at the request of Henry Kissinger. I proposed the opposite in my magazine: to aid the Palestinians. Sharon later told me that he, a general at the time, had asked the General Staff to do the same, though for a different end. My idea was to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank, his was to create it in the East Bank.

(The idea of turning Jordan into Palestine has a generally unknown linguistic background. In Hebrew usage, “Eretz Israel” is the land on both sides of the Jordan River, where the ancient Hebrew tribes settled according to the Biblical myth. In Palestinian usage, “Filastin” is only the land on the West side of the river. Therefore is quite natural for ignorant Israelis to ask the Palestinians to set up their state beyond the Jordan. For Palestinians, that means setting up their state abroad.)

At the time, Sharon was in political exile.

In 1973 he left the army, after realizing that he had no chance of becoming Chief of Staff. This may seem odd, since he was already recognized as an outstanding battlefield commander. The trouble was that he was also known as an insubordinate officer, who despised his superiors and his peers (as well as everybody else.) Also, his relationship with the truth was problematical. David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary that Sharon could be an exemplary military officer, if only he could abstain from lying.

When he left the army, Sharon almost single-handedly created the Likud by unifying all the right-wing parties. That’s when I chose him the first time as Haolam Hazeh’s Man of the Year and wrote a large biographical article about him. A few days later, the Yom Kippur War broke out, and Sharon was drafted back into the army. His part in it is considered by many as pure genius, by others as a story of insubordination and luck. A photo of him with his head bandaged became his trademark, though it was only a slight wound caused by hitting his head on his command vehicle. (To be fair, he was really wounded in battle, like me, in 1948.)

After the Yom Kippur war, the argument about his part in that war became the center of “the battle of the generals”. He started to visit me at my home to explain his moves, and we became quite friendly.

He left the Likud when he realized that he could not become its leader as long as Menachem Begin was around. He started to chart his own course. That’s when he asked for the meeting with Arafat.

He was thinking about creating a new party, neither right nor left, but led by him and “outstanding personalities” from all over the political landscape. He invited me to join, and we had long conversations at his home.

I must explain here that for a long time I had been looking for a person with military credentials to lead a large united peace camp. A leader with such a background would make it much easier for us to gain public support for our aims. Sharon fitted the recipe. (As Yitzhak Rabin did later.) Yet during our conversations it became clear to me that he had basically remained a right-winger.

In the end Sharon set up a new party called Shlomtzion (“Peace of Zion”), which was a dismal failure on election day. The next day, he rejoined the Likud.

The Likud had won the elections and Begin became Prime Minister. If Sharon had hoped to be appointed Minister of Defense, he was soon disabused. Begin did not trust him. Sharon looked like a general who might organize a coup. The powerful new Finance Minister said that if Sharon became commander-in-chief, he would “send his tanks to surround the Knesset.”

(There was a joke making the rounds at the time: Defense Minister Sharon would call for a meeting of the General Staff and announce: “Comrades, tomorrow morning at 06.00 we take over the government!” For a moment the audience was dumfounded, and then it broke out into riotous laughter.)

However, when Begin’s preferred Defense Minister, the former Air Force chief Ezer Weizman, resigned, Begin was compelled to appoint Sharon as his successor. For the second time I chose Sharon as Haolam Hazeh’s Man of the Year. He took this very seriously and sat with me for many hours, in several meetings at his home and office, in order to explain his ideas.

One of them, which he expounded at the same time to the US strategic planners, was to conquer Iran. When Ayatollah Khomeini dies, he said, there will begin a race between the Soviet Union and the US to determine who will arrive first on the scene and take over. The US is far away, but Israel can do the job. With the help of heavy arms that the US will store in Israel well before, our army will be in full possession before the Soviets move. He showed me the detailed maps of the advance, hour by hour and day by day.

This was typical Sharon, His vision was wide and all-embracing. His listener was left breathless, comparing him to the ordinary little politicians, devoid of vision and breadth. But his ideas were generally based on abysmal ignorance of the other side, and therefore came to naught.

At the same time, nine months before the Lebanon War, he disclosed to me his Grand Plan for a new Middle East of his making. He allowed me to publish it, provided I did not mention him as the source. He trusted me.

Basically it was the same as the one he wanted to propose to Arafat.

The army would invade Lebanon and drive the Palestinians from there to Syria, from whence the Syrians would drive them into Jordan. There the Palestinians would overthrow the king and establish the State of Palestine.

The army would also drive the Syrians out of Lebanon. In Lebanon Sharon would choose a Christian officer and install him as dictator. Lebanon would make official peace with Israel and in effect become a vassal state.

