By Al Bawaba News

Dozens of top intelligence and military officers have been assassinated in recent months in a savage campaign widely attributed to jihadists while complex attacks have been conducted against key military installations, all indicating Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is still a force with which to be reckoned.

The group, considered the most dangerous of Al Qaeda’s affiliates from the badlands of northern Pakistan to Morocco, includes some of the network’s most effective commanders, bomb-makers and ideologues.

Despite heavy losses, including several important leaders, from U.S. airstrikes in the last couple of years, AQAP remains a coherent force that counterinsurgency analysts say is steadily regrouping.

In 2012, the Yemeni military, heavily supported by U.S. airstrikes and equipment, drove AQAP out of the jihadist emirate it had established in south Yemen’s Abyan province by exploiting a seething separatist campaign in the region.

But now, the analysts say, AQAP has moved into the eastern province of Hadramaut, which covers a third of the impoverished country, to establish a new base of operations under veteran jihadist Nasir al-Wuhayshi, Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary in the 1990s.

Wuhayshi’s importance in the global jihadist network was underlined in August 2013 when Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who took over when bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy Seals in Pakistan May 2, 2011, appointed him Al Qaeda’s general manager.

While Wuhayshi was regrouping in Hadramaut, the bin Laden clan’s ancestral home and a longtime AQAP bastion, he has also overseen stepped-up infiltration of Yemen’s intelligence services and the army.

This is borne out by the wave of assassinations of senior officers, particularly from the intelligence agencies that spearhead the anti-jihadist operations of the military headed by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi who launched the U.S.-backed offensive that regained Abyan.

U.S. officials estimate as many as 100 Yemeni officials and tribal leaders have been slain since mid-2012. In August 2013, analyst Daniel Green at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy put the toll at more than 90.

Among the victims:

– Brig. Gen. Salim Ali Qatan, commander of the southern military region that includes Abyan, was killed June 18, 2012, by a suicide bomber disguised as a street beggar in the southern port city of Aden. He had led the military operations that drove AQAP out of Abyan.

– Col. Abdullah al-Mushki, a high-ranking security chief, was shot to death by gunmen on a motorcycle, a tactic widely used by the assassins, in Dhammar province south of the capital Sanaa Jan. 17, 2013.

– Col. Abdullah al-Rabaki, another senior military intelligence officer marked for assassination in leaflets circulated in the port of Mukalla in Hadramaut, was shot to death by motorcycle gunmen May 18.

– Col. Abdulrahman Mohammed al-Shami, one of the top army intelligence chiefs in Sanaa, was gunned down by motorcycle-riding assassins Oct. 24 as he left his home.

There have been dozens more such killings across the country on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

These underline how Yemen’s security services are seemingly powerless to stop the attacks because of the woeful lack of collaboration between the rival centers of power and their inability to penetrate the jihadist network.

Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Basindwa was targeted Sept 1 by gunmen who ambushed his motorcade in Sanaa as he drove home from his office.

He was not harmed, but the attack served to illustrate the reach of the assassins and the extent of their intelligence system.

The assassinations are taking place amid rising political tensions as Hadi battles to impose order in a country torn by jihadists, the southern separatists and northern Houthi rebels. There’s also a bitter power struggle within the military between Hadi and the family of his discredited predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The regime blames Al Qaeda for all the attacks. But U.S. analysts Casey L. Coombs and Hannah Poppy observe in a new study for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point that other parties, including competing military groups, may have a hand in the assassinations as well.

“Ex-President Saleh and his longtime ally Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, considered Yemen’s two most powerful actors for decades, are the highest profile if not likeliest suspects,” they noted.

Original article

The article Al Qaeda Systematically Assassinating Yemen’s Intelligence Officers appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Richard Silverstein

You will hear Israel’s boosters brag about the Mediterranean Miracle that is the Israeli economy.  ‘Start-Up Nation’ and the like.  But you’ll hear virtually nothing similarly-claimed regarding the settlements.  Over the decades, the State has invested roughly $20-billion into the settlement enterprise (including military spending to defend them).  You’d think it would’ve invested similarly in creating a viable economy there.  It hasn’t.  Or if it has, it simply hasn’t worked.

Tucked into Jodi Rudoren’s latest NY Times article, which highlights (naturally) a settler website meant to generate economic activity and oppose BDS, is an eye-opening, even shocking fact.  If you didn’t read it carefully, it might’ve zipped right by you:

A recent Israeli government report estimated there are…$250 million in annual exports — 0.55 percent of the national total — from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, territories the international community generally considers illegally occupied.

Consider this, there are roughly 500,000 Jews living in the same Occupied Territories (note how Rudoren concedes they’re considered “illegally occupied,” but refuses to call them by their commonly-accepted term, ‘Occupied Territories’), which is roughly 8% of the overall Israeli Jewish population.  Yet, they produce only “0.55%” of the overall nation’s export product.  In other words, there is a mismatch by a factor of more than ten between the expected and actual export product of the settlements.  Which means that the settlements produce almost nothing of economic value.

What do they produce?  Ideology.  And you can export ideology.  But it has no monetary or economic value.  In fact, BDS makes a very good argument that ideology, in that sense, actually suppresses economic output (since BDS is harming Israel’s overall economic activity).

So what do they do in the settlements?  Most of the working residents are employed by government or local/municipal services.  In other words, the government pays these people to serve others like them.  There are also many settlers who work at actual productive jobs within the Green Line.  Their homes are not where they work.  So their economic output drives the economic engine within the Green Line, not outside it.

Which brings us to this basic truth: while the settlements make an ideological statement, they have no actual economic foundation.  This is the case despite fifty years of effort and massive expense on the part of the Israeli government, which offered the settlement enterprise every opportunity to establish itself.  So settlements offer almost no contribution to the nation’s overall GDP.  They are not viable from any realistic measure.  So the question arises: how long can Israel afford to carry this albatross around its neck before it realizes the huge bird will cause it to drown like shipwrecked sailors of old.

This article appeared at Tikun Olam

The article Israeli Settlements Generate Virtually No Economic Activity – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Robert Higgs

The U.S. unemployment rate dipped to 6.7 percent in December, stirring considerable joy in Mudville. Before we spend time shouting hurrah, however, we should bear in mind a few other facts and recall that not so long ago an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent would have been considered scandalous.

One of the main reasons for containing our joy is that the rate fell from 7 percent in November despite the addition of just 74,000 net new jobs, a weak performance by any measure—and far below the 2013 monthly average of 182,000 new jobs. Another reason for caution is that the standard unemployment measure (U-3) provides a distorted picture of what’s taking place in the job market.

A better measure of the health of the job market is total employment: how many people have jobs. After all, it is employment that contributes to our well-being. Jobs, not unemployment, produce the goods, services and earnings that our families rely on. And on this front the picture is grim by historical standards, with 2 million fewer civilians working at the end of 2013 than at the end of 2007, when the economy began to tank.

But even this doesn’t tell the full story, because while the economy and job market have been struggling, the population has been growing. This means that a smaller percentage of the job-eligible civilian population—that is, non-institutionalized individuals age 16 and older—has jobs.

The employment-population ratio plummeted, of course, during the recession. While the economy has slowly inched its way back since hitting bottom in mid 2009, the ratio of employment to population has been stuck in the 58 percent to 59 percent range ever since—anemic by historical standards. In December, the employment-population ratio remained stuck at 58.6 percent.

What these numbers tell us is that the labor market remains in a funk.

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report clearly shows that employment continues its recovery. Over the course of 2013, the number of unemployed fell by 1.9 million. And since the low point during the recession, more than 7 million jobs have been added. But in terms of total jobs, we’re still in the hole.

The collapse of the employment-population ratio is particularly troubling, indicating that something must have occurred since 2008 or 2009 to depress the job market.