I duly published all this, and nine months later Sharon invaded Lebanon, after lying to Begin and the cabinet about his aims. But the war was a catastrophe, both militarily and politically.

Militarily it was a demonstration of “the Peter principle” – the brilliant battle commander was a miserable strategist. No unit of the Israeli army reached its objective on time, if at all. The Israeli-installed dictator, Bachir Gemayel, was assassinated. His brother and successor signed a peace treaty with Israel, which has been completely forgotten by now. The Syrians remained in Lebanon for many years to come. The Israeli army extricated itself after a guerrilla war that lasted 18 full years, during which the despised and downtrodden Shiites in Israeli-occupied South Lebanon became the dominant political force in the country.

And, worst of all, in order to induce the Palestinians to flee, Sharon let the barbarous Christian Phalangists into the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, where they committed a terrible massacre. Hundreds of thousands of outraged Israelis protested in Tel Aviv, and Sharon was dismissed from the defense ministry.

At the height of the Battle of Beirut I crossed the lines and met with Yasser Arafat, who had become Sharon’s Nemesis. Since then, Sharon and I did not exchange a single word, not even greeting each other.

It looked like the end of Sharon’s career. But for Sharon, every end was a new beginning.

One of his media vassals, Uri Dan (who had started his career in Haolam Hazeh) once coined a prophetic phrase: “Those who don’t want him as Chief of Staff, will get him as Minister of Defense. Those who don’t want him as Minister of Defense, will get him as Prime Minister.” Today one could add: “Those who did not want him as Prime Minister, are getting him as a national icon.”

An ex-general, Yitzhak Ben-Israel, told me yesterday: “He was an Imperator!” I find this a very apt description.

Like a Roman imperator, Sharon was a supreme being, admired and feared,
generous and cruel, genial and treacherous, hedonistic and corrupt, a victorious general and a war criminal, quick to make decisions and unwavering once he had made them, overcoming all obstacles by sheer force of personality.

One could not meet him without being struck by the sense of power he emanated. Power was his element.

He believed that destiny had chosen him to lead Israel. He did not think so – he knew. For him, his personal career and the fate of Israel were one and the same. Therefore, anyone who tried to block him was a traitor to Israel. He despised everyone around him – from Begin down to the last politician and general.

His character was formed in his early childhood in Kfar Malal, a communal village which belonged to the Labor party. His mother, Vera, managed the family farm with an iron will, quarreling with all the neighbors, the village institutions and the party. When little Arik was injured in a fall on a pitchfork, she did not take him to the village clinic, which she hated, but put him on a donkey and led him for several kilometers to a doctor in Kfar Saba.

When rumor had it that the Arabs in neighboring villages were planning an attack, little Arik was hidden in a haystack.

Later in life, when his mother (who still managed the farm) visited his new ranch and saw a low wall with holes for irrigation, she exclaimed: “Ah, you have embrasures! Very good, you can shoot through them at the Arabs!”

How could a poor army officer acquire the largest ranch in the country? Simple: he got it as a gift from an Israeli-American billionaire, with the help of the finance minister. Several dubious large deals with other billionaires followed.

Sharon was the most typical Israeli one could imagine, embodying the saying (to which I modestly claim authorship): “If force does not work, try more force.”

I was therefore very surprised when he came out in favor of the law dispensing with the military service of tens of thousands of orthodox youngsters. “How can you?” I asked him. His answer: “I am first of all a Jew, and only after that an Israeli!” I told him that for me it was the other way round.

Ideologically, he was the pupil and successor of David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, leaders who believed in military force and in expanding the territory of Israel without limit. His military career started for real in the 1950s when Moshe Dayan put him in charge of an unofficial outfit called Unit 101, which was sent across the border to kill and destroy, in retaliation for similar actions committed by Arabs. His most famous exploit was the massacre of Qibya village in 1953, when 49 innocent villagers were buried under the houses which he blew up.

Later, when requested to put an end to “terrorism” in Gaza, he killed every Arab who was caught with arms. When I later asked him about killing prisoners, he answered: “I did not kill prisoners. I did not take prisoners!”

At the beginning of his career as commander he was a bad general. But from war to war he improved. Unusual for a general, he learned from his mistakes. In the 1973 war he was already considered the equal of Erwin Rommel and George Patton. It also became known that between the battles he gorged himself on seafood, which is not kosher.

The man endeavor of his life was the settlement enterprise. As army officer, politician and successively chief of half a dozen different ministries, his central effort was always to plan and set up settlements in the occupied territories.

He did not care whether they were legal or illegal under Israeli law (all of them, of course, are illegal under international law, for which he did not give a damn).