The White House and its allies don’t want to talk about this issue. They continue to focus on the slow-but-steady monthly job gains and equally slow-but-steady decline in the unemployment rate. Administration critics respond by pointing out that the unemployment statistics are improving because the labor force has been shrinking, with many people abandoning their job searches, retiring sooner than they would have under normal circumstances, or finding ways to qualify for disability, using it as a de facto long-term unemployment insurance program.

In December, for example, 2.4 million people were classified as “marginally attached” to the labor force. These individuals wanted and were available for work, had looked for work sometime in the past year, but hadn’t searched for a job in the four weeks prior to the BLS survey. As a result, they were not counted as unemployed, though unemployed they certainly are.

While there are many reasons for the sub-par performance, the many (and ongoing) uncertainties related to the future costs of ObamaCare, the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, and other pending regulations and taxes loom large among them. It seems clear from the evidence that these policies have discouraged hiring.

For many decades the U.S. population and the U.S. labor force grew in tandem. That is no longer the case.

Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: unless the labor force resumes something like its historically normal growth, we cannot expect the economy to resume its historically normal growth.

The article Are US Unemployment Statistics Broken? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Dean Baker

French President François Hollande startled many of his supporters last week, along with fans of evidence-based economics everywhere, when he rejected modern economics in favor of the sayings of an early 19th-century French economist. After winning the election on a platform that the government needed to fill the gap in demand created by the collapse of asset bubbles, Hollande repeated the old line from Jean-Baptiste Say that “supply creates its own demand.”

While the appeal to French national pride may be touching, it is completely out of touch with modern economics. His plan to cut spending will have serious consequences. We should have known at least since Keynes that economies can be subject to prolonged periods of high unemployment due to inadequate demand. The problem is that the private sector does not necessarily generate enough demand to buy back everything it produces, leaving large numbers of workers unemployed and vast amounts of productive capacity sitting idle.

From an economic standpoint this is an incredible waste of resources. Economists often concern themselves with distortions created by quirks in the tax code or barriers to trade, but the losses from having an economy operate below full employment dwarf these inefficiencies. In the United States alone we are looking at more than $5tn in lost output to date, as a result of the downturn. The losses would be even larger in Europe where economies are operating much further below their levels of potential output.

From a social standpoint, the costs are even greater as millions of people are needlessly denied the opportunity to work. This often has devastating outcomes for unemployed workers and their families. There is considerable evidence linking unemployment with alcoholism and suicides. There is also a growing body of evidence that there are serious life consequences for the children of unemployed workers.

Additionally, a prolonged period of high unemployment has a lasting impact on the economy’s productive capacity. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Board estimated that potential GDP has fallen by more than 7% ($1.2tn a year) due to the economic downturn. If this study is correct, we will be throwing an amount equal to the entire discretionary portion of the budget (both military and domestic) into the garbage every year long into the future because we failed to adequately stimulate the economy following the collapse of the housing bubble.

The problem is that we do not know how to boost private sector demand. The basic Keynesian story of spending money sounds simple, but it also happens to be right. In an economy that is constrained by inadequate demand, the need is for more spending. That may not typically be the case – the economy may typically be supply constrained – but it is demand constrained right now. This means that if the government spends more money on education, healthcare, research or infrastructure, it will boost the economy and put people to work.

If there was any doubt on this point, there is much new research to back it up. A meta-analysis of recent research on the topic by Sebastian Gechert showed that the overwhelming majority of studies found that government stimulus was effective in boosting the economy in a downturn. The International Monetary Fund, which is hardly known as a hotbed of anti-capitalist thought, has produced several compelling studies showing that countries that stimulated their economies more in this downturn have achieved stronger growth.

There is no longer a serious debate that stimulus will lead to more growth contrary to Mr Hollande’s 19th-century platitude. Nor is there reason to fear that France and other countries might fall off a debt cliff. The warnings about the dangers of going above a 90% debt-to-GDP ratio proved to be the result of an Excel spreadsheet error and some over enthusiastic proponents of austerity. In short, there is no economic reason for France to be cutting back social spending at a point when its economy has enormous excess capacity.

Unfortunately, economics apparently plays little in role in determining economic policy in France and most other countries these days. For this reason, it is likely that Hollande will get most of his proposed cuts put into law. These cuts will directly hurt people, slow growth and cost jobs.

Remarkably, the cuts will likely be viewed as a success by the business press and much of the public. The reason is simple: France is likely to show decent growth in 2014, in spite of the cuts.

Economies do not shrink forever. After years of cutting back, governments across Europe are relaxing austerity, at least modestly. The same is true in the United States. This will be a net positive for growth everywhere, including France. As a result, even if Hollande’s cuts may lower growth below what it otherwise would have been, he will still have some positive growth and job creation for which he can take credit.

In this sense, Hollande can be seen as similar to the pagan priest making sacrifices to the sun god at the winter solstice. When the days start getting longer again, the priest can boast about the success of the sacrifice to the sun god. The big difference is that, unlike Hollande, the priest’s sacrifice didn’t make things worse.

This article originally appeared in The Guardian and reprinted with permission. 

The article Hollande’s Savage Economic Plan – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By MISNA

A retired General from the Muslim-majority North of Nigeria, already decisive in the transition from the military regime to liberal-democracy in 1999, may be a winning card for President Goodluck Jonathan, under increasing fire within his party.

According to the Premium Times and other newspapers, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau was named Minister of Defence by the President. The General, along with other top northern officials chosen in the reshuffle, such as the Ambassador to China Aminu Wali and lawmaker Mohammed Wakil, will now need to be approved by parliament.

A former chief of army staff and several times national security adviser under former president Olesugun Obasanjo, Gusau replaces a minister from the oil-rich Christian-majority South. His role will be crucial in the government force offensive against the Boko Haram armed group in the north-east.

The retired General could also help Jonathan mend relations also with sectors of his PDP (People’s Democratic Party), critical of an administration of power favorable to the South. The PDP has been in office since 1999. The internal division emerged over Jonathan’s possible running for another term in office in 2015, given he is from the South. A move that the critics say would breach internal PDP accords on an alternation of national leaders on a regional, ethnic and religious basis.

The article Nigeria: General From North Becomes Defense Minister appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By EurActiv

(EurActiv) — Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan explained to the European Union’s top officials yesterday (21 January) why he hastily tried to push through sweeping changes in the Turkish judicial system, something which raised alarms in Brussels. But he seemed unable to convince EU officials, who seemed more concerned about the bill’s compliance with EU principles the than motives behind them.

Erdoğan’s visit to Brussels yesterday (21 January), the first in five years, came against a background of a recent thaw in relations between Turkey and the EU.

Turkey opened a new chapter in its accession negotiations with the EU last November, the first in three and a half years. The country began EU membership negotiations in 2005.

It also began visa liberalisation talks with the EU in December, something which Ankara had been aspiring to for a long time.

But the visit also came against a backdrop of an even more recent strain in relations, triggered by the Turkish government’s hasty push for sweeping rearrangements of the judicial system. The attempt, which followed a graft scandal that erupted last month and engulfed its several top officials, raised concerns in the EU and the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights and rule of law watchdog.

Despite the three leaders underlining the need to keep the newfound momentum in the relations alive, issues about the rule of law and the separation of powers stole the show during the joint press conference held by Erdoğan, EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and the Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, after their meeting.

Van Rompuy said “that Turkey as a candidate country is committed to respect the political criteria of accession, including the application of the rule of law and separation of powers” during their meeting with the Turkish premier.

“It is important not to backtrack on achievements and to assure that the judiciary is able to function without discrimination or preference, in a transparent and impartial manner,” he added.

He welcomed the further dialogue on this issue between Turkey and the EU.

Barroso also said that he “relayed the European concerns to Prime Minister Erdoğan, as an honest friend and partner” and that the Turkish leader gave them reassurances of his intention to “fully respect the rule of law, the independence of judiciary and, generally speaking, the separation of powers”.

The president of the Commission said he was confident that the “Turkish government will swiftly address the issues they have raised”, adding that structural reforms were a challenging process and not a straightforward one.