He planned their location, with the aim of cutting the West Bank into ribbons which would make a Palestinian state impossible. Then he rammed it through the cabinet and the ministries. Not for nothing was he nicknamed “the Bulldozer”.

The “Israel Defense Army” (its official Hebrew name) turned into the “Settlers Defense Army”, sinking slowly in the morass of the occupation.

However, when settlements obstructed his plans, he had no compunction about destroying them. When he was in favor of peace with Egypt, in order to concentrate on the war with the Palestinians, he destroyed the entire town of Yamit in North Sinai and the adjacent settlements. Later he did the same to the settlements in the Gaza Strip, attracting the enduring hatred of the settlers, his erstwhile protégés. He acted like a general who is ready to sacrifice a brigade to improve his overall strategic position.

When he died last week, after lying in a coma for eight years, he was eulogized by the very people he despised, and turned into a shallow folk hero. The Ministry of Education compared him to Moses.

In real life he was a very complex person, as complex as Israel. His personal history is interwoven with the history of Israel.

His main legacy was catastrophic: the scores of settlements which he implanted all over the West Bank – each of them a landmine which will have to be removed at great risk when the time comes.

The article The Imperator: Sharon’s Catastrophic Legacy – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By TransConflict

Flags, parades and the past cannot be easily disentangled from the high levels of social discontent that currently exist. However, there is no reason why these issues of identity cannot be addressed in parallel with an assault on the vast social and economic problems that show no sign of receding.

By Seán Byers

I was always prepared for defeat, for none of our leaders seemed to me perfectly acquainted with the main cause of social derangement, if I except Neilson, McCracken, Russell, and Emmet. It was my settled opinion that the condition of the labouring class was the fundamental question at issue between the rulers and the people, and there could be no solid foundation for liberty, till measures were adopted that went to the root of the evil, and we specially directed to the restoration of the natural right of the people, the right of deriving a subsistence from the soil on which their labour was expended. 

Jemmy Hope, Belfast weaver and United Irishman, speaking in the aftermath of the defeated 1798 rebellion

As the dust slowly settles on the Haass/O’Sullivan talks, it is becoming increasingly evident that the Executive parties cannot agree to disagree, let alone find a way of implementing specific aspects of draft seven. Despite Martin McGuinness’ protestations to the contrary, a new round of negotiations seems inevitable, though without the involvement of Richard Haass or Meghan O’Sullivan. Future negotiations are likely to take place under the supervision of British Secretary of State Theresa Villiers and a representative of the Irish government. Meanwhile, the stuff of government – health, housing, education, unemployment, welfare reform and the environment – will proceed gradually, interrupted by the tribalism that has become part and parcel of electoral politics in the North.

In an interview with Mark Carruthers, a frustrated Haass laid the blame squarely at the door of Alliance and the Unionist parties for their failure to ‘step up and make a decision’ in favour of proposals that contain ‘something for everyone in Northern Ireland, including Unionists’ – the abolition of the Parades Commission being one example. Firmly in election mode, the DUP and UUP appear to be looking over their shoulder at the PUP, which has enjoyed something of a political rebirth on the back of the flag protests and events at Twaddell Avenue, and the Paisleyite rejectionists of the Orange Order, TUV, UVF and Protestant Coalition, which have assumed the traditional role of ‘spoilers’ in peace studies terms. Indeed it says something about the state of Unionism that representatives of its anti-Agreement, religious fundamentalist fringe claim to have been briefed by one or both of the main parties at crucial junctures of the all-party talks. The current malaise is symptomatic of Unionism’s remarkable knack for painting victory as defeat and reverting to a siege mentality at the first sight of compromise. Moreover, Eamonn Maillie’s revealing two-part documentary on Ian Paisley promises to create further headaches for the DUP. If, as it appears they will, May’s local council and European Parliament elections become a consolidation exercise for party leader and First Minister Peter Robinson, the chances of achieving tangible progress on flags, parades and the past could be significantly reduced in the interim.

By contrast, Sinn Féin and the SDLP have been unequivocal in their support for the Haass proposals, calling for their full implementation. In the light of pressure brought to bear on the party by recent documentaries on ‘the Disappeared’, for instance, and the dogged determination of victims’ groups, Sinn Féin has little option but to support a twin-track process involving both criminal accountability for past actions and a truth recovery process. In fact, as the Arkiv group of academics has warned, the proposed thematic approaches to truth recovery and historical enquiry contain “the very real potential to politicise the past and to achieve the reverse of what Haass and O’Sullivan intend: that they do imply prejudgements (they already pre-exist the evidence); that they contradict the engagement to consider only what the evidence obliges one to believe; that there will be intense political pressure to support particular hypotheses; that this will encourage ideological-led rather than investigative-led history; and as a consequence the ‘past’ will not be taken out of politics but drawn very much into the centre of it.”