Erdoğan complains about “state of the judiciary”

For his part, Erdoğan maintained that Turkey had no problems with the issues of separation of powers or the rule of law, but his government’s push for change was merely aimed at better ensuring the impartiality of the judiciary.

“If the judiciary tends to enjoy its independence by moving away from the principle of impartiality, serious problems arise. It is then the legislature’s duty to overcome these problems by ensuring both the independence and the impartiality of the judiciary, and put these on certain fundamentals. If you disregard the legislative and the executive branches, if you recognize the judiciary as completely unaccountable; then it becomes a state of the judiciary, not a democratic state,” he said.

Erdoğan holds that the corruption probe targeting top government officials is initiated by circles among the judiciary and law enforcement units loyal to Fethullah Gülen, an influential Turkish preacher living in self-imposed exile in the United States. Gülen is a former ally of Erdoğan and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), but relations between supporters of the two men have gone sour in recent years.

The Turkish prime minister accuses a “parallel structure,” a barely veiled reference to the followers of Gülen, with organising a “judicial coup” against his government in the run up to the local elections in March and the presidential elections later this year.

Controversial draft to be discussed further

Europe’s concerns focus on the changes that the AKP wants to make to the structure of High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HCJP), the highest body in Turkey responsible for appointing judges and prosecutors. Currently, the Turkish minister of justice also holds the title of the HCJP presidency, but the draft bill introduced by the government aims to give this largely symbolic post a greater administrative power.

When a journalist asked if putting the justice minister in charge of the judiciary and prosecution services was compatible with the separation of powers, Erdoğan appeared to try to avoid the question simply by playing on an error in the interpretation during the press conference.

“Unless there is a problem in the interpretation services, some ministry of tahkikat (‘inquiries’ in Turkish) was mentioned. There is no such ministry [in Turkey], nor [any plans] to form one,” he said, going on to reiterate that neither executive, legislative or judicial branches should wield power on each other.

The draft bill, which caused brawls in the justice committee of the parliament, goes to the plenary this week for further discussions. The government had earlier proposed to suspend the work on the draft if the opposition parties agreed to work on a change of constitution regarding the issue. But the opposition parties, who suggest that the government is trying to cover up the graft scandal which troubles itself, were cool towards the idea.

AKP lacks enough seats to make constitutional changes without support from the opposition, but could easily pass the changes as a piece of legislation with its comfortable majority in the parliament. The draft will then move on to the president, who holds the power to veto the bill and send it back to the parliament for further discussions.

Turkish president Abdullah Gül, an ally of Erdoğan who has also served in previous AKP governments, voiced his reservations about the draft bill last week. He said that he considered making changes to the constitution rather than introducing new legislation on HCJP to be more appropriate, and also that he would like the changes in the constitution to be made according to EU criteria.

Even if the draft bill becomes law, it will almost certainly be referred to the constitutional court by the opposition.

Erdoğan said that the government received “some recommendations” from Europe about the draft bill and relevant changes have been already made in the parliamentary committee. The government had withdrawn some of the provisions in the bill earlier.

“If there are further developments [while the bill is being discussed in the plenary], we are open to consider these as well,” added the Turkish premier, during a separate press conference with the European Parliament president, Martin Schulz, later.

Van Rompuy said there was still room for improvement, adding: “But the important thing is that we are in close contact, and in close dialogue.”

Another concern raised by the EU earlier was the massive purge in the ranks of law enforcement and judiciary. This particular issue was less pronounced during Erdoğan’s joint press conference with EU leaders. But it was announced that a further 96 prosecutors were relocated only hours after that event, which is a new round in addition to the many since the graft probe began.

EU ‘not making an analysis of the political situation’

Whatever Erdoğan’s motives behind the far-reaching readjustments in the judiciary might be, EU leaders seem to be more interested in their implications regarding fundamental EU principles.

Presidents of the Council and the Commission were repeatedly asked by journalists if Erdoğan told them about the evidences of the conspiracy against his government he had been mentioning publicly, and if they found these arguments convincing.

“I reiterated our position that whatever the problems are, we believe that the solution for those problems should respect principles of rule of law and separation of powers. Any concerns regarding the independence and impartiality of the investigations and judges can be addressed, we believe, within the limits of European standards. That was the message I conveyed prime minister Erdogan,” said Barroso, adding that he thanked the Turkish premier for his “presentation of the situation as he sees it”.

Van Rompuy echoed the same message, stressing that Brussels was more interested in whether the acts and laws in Turkey were in accordance with basic EU principles.

“Of course, the prime minister presented his analysis of the situation, and we took good note of this analysis. We are not making our own analysis. What we have to do according to the negotiating framework is to see if the basic principles of the European Union – in terms of acts, in terms of laws – are respected. That is why we shared our concerns, that is why … the Commissioner responsible for accession is in contact with his counterparts in Turkey – because the Commission has a role in monitoring, a role of reporting on eventual breaches of those principles. But we are not to have an analysis of the political situation. That is internally, for Turkey, to make their own analysis. We have to deal with acts and legislative texts. That’s what we are monitoring and that’s what we are giving our opinion on.”

Leaders tread carefully

Both Erdoğan and the EU top officials seemed to measure their words during the Turkish premier’s first visit in half a decade, despite the visible tension in the relations.

Erdoğan, who has grown intolerant of criticism from EU in the past, used a much milder tone in Brussels than some anticipated. In June, the Turkish premier said he did not recognise the European Parliament after it adopted a resolution condemning the government for its handling of the summer protests in Turkey.

“[Relations with] the EU will not withstand a ‘one minute’ scene” warned Aykan Erdemir, an MP from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), during a press conference at the Turkish parliament before the premier’s visit to Brussels.

“One minute” is a reference to Erdoğan’s iconic confrontation with Israeli president Shimon Peres in 2009, which marked the beginning of decline in the relations between two countries and became a symbol in Turkey for the prime minister’s impetuous approach to foreign affairs.

Erdoğan last week said the EU “had exceeded its authority” by expressing its concerns about HCJP, because there were no uniform standards for similar bodies in the EU.

Schulz tweeted after his meeting with Erdoğan that European Parliament was a supporter of Turkey’s integration process and that was why they “flagged both progress and setbacks”.

“I consider it more appropriate to discuss these issues through our relevant ministers, rather than to discuss through the media,” said Erdoğan, during the press conference with Van Rompuy and Barroso.

Can Girgiç, EurActiv Turkey

The article Brussels Unimpressed With Turkey’s Internal Struggles, Sticks To Principles appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Profit Confidential

By Mitchell Clark, B. Comm.

The business section of any bookstore is littered with leadership stories of big corporations, musings on personal finance, and countless how-to manuals.

However, there are very few books that deal specifically with capital markets and how to improve your skills in picking stocks and honing your market view. Jim Cramer’s latest book, Get Rich Carefully, is a worthwhile read, especially if you’re not a full-time investor/speculator and you’re either saving for retirement or you’re in retirement and looking to improve your portfolio.

Cramer always has a lot to say, and like his shows on CNBC, his latest book is wordy and somewhat laborious. But he offers a lot of tips that he’s garnered through his experiences in trading and picking stocks, with each chapter offering a summary of lessons learned—the dos and don’ts.

The first chapter offers what 99% of all business books do not—“What Moves a Stock.” Cramer examines the pricing mechanism for all securities—supply and demand—and demonstrates the power that buy-side institutional investors and professional Wall Street traders have over stocks. As evidenced in the stock market crash of 1987, index futures have now overwhelmed traditional share price movements. Cramer says that stocks now trade like commodities, and individual investors are basically helpless in the face of such vast amounts of institutional money.

Cramer talks about a number of companies that he thinks make for excellent long-term holdings. He’s a big fan of dividend paying stocks and the domestic energy sector revolution, which he feels will generate good investment returns for the rest of this decade.

He also likes technology—not pure-play technology, but rather technological innovation that’s happening in companies like Colgate-Palmolive Company (CL) and Under Armour, Inc. (UA). (See “Top Sectors for 2014.”)

In addition to Colgate-Palmolive and Under Armour, some of the stocks Cramer likes for the long-term include: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), V.F. Corporation (VFC), EOG Resources, Inc. (EOG), Becton, Dickinson and Company (BDX), PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP), Schlumberger Limited (SLB), Union Pacific Corporation (UNP), Starbucks Corporation (SBUX), Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST), salesforce.com, inc. (CRM), Google Inc. (GOOG), and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (KMP).

Cramer breaks down seven big investment themes going forward, which he feels will last over the coming years. They are:

• Technology for social, mobile, and cloud-based applications, not products that are easily commoditized

• Food chain health and wellness stocks, like Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFM) and The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (HAIN)

• Post-recession value in goods and services stocks, like Costco, The TJX Companies, Inc. (TJX), priceline.com Incorporated (PCLN), and Cedar Fair, L.P. (FUN)

• Companies that merge with others or divest operating divisions

• Stealth technology plays in food, consumer packaged goods, and apparel

• Large-cap biotechnology stocks, like Celgene Corporation (CELG), Biogen Idec Inc. (BIIB), Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD), and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (REGN)

• The energy revolution: According to Cramer, shale success is in its infancy, with very good investment returns to be had for a number of years

Cramer makes a point of highlighting the wealth effect that is often created by companies that break themselves up. Stocks like Phillips 66 (PSX) and Kraft Foods Group, Inc. (KRFT) were powerful spin-offs from their parent companies. These stocks (and their previous parent companies) created a lot of wealth after being spun off.

Finally, Cramer reiterates (over and over) the most valuable information available to investors—what corporations actually say about their businesses. The only economic statistic with lasting impact on share prices is the unemployment report. Everything else is just noise.

He recommends the conference calls/transcripts of big, international companies like Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) and General Electric Company (GE). Even if you aren’t interested in these stocks, the quarterly information they provide is unique, global, and very valuable for honing your market view.

Cramer likes to talk and he likes to write. Many of his observations about investing and the way institutional investors trade stocks are spot-on.

Get Rich Carefully is a worthy read and the chapter summaries are excellent. It’s no Market Wizards, by Jack Schwager, but it fits today’s world for long-term equity investors.

This article A Must-Read for Long-Term Equity Investors was originally posted at Profit Confidential

The article A Must-Read For Long-Term Equity Investors – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By EurActiv

(EurActiv) — Business leaders gathering for their annual high-profile networking forum in Davos are feeling a bit better about their companies’ prospects and a lot more so about the broader economic outlook. But they still have a long list of worries.

Half a decade on from a financial crisis that brought the world economy to the brink, the immediate threats to corporate profits are receding and chief executives are encouraged by a brightening outlook in both the United States and Europe.

Yet they do not have to look far for future threats – from a worrisome slowdown in emerging markets to uncertainty over the tapering of Federal Reserve stimulus and concerns over increased regulation.

The annual PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey of more than 1,300 CEOs found that 39% were “very confident” their company’s revenues would grow in 2014, up from 36 percent a year ago.

While the trend is encouraging, the reading is still down on the 50 percent-plus levels seen in 2007 and 2008, highlighting how the return to growth remains fragile and uncertain.

Significantly, CEOs were more upbeat in assessing the macro-economic outlook than that of their own companies, with 44% now believing the global economy will improve in the next 12 months against just 18 percent a year ago.

The difference reflects the fact that economic issues are not the only ones weighing on executives’ minds, according to Dennis Nally, the chairman of PwC International, who presented the findings on the eve of the January 22-25 World Economic Forum.

“Even though there is a higher degree of optimism about the global economy, there are still some pretty big challenges elsewhere to do with the volatility of certain economies, concerns around regulation and shifts in technology,” he said.

In fact, concerns about over-regulation have moved to the top of the agenda in the past year as new rules – many of which have been debated since 2008 – are now being implemented, raising the cost of compliance and taking up management time.

Weakness of emerging markets

The weakness in some emerging markets and uncertainties about where this leaves corporate strategies is a big talking-point for many multinational companies, since it coincides with recovery in the West and signs of progress in Japan’s efforts to counter years of economic stagnation.

In response, a number of CEOs are turning back to advanced economies for growth, with the United States, Germany and Britain now seen as more promising than previous high-flyers such as India and Brazil.

Nally said the trend was a key “headline” for Davos 2014 – a view shared by other pundits converging on the Swiss ski resort for four days of high-level discussions and networking.

Economies considered “dull and old” like the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan will actually turn out to be the new locomotives of growth in 2014, according to Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS.

The emerging economies, by contrast, are losing steam as a commodities “super-cycle” – which has buoyed the likes of Brazil and Russia – wanes and political uncertainties grow ahead of 2014 elections in Turkey, South Africa, India, Indonesia and Brazil.

“Business leaders are generally feeling better about the developed markets and the prospects for the next couple of years but are worried about certain emerging markets, perhaps even to the point of curtailing some investment,” said Barry Salzberg, global CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

Other issues keeping top managers awake at night include concerns about fiscal deficits, increasing tax burdens, the availability of talent to fill key jobs, exchange rate volatility and unstable capital markets, the PwC survey found.

The prevailing business mood paints a improving picture for job prospects, with half of CEOs interviewed worldwide expecting to add to staff in 2014, versus 45 percent a year ago.

But that modest pick-up in hiring plans may not do much to dent chronic unemployment levels in many countries.

Worldwide unemployment hit nearly 202 million in 2013, an increase of some 5 million compared with a year earlier, according to a report from the International Labour Organization on Tuesday.

The article Rising CEO Confidence In Economy, But Plenty Of Worries In Davos appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Using a smartphone to cram in more work at night results in less work the next day, indicates new research co-authored by a Michigan State University business scholar.

In a pair of studies surveying a broad spectrum of U.S. workers, Russell Johnson and colleagues found that people who monitored their smart phones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and were less engaged the following day on the job.

“Smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep,” said Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management who acknowledges keeping his smartphone at his bedside at night. “Because they keep us mentally engaged late into the evening, they make it hard to detach from work so we can relax and fall asleep.”

More than half of U.S. adults own a smartphone. Many consider the devices to be among the most important tools ever invented when it comes to increasing productivity of knowledge-based work, Johnson said.

Yet at the same time, the National Sleep Foundation says only 40 percent of Americans get enough sleep on most nights and a commonly cited reason is smartphone usage for work.

For the first study, the researchers had 82 upper-level managers complete multiple surveys every day for two weeks. The second study surveyed 161 employees daily in a variety of occupations – from nursing to manufacturing and from accounting to dentistry.

Across both studies, the surveys showed that nighttime smartphone usage for business purposes cut into sleep and sapped workers’ energy the next day in the office. The second study also compared smartphone usage to other electronic devices and found that smartphones had a larger negative effect than watching television and using laptop and tablet computers.

In addition to keeping people mentally engaged at night, smartphones emit “blue light” that seems to be the most disruptive of all colors of light. Blue light is known to hinder melatonin, a chemical in the body that promotes sleep.

“So it can be a double-edged sword,” Johnson said. “The nighttime use of smartphones appears to have both psychological and physiological effects on people’s ability to sleep and on sleep’s essential recovery functions.”

One potential solution is turning off the smartphone at night. But Johnson said that isn’t always practical in today’s business world.

“There may be times in which putting off work until the next day would have disastrous consequences and using your smartphone is well worth the negative effects on less important tasks the next day,” he said. “But on many other nights, more sleep may be your best bet.”