In other words, although this affords former combatants the opportunity to ease the suffering of victims under the cover of ‘limited immunity’, the truth recovery process could conceivably become a sectarian carve-up, characterised by competing political narratives that place subjective experience over historical fact, attach equivalence to different interpretations of the conflict, and thus ‘reinforce ethno-national divisions and perpetuate historic grievances’. That is not to say that republicans have won the most recent round of negotiations: nothing is agreed until all the Executive parties agree, and presently there is virtually nothing in ‘flags’ or ‘parading’ for republicans to write home about. However the section on contending with the past, which consumes nearly half of the forty page Haass/O’Sullivan document, is sufficiently ambiguous to permit differential interpretation and therefore earn the endorsement of Sinn Féin’s traditional support base and its growing middle class constituency.

With the SDLP moving in tandem for fear of being outflanked by its nationalist rival, Sinn Féin is with some justification using the outcome of the Haass/OSullivan talks to contrast its moderation and willingness to compromise with the intransigence of Unionism. As the journalist and socialist activist Eamonn McCann has noted with customary insight, this represents the latest milestone in Sinn Féin’s transformation into a party of constitutional nationalist respectability:

“The main reason there was a fitful peace to begin with is that a substantial majority of the Catholic working class, the constituency which sustained the Provo war, has long ago reverted to its traditional position of rejecting violence to bring about a united Ireland. Thus the increased support for Sinn Féin as it retreated from the objective which the IRA campaign had been designed to attain. And thus, too, the luxury of being able to make concessions more comfortably than was the case with the DUP … So Sinn Féin comes out as the relative good guys; the DUP, which has never had a paramilitary wing, as, again, the villains of the piece.”

One might add that, since its first foray into electoral politics in 1981, Sinn Féin has incrementally stolen the SDLP’s clothes and won considerable Catholic middle-class support (Murray & Tonge, 2005). It is evident that Provisional republican movement’s overarching political strategy in the North is to breach the electoral glass ceiling it has encountered and become a catch-all nationalist party through securing the support of ambivalent nationalists and a larger section of SDLP voters. The party has in its sights gains in constituencies such as North Belfast and South Down, for example, at the SDLP’s expense. If continues in this vein, Sinn Féin is likely to attain the position of dominance coveted by its aging, legacy-oriented leadership. The danger inherent in this is that, as the generation of ‘69 vacates the scene, Sinn Féin becomes, with a few honourable exceptions, just another neo-Redmondite, Hibernian nationalist party shorn of all radicalism, which has its corollary in the formation of a reactive – and reactionary – Orange populist bloc led by the dominant voices of Unionism.

The balancing act being performed by Sinn Féin involves recourse to both traditionalist republican rhetoric and criticisms of militant republican tactics. In the first respect, the rather underwhelming Border Poll campaign launched by party members and fellow travellers acts as a sop to wavering supporters who require convincing that a united Ireland remains the agenda; in the other respect, former combatants such as Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness have continued to release statements endorsing the PSNI and fiercely condemning the methods of armed ‘dissident’ groups (a thoroughly inadequate term). Yet the same individuals refuse to countenance the widely held belief that the Provisional IRA’s campaign was a futile exercise that arguably caused irreparable damage to the radical-democratic, non-sectarian message advanced by the founders of Irish republicanism. This position is not, however, sustainable in the long term. Recent months have witnessed a number of prominent ex-IRA volunteers not only declaring publicly against post-1998 violence but also insisting that the republican armed struggle that occurred between 1969 and 1994 signally failed to achieve its main objectives (here and here). McGuinness has been forthright in his condemnation of ‘dissident’ violence, but future leaders of the party – perhaps those of the emerging post-conflict generation – may eventually feel compelled to renounce the non-mandated use of arms in pursuit of political objectives.

For members of the public and large sections of the media, the convenient, all-encompassing ‘dissident’ label refers to republicans who are hell-bent on destroying the peace process. In lieu of a better term, it is also widely used by academics, although research on the subject is beginning to capture the nuances of anti-Agreement republicanism. While a number of groups are linked to recent acts of violence, the revolutionary socialist republican party éirígí maintains a critical distance from paramilitarism and devotes much of its energy to campaigning on a range of social and economic issues. With a strong dose of crude anti-partitionism and anti-Britishness, éirígí dismissed the Haass/O’Sullivan talks as a ‘pantomime’ designed to divert attention away from the ‘very real socio-economic problems that face all working class communities’. These problems include: the obscene levels of child and working-age poverty that persist in many areas of Northern Ireland; a long term trend of rising unemployment and underemployment relative to the UK, including record levels of youth and female unemployment; educational underachievement in disadvantaged areas; and a health service that seems to lurch from crisis to crisis under the direction of gaffe-prone DUP minister Edwin Poots.