The study will appear in the research journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Johnson’s co-authors are two doctoral graduates from MSU’s Broad College of Business: Klodiana Lanaj, now an assistant professor at the University of Florida, and Christopher Barnes, now an assistant professor at the University of Washington.
- See more at: http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/nighttime-smartphone-use-zaps-workers-energy/#sthash.6m4kUZaV.dpuf

The article Nighttime Smartphone Use Zaps Workers’ Energy appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Eurasia Review

Children around the world who grow up in dangerous neighborhoods exhibit more aggressive behavior, says a new Duke University-led study that is the first to examine the topic across a wide range of countries.

Many U.S. studies have described a link between dangerous neighborhoods and children’s aggressive behavior. Authors of the new study wanted to determine whether the pattern held true in other cultures. To find out, researchers interviewed parents and children from 1,293 families in nine countries: China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and the United States.

The study appears online today in the journal Societies.

The researchers asked families a series of questions about dangers in their neighborhoods. Based on the answers, the researchers scored the neighborhoods according to their degree of danger.

To measure children’s aggressive behavior, researchers asked parents and children to complete a widely used child-behavior checklist that captures behaviors such as screaming and threatening people. The researchers sought answers from mothers, fathers and children for the surveys, in order to obtain a fuller portrait.

In neighborhoods that parents described as highly dangerous, children exhibited higher levels of aggressive behavior. This link held true across all nine countries studied, based on parents’ responses, said lead author Ann T. Skinner, a researcher with Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy.

“This is an incredibly diverse set of countries from around the world, representing countries from the developing and the developed world and including individualistic and collectivist societies,” Skinner said. “In all the countries we studied, we see that living in a dangerous neighborhood may affect kids negatively.”

The study further suggests that perilous neighborhoods may affect children indirectly, through their parents. In all nine countries, when children reported living in more dangerous neighborhoods, harsh parenting practices were more common, as was child aggression. However, adults’ and children’s perceptions differed on that point. More research is needed to determine whether or not dangerous neighborhoods promote harsh parenting practices, Skinner said.

The article Dangerous Neighborhoods Produce Aggressive Children appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Pambazuka News

By Antoine Roger Lokongo

By the end of 2013, ‘the White man’s burden’ was proving too heavy to bear for France. Feeling militarily and materially outstretched, Paris cried for help from other European powers to help it shoulder ‘its responsibility’ to quell violence, restore peace, order and political legitimacy in its backyards of Mali and Central African Republic, both in turmoil: the Islamists terrorists linked to Al-Qaïda in Maghreb (Aqmi)， Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria and so on, are wreaking havoc in northern Mali and Christians and Muslims are hacking each other to death in Central African Republic (CAR). Both Belgium and the United States responded positively by providing logistics and transport for the French and African troops.

France regards these countries as its backyard because CAR and other former French colonies in West and Central Africa are the constituents of the so-called ‘Françafrique’, meaning that since independence they have kept close ties with France, the former colonial power, with which they are bound not only by defense agreements but also by a common currency, the CFA franc, which was pegged to the French franc, and therefore to the French Treasury, but is now pegged to the euro. As Colette Braeckman of the Belgian daily Le Soir argued on 31 December 2013, if France abandons these former colonies, it will represent not only a resignation in humanitarian terms but also a political signal, indicating the weakening of the French position on the international level. So ‘abandon’ is not really the term here because France cannot do without Africa.

In fact, former President Jacques Chirac acknowledged in 2008 that ‘without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power’ (Philippe Leymarie, 2008, Manière de voir, n°79, février-mars 2008).

Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterand already prophesied in 1957 that ‘Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century’ (François Mitterrand, Présence française et abandon, 1957, Paris: Plon).

Former French foreign minister Jacques Godfrain for his part confirmed that ‘a little country [France], with a small amount of strength, we can move a planet because [of our] relations with 15 or 20 African countries…’ This is consistent with France’s ‘Françafrique’ policies, which aim to perpetuate a particular ‘special relationship’ with its former African colonies (Thabo Mbeki, ‘What the world got wrong in Côte d’Ivoire,’ Foreign Policy. April 29). So France is intervening in Africa for the sake of its own survival as a country as well as a power. It is perfectly justified to argue that it is France that is ‘a burden’ to CAR and its other former colonies in Africa, not the other way round. And so, total independence for CAR, both political and economic means the end of ‘Françafrique’.

UNITED IN FEAR OF CHINA

The reason why France counts on European support is because all the European powers are now united in their fear of China’s strong presence in Africa. As Colette Braeckman of the Belgian daily Le Soir explained on 31 December 2013, France counts on the solidarity of fellow former colonial powers (Britain, Belgium) in order not to completely give way to newcomers (Chinese but also Koreans, Turks …) in these potentially rich and increasingly courted countries (rich in timber, agricultural, water and oil and mineral resources, including, diamond, oil and uranium in the case the Central African Republic). That is what is really at stake in France’s interventions both in Mali, Central African Republic and Ivory Coast in 2011 where Sarkozy removed Laurent Gbagbo by force and installed Alassane Ouattara. It is well known that both Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo and former president François Bozize of CAR got into trouble with the master – meaning France – because they turned to China for win-win cooperation. They were swiftly removed from power. In the case of CAR, France opted for Michel Djotodia who headed the Seleka (meaning ‘union’ in the Sango language) rebel movement which overthrew Bozize in a matter of weeks. Did France not know that Seleka was a Islamist movement from the north of CAR linked to Al-Qaïdain in Maghreb (Aqmi) and Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria at the time? Paris surely did! But those uranium deals Bozize signed with China sealed the end of his regime.

FROM ‘A WAR OF REGIME CHANGE’ TO ‘A WAR OF CORRECTION’

The Seleka rebel movement overthrew Bozize and took power in March 2013. However, Seleka men refused to be disarmed and confined in the barracks, and for months multiplied abuses against civilians, mostly Christians from the south of the country. On 13 September 2013, CAR interim President Michel Djotodia announced that the Séléka had been dissolved. The horrors perpetrated by gangs of Seleka (including Chadians, Sudanese and other ‘Soldiers Without Borders’) led to the emergence of self-defense groups, the ‘Anti-balakas’, composed of Christians, simple peasants armed with machetes, but also former supporters of ousted president François Bozizé (Colette Braeckman, Le Soir, 28 December 2013). Initially, France launched what it called ‘Operation Sangaris’ which was mainly a police operation, with well-defined objectives: to neutralize the Seleka fighters.

The French forces were operating in coordination with the Misca (UN Mission in the Central African) intervention force, which replaced FOMAC (Military force in Central Africa) composed of Chadian, Burundian and Congolese (Brazzaville) soldiers.

On 5 December 2013, while ‘Operation Sangaris’ was still in its infancy, ‘Anti-Balaka’ elements armed with machetes, launched attacks and massacred many Muslims whom they accused of supporting the Seleka from the north, predominantly Muslim too – divide and rule, the legacy of French colonialism is taking its toll. According to the weekly Jeune Afrique, it was not just retaliation, but a professional military attack coordinated by the son of former President Bozizé. More than 600 people were killed in the capital Bangui. Since then, the image of the conflict became greatly blurred : While they are saying that they are neutral, French forces are accused by Muslims of siding with Christians and French troops. Relations with interim President Michel Djotodia deteriorated to hate level (especially due to his link with Islamists when France was fighting the same Islamists in Mali). African forces meant to help restore peace were said to have different agendas. Thus Chadians were believed to protect the Seleka (among which are nationals of their country) while soldiers from Congo-Brazzaville and Burundi feel closer to the Christian populations; to the extent that an exchange of fire took place between Burundian ‘peacekeepers’ and their Chadian counterparts in Bangui. The tension was such that ultimately it was decided that Chadians had to be relocated to the north of the country (Colette Braeckman, Le Soir, 28 December 2013).

Worried that the crisis could spill over into the DRC (like it was with Rwanda in 1994, in fact the DRC has already welcomed thousands of refugees from CAR, which shares a long but porous border with CAR), Kinshasa announced the deployment of 850 troops in Central Africa to secure the border. Curiously, Rwanda which is at war with the DRC, also announced that it would provide a contingent of 800 men to the African Union (apparently Rwandan troops are going to hunt the Hutu ‘genocidists’ allegedly hiding in CAR).

More than 1,000 people have killed in a matter of days in the first weeks of 2014 and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF says that two children were beheaded, and that ‘unprecedented levels of violence’ are being carried out on children. An estimated 935,000 people have been uprooted throughout the country (AP, 13 January 2014). 150,000 internally displaced people remain crammed for months now in makeshifts at Mpoko International Airport.

France was determined to ‘correct the mistake’ it made by backing Michel Djotodia. Since French troops’ relation with interim President Michel Djotodia deteriorated to hate level, there was no way he could continue to preside over the country. He quickly became a liability.

Both interim President Djotodia and Transitional Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye were forced to resign on 9 January 2014 at an extraordinary summit of leaders of the Economic Community of Central African States (CEEAC, by its French acronym) gathered in Ndjamena, the capital of Chad, at the initiative of Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno (the main backer of Djotodia). Deby had understood that France did not want Djotodia anymore.

According to Agence France Presse (AFP), Djotodia was accused by ‘the international community’ (read France) of passivity towards the sectarian violence that has turned to mass killings. A total paralysis of Bangui also alerted CAR’s neighboring countries. France, which wanted the departure of Djotodia (he has now started a long exile in Benin) asked the National Transitional Council (NTC interim parliament) – composed of 135 members appointed after the takeover by Mr Djotodia, from different political parties, the Seleka movement, civil society and public institutions – to chose a new transitional president as soon as possible.

FRANCE STILL CALLING THE SHOTS IN CAR

For the time being, CAR has ‘an acting transitional president of the republic’ Alexander Ferdinand Nguendet, the current National Transitional Council President. Mr. Nguendet has already pledged that the election would take place ‘under such conditions’ as stipulated by the Transitional Charter. So far, violence continues unabated and tension remains high.

The newly elected transitional leader will have the difficult task of pacifying the country, a totally paralyzed administration and allowing hundreds of thousands of displaced people to return to their homes. France has also indicated that it wished that general elections be held ‘before the end of 2014’. We suppose that all mining contracts Djotodia signed with whoever will probably be cancelled. It is France who is calling the shots. Not surprised! How independent are African countries? New Year, new wars in Africa. Even South Sudan, Africa’s youngest country, has not escaped from the road most travelled by its older siblings. The truth is that every ‘resource war’ in Africa has hidden hands pulling the strings behind it.

Antoine Roger Lokongo is a journalist and Beijing University PhD candidate from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

The article French Complicity In The Crisis In Central African Republic appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By James Petras

Ariel Sharon was a serial mass murderer, engaged in massacres of unarmed victims in four countries, of all ages and conditions. He was a “hero” for hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews who settled on land and in houses seized from Palestinians in the West Bank. He was praised by Western leaders at his funeral for his violent, lifelong opposition to Arab nationalist movements throughout the Middle East.

That he was a fanatical upholder of Jewish supremacist policies and practices did not go unnoticed by wealthy Zionist donors in the US. During his tenure as a senior official in numerous Israeli regimes, they contributed hundreds of millions of dollars for Greater Israel and extracted nearly a $100 billion more from the US Treasury. Israeli leaders praise of Sharon as a valiant, brilliant and legendary military leader is echoed in the US mass media and repeated by most Western leaders. He was, in the view of his US adulators, a powerful leader who defied world public opinion in his defense of Israel, who seized Palestinian and Syrian territory and who was willing to strike an independent policy even against Israel’s main benefactors in Europe and North America.

This essay does not simply recount Sharon’s lifelong criminal record. The story we will relate has more to do with (1)the crimes that continue to live after him; (2) the political and military context which allowed him to butcher non-Jewish populations with impunity; (3)the psychological core of Sharonist impudence and arrogance which is so deeply etched in the political psyche of all of Israel’s contemporary leaders.

This paper will critically address several issues regarding the Sharon cult (in Israel and abroad) which presents him as a fearless and successful military leader; a formidable world political statesman, who successfully imposed Israel’s will throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Genocide at the Service of Nationhood

Sharon’s record as a serial genocider is beyond dispute. As early as the ‘founding years’ of Israel in 1947 – 1948 Sharon was commander of the murderous Alexandroni and then the Golani Brigade which murdered, uprooted and terrorized thousands of lifelong Palestinian residents. He later was the commander of Unit 101, an Orwellian Death Squad, which reduced villages to rubble, blowing up homes, where mostly women and children were hiding. In October 1953, Sharon assaulted the Jordanian village of Qibya blowing up forty-five houses and killing sixty-nine civilians, the vast majority women and children. In the early 1950’s Sharon ruled over Palestinian settlements with an iron fist, murdering dissidents, arresting and torturing protestors on a mass scale. On October 29, 1956 Israeli, British and French troops invaded Egypt to seize the Suez Canal and recolonize the country. Colonel Sharon led the 202th Paratroop Brigade which seized the Mitla Pass and covered himself with gore – murdering all the Egyptian military and civilian prisoners. The Israeli military advance was stopped cold despite its military alliance and supply from Britain and France. President Eisenhower told the Israelis and their French and English allies to end their aggression and proceeded to cut off all military and economic aid to Israel; shut off IMF funding for England and France’s post WW II bankrupt economies. US Zionists using their leverage in the Democratic party especially over Lyndon Johnson, House Minority Leader, to block Eisenhower’s economic sanctions and to support Israel’s invasion. Eisenhower rejected Zionist pressure and went to the UN Security Council where his armistice and withdrawal proposal was vetoed by France and Britain. Eisenhower then called a special session of the General Assembly where he triumphed by a 12 to 1 margin. France, Britain and Israel were defeated and forced to retreat. No other President before or since Eisenhower ever took a forthright stand against Israeli colonial wars and territorial seizures.

During the Egyptian invasion, Sharon’s military leadership was severely questioned by his Israeli superiors. His troops suffered the highest casualties of any unit because of his order to attack heavily fortified Egyptian emplacements when Israeli air power could have done more with less.

During the so-called Six Day War (June 5 -10, 1967), Israel’s sneak attack on Jordan, Syria and Egypt, resulted in the seizure and occupation of vast areas and the conquest of millions of Palestinians. Sharon’s military achievements included the wholesale massacre of Egyptian prisoners of war.. President Lyndon Johnson, totally under the thumb of his Zionist fundraisers, not only supported Israel’s war of aggression but acquiesced in Israel’s bombing of the US intelligence ship the Liberty and the killing and maiming of over 200 US sailors. In the 1973 Yom Kipper War, Sharon and the Israeli high command were on the verge of military defeat by the Egyptian and Syrian armed forced intent on liberating occupied territories, until Kissinger airlifted 22,395 tons of weapons to Israel, including scores of fighter planes, helicopters and transport planes to turn the tide.

From the Yon Kipper debacle onward, Israel never lacked for US military and political backing and diplomatic protection in its military invasions, colonial settlements and air assaults on Arab countries and inhabitants.

Upward Advance: Master of Massacres and Mediocrity

Sharon’s political career was aided by his leading role in massacring Palestinians in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories. In Lebanon, Sharon slaughtered 2000 children and women at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. He certainly did not rise to political power for his mediocre performance during the Suez crises and Yon Kippur war. In fact, when Sharon faced well-trained and well-armed military forces, as was the case during the Hezbollah war in 2006, he was even less than a mediocre commander. Only against civilians and poorly trained irregulars did he “succeed”. Only where he could murder and dispossess hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians and settle Israeli Jews was he glorified as the “King of the Jews” by the Israeli settler population.

World leaders praise Sharon because of his power and usefulness in smashing nationalist Arab-dissent. Sharon’s ascent to the Pantheon of world statesman was greased by the western mass media, who to no small extent, sup at the table of his main Zionist benefactors. Sharon’s “legendary history” is media manufactured to fit the requirements of his western Zionist power brokers.