Éirígí has attempted to address these material concerns politically, arguing with some conviction that the sectarian institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement are ill-equipped to deal with them. The same party is a strong advocate for public services and the welfare state, opposing the austerity measures handed down to Stormont by the Tory-led government at Westminster. Drawing on research carried out by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA), éirígí has joined the chorus of voices warning that the Welfare Reform Bill will have devastating consequences for Northern Ireland, removing £750m from the local economy and heaping further misery upon some of Britain and Ireland’s most deprived communities Significantly, working-class Catholic disillusionment with neoliberal peacebuilding is showing signs of manifesting itself in a minor challenge to Sinn Féin hegemony. In the 2011 local elections, éirígí polled 1,415 votes in the Sinn Féin stronghold of Upper Falls, West Belfast, just missing out on a council seat. Similarly, in the Assembly elections of that year, the People Before Profit candidate took 1,661 votes (4.8%) in the West Belfast constituency. In the event that Sinn Féin MLAs vote to implement welfare reforms, even in diluted form, the party’s credibility in working-class constituencies is likely to suffer.

Social justice, argues the respected sociologist and peace studies theorist Johan Galtung (1996), is the chief component of ‘positive’ peace and reconciliation in post-conflict societies, not an optional add-on. This view is echoed by the veteran socialist republican Tommy McKearney who, like éirígí, opposes the tendecy to elevate the tactical armed struggle to a principle and at the same time openly dissents from Sinn Féin orthodoxy. In his book detailing the Provisional republicanism’s transformation from armed insurrectionary to junior partner in devolved government, McKearney laments the opportunities missed to  move away from sectarian politics and build a mass movement, particularly during Sinn Féin’s transition to electoralism in the 1980s. Why not, left-wing prisoners in the H-Blocks asked, attempt to align republican politics with the labour movement in ‘a long struggle for socialism?’ (2011: 164-171). This presents a counterfactual for researchers of the period to contend with. Of greater significance is McKearney’s analysis of prevailing conditions, which departs from the whole gamut of republican groups on the question of partition:

Radical Republicanism cannot survive in any meaningful sense if it insists on confining its programme to achieving something that is not deemed a pressing necessity by more than a small minority. Nor is it realistic to argue that a significantly large section of society can be persuaded of the need for the political unification of Ireland in the abstract (209).

Without dismissing entirely the border as a factor in shaping sectarian divisions, McKearney places the emphasis on the effects of economic crisis on both states of Ireland, noting that the northern polity is characterised by ‘a constitutional inability to bring redress to the region’s problems coupled with a political hysteresis arising from sectarian community politics’ (210). Consequently, he argues that republicans ought to actively support the development of normal class politics, on which basis the the movement can attempt to engage with the Protestant working class in earnest. A socialist or social-democratic Northern Ireland does not preclude the realisation of a united Ireland; quite the opposite in fact.

It is one thing to reject the dogma of austerity in theory, another to oppose it in practice. While it would be remiss to ignore Sinn Féin’s efforts to champion the rights of marginalised groups (women, ethnic minorities, the LGBT community) and address the root causes of inequality (tackling social segregation in education), the fact remains that the party is hidebound by the system it embraces. Modern republicanism stands at a crossroads. One path leads to centrist or centre-right green nationalism, whereby Sinn Féin makes ostensibly responsible decisions in government while upping the ante on cultural and constitutional questions at crucial junctures. This ensures the survival of the consociational model and rewards the incumbent political class with enhanced power and prestige, but condemns future generations to the toxic green-orange structural conditions that have entrenched sectarian divisions and proved incapable of producing the social transformation required to redress the material grievances that perpetuate ethno-national conflict.

The other path available is the long and arduous struggle towards class politics, which may cause disquiet among the middle classes and result in short-term electoral losses. More importantly, though, it would represent a break with zero-sum tribalism, giving substance to Sinn Féin’s identification with the dispossessed majority. Flags, parades and the past cannot be easily disentangled from the high levels of social discontent that currently exist. However, there is no reason why these issues of identity cannot be addressed in parallel with an assault on the vast social and economic problems that show no sign of receding. In fact, this understanding is implicit in the DUP/Sinn Féin arrangement at Stormont, as evidenced by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness’ united front for potential investors in New York last September. Doubtless the Welfare Reform Bill will serve as a litmus test of Sinn Féin’s progressive credentials. If the party cannot find a way of developing an economic alternative to neoliberalism and austerity in cooperation with the DUP, then perhaps it ought to look elsewhere for partners, whether in the broad labour movement and civil society, or – idealistic in the present circumstances – across the sectarian divide, in the residual Protestant labour tradition of the PUP. Admittedly, this project is long in the making, requiring a gradual overhaul of the devolved institutions and the cultivation of new relationships. However, posterity demands a new vision for Northern Ireland, and republicanism can only survive if it advances a democratic, non-sectarian programme with social justice at its core.