The Context of Sharon’s and Israeli Ascendancy

Israel cannot and does not wield power on the bases of its military capability or performance – it operates on borrowed power. When the US was ruled by a President who rejected Zionist influenced Congressional pressure and used available economic and political leverage, Israel retreated, surrendered captured territory and abided by UN sanctions. In other words, Israel’s war aims and its bellicose behavior, is dependent on the power of the Zionist power configuration in the US to turn Washington in its favor.

The Israeli leaders and most, especially Sharon, learned the lesson of the Eisenhower experience. The key to regional power lies in the capacity of American Zionists to control Washington’s decision-makers. In the blunt language of Sharon, in reply to Shimon Peres on Koi Yisrael radio (October 3, 2001) “Every time we do something, you (Peres) tell me, Americans will do this and that. I want to tell you something very clear. Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We the Jewish people control America and the Americans know it”.

In this, his comment on the relations of power between Israel and the United States, Sharon is also providing an insight into his own importance and influence. Sharon the “legendary military leader” is a complete artifact of the real power that the Zionists wield in the US on behalf of Israel.

Sharon is, in a sense, a “cardboard general” who has lost or nearly lost the most important battles in his career – beginning with Suez in 1956, Yom Kippur in 1973 and Lebanon in 2006. Israel has prospered economically and become a major military power largely through over $130 billion dollar transfers from the US Treasury over the past half century; plus tens of billions in favorable trade concessions; plus ‘imports’ of highly trained professionals from the US and Russia (educated by the tax payers of those countries); and more recently billions more in “venture capital” by overseas speculators. In other words, Israel is an artifact of the ‘power of extraction and transfer’ by its overseas acolytes embedded in the US political and economic power structure.

Without the influence and material privileges which have accumulated over four decades, Sharon would have ended his mediocre military career as a crabby second rate politician, barking “blood libels” at his adversaries in the Knesset.

But as circumstances dictated Sharon was not an insignificant figure. His brutal colonial policies reflected the Israel-Jewish political tradition and shaped what has become a dangerous ethno-supremacist ideology, which unfortunately has traversed across borders and entered into the consciousness of many Zionists.

It was one thing to joke, as many of us did in our university days, about the ghetto expression “Is it good for Jews?. It is another for leaders in positions of power to apply this ethnocentric criteria to American foreign policy, personnel recruitment and professional appointments. That is the real legacy of Ariel Sharon: the legacy of an Israel -centered world built on ideology of ethno-religious supremacy which displays superiority and disdain for non-Jews. For the ethnic supremacists like Sharon, most Americans exist to pay tribute and fight wars for Israel and to keep a tight lip about it.

A Final Word on the Sharon Legacy

Let it be said, here and now, that Sharon’s presumption to speak for “the Jewish people” confused his rabid electoral supporters in Israel and blind adherents among US Zionist leaders, with a growing number of Jews and ex-Jews who detested him and scorn his legacy. His boast that “Jews control America” has dangerous implications, especially in the context of growing popular malaise in these United States. Sharon’s claim that Americans knowingly submit to a foreign tyranny, is very provocative especially if and when Americans begin to wake up— and it will be the majority of Jews, who neither abide by Sharon’s legacy nor share his naked contempt for non-Jews, who will pay a painful price.

The Sharon legacy lives on, among his epigones at the prestigious universities and with the billionaires who bankroll the Democratic Party. Sharon’s Israel First legacy lives on with the government officials who betray the trust of the American people and prostrate themselves before his present-day disciples (Klansmen with yarmulkes), the Avigdor Lieberman’s, Naftali Bennett’s and Netanyahu’s who execute the Sharon legacy of dispossession and assassination of unarmed Palestinian people. Ariel Sharon is dead but his crimes will not be buried. They live on in the policies of the Netanyahu regime but also in the collective memory of humanity in its struggle for freedom and self-determination.

The article Ariel Sharon Is Dead: His Crimes Will Not Be Buried With Him – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Palestine Chronicle

By Jonathan Cook

Things have come to a strange state of affairs when Washington regards Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, as the voice of moderation in the Israeli cabinet.

While Lieberman has called the soon-to-be-unveiled US peace plan the best deal Israel is ever likely to get, and has repeatedly flattered its chief author, US secretary of state John Kerry, other ministers have preferred to pull off the diplomatic gloves.

The most egregious instance came last week when Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defense minister, launched an unprecedented and personal attack on the man entrusted by President Barack Obama to oversee the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

In a private briefing, disclosed last week by the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper, Yaalon called Kerry “obsessive and messianic”, denounced his peace plan as “not worth the paper it was written on”, and wished he would win “the Nobel prize and leave us alone”.

Yaalon could hardly claim he was caught in an unguarded moment. According to reports, he has been making equally disparaging comments for weeks. Back in November, for example, an unnamed “senior Israeli minister” dismissed Kerry’s ideas as “simply not connected to reality … He is not an honest broker.”

On this occasion, however, Washington’s response ratcheted up several notches. US officials furiously denounced the comments as “offensive” and demanded that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly slap down his minister.

But what might have been expected – a fulsome, even grovelling apology – failed to materialize. It was only on Yaalon’s third attempt, and after a long meeting with Netanyahu, that he produced a limp statement of regret “if the secretary was offended”.

Also showing no signs of remorse, Netanyahu evasively suggested that disagreements with the US were always “substantive and not personal”.

With the diplomatic crisis still simmering, Yaalon returned to the theme late last week, telling an audience in Jerusalem that the US and Europe had a “misguided understanding” of the Middle East and denouncing a “Western preoccupation with the Palestinian issue”.

Not surprisingly, the Palestinian leadership is celebrating the latest evidence of Israel’s increasingly self-destructive behavior. Such outbursts against Kerry will make it much harder for Washington to claim the Palestinians are to blame if, or more likely when, the talks collapse.

The Israeli government is not only hurling insults; it is working visibly to thwart a peace process on which the Obama administration had staked its credibility.

Netanyahu has kept moving the talks’ goal posts. He declared for the first time this month that two small and highly provocative settlements in the West Bank, Beit El and a garrisoned community embedded in Hebron, a large Palestinian city, could not be given up because of their religious importance to the “Jewish people”.

That is on top of recent announcements of a glut of settlement building, ministerial backing for the annexation of the vast expanse of the Jordan Valley and a new demand that Palestinians stop “incitement”.

Even Obama appears finally to be losing hope, telling the New Yorker this week that the chances of a breakthrough are “less than fifty-fifty”.

While Netanyahu may act as though he is doing the White House a favor by negotiating, he should be in no doubt of his dependence on US goodwill. He received a timely reminder last week when Congress voted through a $3.1 billion aid package for Israel in 2014 – plus hundreds of millions of dollars more for missile development – despite the severe troubles facing the US economy.

In part, Netanyahu’s arrogance appears to reflect his personality – and a culture of impractical isolationism he has long nurtured on the Israeli right.

With Washington pushing firmly for engagement with the Palestinians, this has started to rebound on him. Israeli analysts have noted his growing insecurity, fearful that any concessions he makes will weaken him in the eyes of the right and encourage challengers to the throne. That explains some of his indulgence of Yaalon.

But his ideological worldview also accords with his defense minister’s.

It is hardly the first time Netanyahu has picked a fight over the peace process. In Obama’s first term, he waged a war of attrition over US demands for a settlement freeze – and won. He even dared publicly to back the president’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, in the 2012 elections.

In unusually frank references to Netanyahu in his new memoir, Robert Gates, Obama’s defense secretary until 2011, recalls only disdain for the Israeli prime minister, even admitting that at one point he tried to get him barred from the White House. He writes: “I was offended by his glibness and his criticism of US policy – not to mention his arrogance and outlandish ambition.” He also calls Netanyahu an “ungrateful” ally and a “danger to Israel”.