Seán Byers received his PhD from the University of Ulster and is presently conducting research on Republican Youth in post-conflict (Northern) Ireland. His research interests include Irish labour and international socialist history. Twitter: @Sean_Byers84

References

Galtung, J. (1996) Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization, Oslo: International Peace Research Institute.

McKearney, T. (2011) The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament, London: Pluto.

Murray, G. & Tonge, J. (2005) Sinn Féin and the SDLP: From Alienation to Participation, London: Hurst.

The article Post-Haass Northern Ireland And The Future Of Irish Republicanism – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By TransConflict

While commentators argue about who or what is most at fault for South Sudan’s return to conflict, one thing is clear: the international community is not free from blame.

By Sara Pantuliano

What has gone wrong in South Sudan? As the country today marks the ninth anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended decades of conflict between southern insurgents and the government of Sudan and paved the way to independence, South Sudan is experiencing another wave of violence and conflict – this time within its own borders.

Over the last few weeks we have seen what was ostensibly a political tussle for power in the world’s newest country descend into shocking violence, leaving over a thousand people dead and around 200,000 displaced. While commentators can argue about who or what is most at fault in this terrible turn of events, one fact is clear: the international community – the many regional and international players who have been supporting the transition in South Sudan − shoulders some of the responsibility.

Contrary to narratives of progress that ignored the complexity of the country, the real picture has been far from rosy in the nine years since the signing of the CPA in 2005, and in the three years since the 2011 referendum that ushered in independence for South Sudan. Indeed, the political wrangling that has gripped the ruling party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), over the last few months, and the ferocious violence unleashed on the nation’s capital and much of the country over the last three weeks, did not come as a complete surprise to those who know South Sudan.

Development does not equal peace

Over the last few years, South Sudan has served as a testing ground for international engagement in so-called ‘fragile states’, an engagement which has too often followed textbook prescriptions and overlooked the political and social realities of the country, treating it instead as a technical exercise in state building.

Many in the aid sector in South Sudan have been operating on the assumption that greater development – improved services, infrastructure, access to food – would lead to stability and lasting peace. These assumptions were fundamentally challenged in Aiding the peace: a multi-donor evaluation of support to conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities in Southern Sudan 2005-2010 which found no evidence of the assumed causal link between the provision of basic services (‘peace dividends’) and a reduction in conflict.

This finding was controversial as it challenged the premise, upon which a great deal of assistance to southern Sudan has been based, “that the provision of socioeconomic services addresses needs, leading ultimately to the enhancement of state legitimacy and stabilisation.”

Ignoring complexity and negativity

As stressed already in 2009, transitioning from war to peace is not a technical exercise but a highly political process. South Sudan was born amidst ongoing political power plays, deep divisions and conflict at many levels − issues that remain unresolved.

The international community – and particularly donor governments – had high expectations for peace in South Sudan after the signing of the CPA. Seeing the conflict between the North and South as the main threat to peace, many overlooked the deeply entrenched divisions within the South that would continue to shape relationships and the political leadership after independence in 2011.

Concerns and warnings about the role that patronage and ethnicity play in South Sudan’s politics, as well as calls to better understand the causes of vulnerability, power relations, and drivers of instability, were largely ignored as the international community focused on less complex and more positive technical ‘fixes’. As argued in Aiding the Peace:

“The problem lies in the conceptual vacuum around ‘statehood’, as well as unclear identification of critical conditions that lead to peace, or to conflict, or the lack of sustained attention to them. Neither the [Government of South Sudan] nor donors produced a convincing and consensual model of what Southern Sudan as a ‘state’ would look like in say, ten years. From the donors, the reticence… reflected the tendency to approach the challenge purely as a technical exercise in capacity building and service delivery.”

Longstanding and unaddressed grievances deeply rooted in South Sudan’s turbulent history were left unhealed and have now come to the surface again. The inherently political battle for power and control of the ruling party has increasingly taken on strong ethnic connotations. In South Sudan, ethnicity is often manipulated to create enmity between groups (tribes, clans or sub-clans) for political or military advantage. The biggest problem is that the violence has created a cycle of revenge and fear, tinged with ethnic divisions,which will be extremely damaging for the future cohesion of the country. The longer the violence continues, the more difficult it will be to stop the country from sliding into all-out civil war.

The immediate focus now is on stemming the violence. While President Salva Kiir and former Vice-President Riek Machar have reportedly committed to dialogue, no real progress has been made, and once again peace talks were stalled on the issue of political prisoners yesterday. That deadlock does not seem to have been broken today.

On the anniversary of South Sudan’s independence referendum, Kiir and Machar must take responsibility for stopping the fighting, call for restraint and commit to holding direct talks urgently. The country cannot afford to wait for a long drawn-out political peace process. Stopping the violence immediately is the priority, alongside a serious process of reconciliation in the long-term.

While the people and politicians of South Sudan will undoubtedly be the most significant players in determining the future of their nation, international actors will also need to reflect on how to refocus their efforts to support a peaceful transition in South Sudan. These will need to build on a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of power relations, causes of vulnerability and drivers of conflict, which must be continuously revised to be useful. Technical fixes have failed South Sudan: it’s time to put politics at the heart of the nation-building project at last.

Sara Pantuliano is the Head of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute. Prior to joining ODI, she led UNDP Sudan’s Peace Building Unit, managed a high-profile post-conflict response in the Nuba Mountains and was a resource person and an observer at the IGAD Sudan peace process. She can be followed on twitter @SaraPantuliano.

The article Donor-Driven Technical Fixes Failed South Sudan: It’s Time To Get Political – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Iran Review

By Pir-Mohammad Mollazehi

In what way is the oil wealth of the Arab countries being spent? Is that wealth being used to promote sustainable social, cultural, political and economic development in Arab countries and, thus, plays a positive role in the life and livelihood of the Arab masses? Or is it being used in the opposite direction and is actually destroying the entire infrastructure in the Arab world, and instead of being a silver bullet for the maladies of the Arab countries, is only a scourge?

It is not easy to pass a simple judgment on this issue and many positive or negative arguments can be offered here. However, if the current conditions in the Arab world are examined more closely, especially after the political developments that have come to be known as the Arab Spring, one can, at least, claim that more than being a cure to their intractable ailments, the Arab oil wealth has been a scourge in disguise.

A cursory glance at the Arab world from Morocco, in the entrance of the Gibraltar, all the way east to Somalia and Sudan in the Horn of Africa, and from the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf up to the Mediterranean and Turkey, will clearly prove that Arab nations are going through one of the most critical junctures of their historical life. They are currently grappling with a crisis, which more than anything else, emanates from unequal distribution of the oil wealth and emergence of growing divides in all aspects of the social and political life of Arabs. Therefore, the oil wealth in the Arabs hands has been playing a very destructive role on two fronts:

1. By worsening the existing gaps between oil-rich countries and countries devoid of abundant oil resources; and

2. By exacerbating the existing gaps within the Arab societies which have made many people in those societies change course in the direction of traditional tribal tendencies.

It does not need a lot of research to understand to what extent the oil wealth in Arab countries has been at work to undermine the infrastructure in those societies. It would suffice to note that how the power struggle both at domestic level in many Arab countries, and at regional level in various parts of the Arab world has been raging on just because some Arab states enjoy hefty revenues through oil sales, and other countries are deprived of such a huge source of power and wealth.

Just take into account, for instance, the ongoing tribal wars in Libya and South Sudan, on the one hand, and the power struggles in Somalia and Syria, on the other hand. The root causes of destructive wars in both cases can be traced back to oil revenues. The difference, however, is that in Sudan, the rival tribes first divided an integrated Sudan into two southern and northern parts. Then, at a lower level in South Sudan, they engaged in a war among themselves in order to establish their monopolistic control over the country’s rich oil resources.

Following the separation of two parts of Sudan, the most important change that was made to the south was substitution of Arab rulers of North Sudan with new rulers who hailed from local tribes. Otherwise, the true nature of the power struggle in the country has not changed a bit.

In Libya, the situation that the country has come to following the fall of its former dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, is a copycat of the situation in other Arab countries where popular revolutions have taken place.

In all those countries, tribes have entered a battle of power in order to establish their grasp over the country’s rich oil resources. Therefore, in a bid to achieve their goal, they have been effectively preventing the emergence of a powerful central power. This is the fate of all countries which have direct access to rich oil resources.

An even worse fate awaits those countries where oil riches are not high enough to meet the ambitious goals of their leaders, but still under the influence of petrodollars, power struggles have been going on.

Syria is one of the most objective examples of such countries. The oil wealth of oil-rich countries around the Persian Gulf has not been used to reduce poverty or energize development in Syria, but has been taken advantage of to give a sectarian quality to the existing gaps and increase the destructive effect of those gaps.

Yemen and Somalia are other instances where countries have been devastated through the oil wealth of regional Arab states.

A scourge and disaster

Therefore, in a preliminary assessment, one may claim that the oil wealth has been a scourge and disaster for Arab peoples. This is true as in those parts of the Arab world which have access to rich oil resources, the petrodollars have served to revive the primitive ambitions that were rife among ancient Arabs, and have helped the leaders of such countries to intervene in the internal affairs of poor Arab states and wage proxy wars in those countries.

On the other hand, in that part of the Arab world, which is deprived of rich oil resources, tribal and sectarian conflicts have been going on among various groups who aim to secure their monopoly over power. In both parts of the Arab world, innocent people have been the main victims of power struggles.

Also, the final result of such struggles is widening social gaps and growing tribal and sectarian differences, which on the whole, prevent peace and stability – as the main factors that promote a country’s sustainable development – from being established in the Arab countries. Apart from this, the oil wealth of Arabs is not simply used to destroy Arab countries, but it has caused serious problems from different viewpoints. Part of that wealth, for example, has been spent on fostering radicalism and extremism. These ominous phenomena are not merely at work in the Arab world, but have enough potential to engulf other countries as well.

In fact, one may daresay that unawareness, ignorance, power thirst, and ambitions of leaders in the Arab world are gradually turning into a big problem because the scourge of the oil wealth is playing its destructive role in other parts of the world. Has this situation come about just accidently, or is there a well-calculated scheme and premeditated idea at work in order to cause the Middle East oil to wreak havoc on the regional countries instead of helping them to thrive? It is not easy to pass a judgment on such issues.

Plundering Middle East oil wealth

The existing problems are so intermingled and intricate that it is really difficult to understand all the existing aspects of a certain problem. Without getting caught in the intricacies of common theories of conspiracy, we can still find clues to how the Middle East oil wealth is being plundered. The Middle East oil is actually being plundered by the big powers of the world in various ways. One way to do this is to squander the oil revenues by inefficient, but ambitious rulers who are still pursuing their historical delusion of power, though under different names and façades. At the end, if anything remains of that huge wealth, those crumbs may be spent in their own countries in order to deceive the public opinions of regional nations.

At the moment, this is the path that the Arab states are treading. As a result of their huge oil wealth, they have actually lost all the positive motives that may help them to continue a dignified life. The poor Arab countries are, in fact, dependent on rich Arab states. As a result, they often have to give in to the demands of inept dictatorial regimes whose leaders hold unreal images of themselves and their ignorant nations also share the power delusion of their leaders. Such nations are frequently engaged in destructive ethnic, tribal and even sectarian conflicts and are mostly used as cannon fodder by their dictatorial rulers.

It is due to such realities that popular revolutions in the Arab world – regardless of whether you call them Islamic Awakening or Arab Spring – have not been able to provide a solution to the problems facing Arab societies and have not saved Arab societies from the vicious circle which has been plaguing them.

Just take Egypt, as one of the most important and axial Arab countries, as an example. This example shows how far the power struggle has gone in this Arab country and how the Egyptian society has been pushed toward intensification of ethnic and religious differences in a step-by-step manner.

Just have a look at Syria, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Iraq. What has been the share of these countries from the benefits of the Arab Spring? Their share has been nothing, but worsening sectarian or tribal conflicts which are the only visible consequences of the Arab Spring in these countries.

Of course, the above account should not be taken as reason to argue that oil wealth, per se, is a negative phenomenon. That wealth, once in good hands, could be used to save Arab nations and countries from cultural, social, political and economic hardships.

The Islamic Awakening was originally supposed to show a new way and help Arab societies to get out of the aforesaid vicious circle. However, the current power struggle that has taken its place is the result of efforts made by corrupt leaders who are subservient to global sources of power and who have tried to divert the Islamic Awakening from its right path.

Otherwise, the oil wealth, per se, is not a negative phenomenon. If used properly, instead of being spent on buying lethal weapons that Arabs are currently using to kill each other, it could have been used to build factories, farms, roads, schools and universities.

The petrodollars could have been spent on constructing infrastructure in Arab countries and making Arab nations more attuned to the modern world. It is a pity that this is not really the case. The fact that everybody is now blaming everybody else for the status quo will solve no problem. Both the rulers and those ruled in Arab countries are similarly responsible for the existing dire situation of the Arab world.

Pir-Mohammad Mollazehi
Expert on Indian Subcontinent & Middle East Isuues

The article Oil Wealth Fueling Arab Conflicts – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.