But the problem runs deeper still. Just too much bad blood has built up between these two allies during Netanyahu’s term. The feud is not only over Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians but on the related matter of US handling of what Israel considers its strategic environment in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Netanyahu is angry that the US has not taken a more decisive hand in shoring up Israeli interests in Egypt and Syria, and near-apoplectic at what he sees as a cave-in on Iran and what Israel claims is its ambition to build a nuclear weapon.

He appears ready to repay the White House in kind, rousing pro-Israel lobby groups in Washington to retaliate on almost-home turf, in Congress, through initiatives such as a bill threatening to step up sanctions against Iran, subverting Obama’s diplomatic efforts.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran US Middle East peace negotiator, recently described the Israeli-US relationship as “too big to fail”. For the moment that is undoubtedly true.

But in his New Yorker interview, Obama warned: “The old order, the old equilibrium, is no longer tenable. The question then becomes, What’s next?”

That warning is a double-edged sword. It is doubtless directed chiefly against those, like Iran and Syria, that are seen as threatening western interests in the Middle East. But Israel is no less a part of the “old order”, and if it continues to cramp US efforts to respond effectively in a changing region it will severely test the alliance.

It looks as if the cracks between Israel and the US are only going to grow deeper and wider.

- Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).  He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jonathan-cook.net. (A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.)

The article Cracks In The Alliance: Is There Finally Daylight Between Israel And The US? – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ramzy Baroud

Israel is often viewed by Washington politicians as the most ‘stable’ ally in the Middle East. But stability from the American perspective can mean many things. Lead amongst them is that the ‘ally’ must be unconditionally loyal to the diktats of the US administration. This rule has proven to be true since the United States claimed a position of ascendency, if not complete hegemony over many regions of the world since World War II. Israel, however, remained an exception.

The rules by which US-Israeli relations are governed are perhaps the most bewildering of all foreign policies of any two countries.

An illustration of this would be to consider these comments by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon quoted in the Israeli news portal Ynetnews. “The American security plan presented to us is not worth the paper it’s written on,” he said, referring to efforts underway since July by American Secretary of State John Kerry, “who turned up here determined and acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor.” Kerry “cannot teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians,” said Ya’alon.

So far, Kerry has made ten trips to the Middle East with the intention of hammering out an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Based on media reports, it seems that the potential agreement is composed in such a way that it mostly accommodates Israel’s ‘security’ whims and obsessions, including a proposal to keep eastern West Bank regions and the Jordan Valley under Israeli military control. In fact, there is growing interest in the idea of ‘land swaps” which was floated by Israel’s notorious Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman ten years ago.

“When Mr. Lieberman first proposed moving Arab-populated Israeli towns near the present border into Palestine in exchange for Jewish settlement blocs in the Palestinians’ West Bank being incorporated into Israel, he was branded a racist firebrand,” wrote the Economist on Jan. 18. “Liberals accused him of promoting the forcible ‘transfer’ plan, akin to ethnic cleansing, proclaimed by a rabbi, Meir Kahane, who vilified Arabs while calling for a pure Jewish state.”

Those days are long gone, as Israeli society drifted rightward. “Even some dovish Israeli left-wingers find such ideas reasonable.” Back then, the Americans themselves were irked, even if just publically, whenever such ideas of ‘population transfers’ and ethnic cleansing were presented by Israel’s ultra-right politicians. Now, the Americans find them malleable and a departure point for discussion. And it’s Kerry himself who is leading the American efforts to accommodate Israel’s endless list of demands – of security and racial exclusiveness even if at the expense of Palestinians. So why is Ya’alon unhappy?

The Defense Minister, who sat immediately next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during talks with Kerry, was unapologetic about his reasoning: “Only our continued presence in Judea and Samaria and the River Jordan will endure.” It means unrelenting Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu is hardly an innocent bystander in all of this, although for diplomatic reasons he often entrusts his government minions to deliver such messages. The Prime Minister is busy issuing more orders to populate the occupied West Bank with Jewish settlements, and berating every government that rejects such insidious behavior as being anti-Israel, ‘pro-Palestinian’ or worse, anti-Semitic. This was the case again in recent days following another announcement of settlement expansion.

On Jan. 17, Netanyahu called on Europe to stop its “hypocrisy”. On the same day, Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of Britain, France, Italy and Spain, “accusing their countries of pro-Palestinian bias,” reported the BBC online. According to the ministry, the “perpetual one-sided stance” of these countries is unacceptable.

Yet, considering that Europe has supported Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories for decades, economically sustained the ‘Jewish state’ and its over 100 illegal Jewish settlements, and continue with its often unconditional military support of Israel, the accusations may appear strange and equally bewildering to that of Ya’alon against John Kerry.

How could a country the size of Israel have so much sway over the world’s greatest powers, where it gets what it wants and more, hurls regular insults against its sustainers, and still asks for more?

European countries found themselves in Israel’s firing line because a day earlier, the four EU countries took the rare step of summoning Israeli ambassadors to object to the Netanyahu government’s latest announcement of illegal settlement expansion (that of an additional 1,400 new homes). EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton has even went to the extent of calling the settlements “an obstacle to peace”, although hardly an advanced position considering that Israel’s colonial project in Palestine has been in motion for 46 years.

But even that is too much from the Israeli point of view. “The EU calls our ambassadors in because of the construction of a few houses?” Netanyahu asked as if baffled by a seemingly foreboding act, in a Jan 16 press conference. He even had the audacity to say this: “This imbalance and this bias against Israel doesn’t advance peace,” and also this, “I think it pushes peace further away because it tells the Palestinians: ‘Basically you can do anything you want, say anything you want and you won’t be held accountable.”

There is no sense in arguing with Netanyahu’s strange logic, but the question regarding Israel’s stronghold over the US and EU remains more pressing than ever, especially when one considers the ruckus in US Congress. No, the congress is not revolting because of the unmitigated power of the Zionist lobby, but for something far more interesting.

There seems to be a level of confusion in US Congress because members of the Senate are yet to feel serious pressure by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) over a bill that proposes more sanctions on Iran.

“The powerful pro-Israel lobby has not engaged in a shoe-leather lobbying campaign to woo wayward senators and push Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to schedule a vote on the bill .. While the group supports the bill — authored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) — it is not yet putting its political muscle behind a push for an immediate vote,” reported Politico, citing key senators and their aides.

To say the least, it is disturbing that the US Senate is completely bewildered that AIPAC, which lobbies for the interest of a foreign power, is yet to provide its guidelines regarding the behavior of America’s supposedly most respected political representatives.

“I don’t know where AIPAC is. I haven’t talked to anybody,” said Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.). “I don’t know what they’re doing,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

This alone should shed some light on the seemingly bewildering question of the ‘strong bond’ and ‘stable’ alliance of Israel and the US – and to a lesser degree EU countries. This is not to suggest that Israel has complete dominance over US foreign policy in the Middle East, but to ignore Israel’s indispensable role in shaping the outlook of US foreign policy is dishonest and inconsistent with the facts, to put it mildly.

The article The Strange But ‘Stable’ Alliance: US Senate Await Israeli Instructions – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By JTW

The Geneva II peace conference has brought together the diplomats from around the globe in Switzerland. The future of Syria—which has been experiencing a bloody civil war for three years—will be discussed. Representatives from the Syrian regime and the opposition will negotiate directly for the first time. The regime is focusing on terrorism whereas the opposition expects a transition period without Assad.

The conference is being organized right after the invitation crisis with Iran and the revelation of the photos proving systematic torture in Syria. Some groups regard the conference as the last chance for a peaceful solution in Syria. For others, reaching a concrete solution is not likely.

Turkey is emphasizing the importance of the UN’s presence on the ground for observing and supervising potential outcomes.

USAK American expert Mehmet Yegin evaluated the position of the U.S. in the Geneva II conference. He said that it is difficult to talk about big expectations from the U.S. for the conference. Yegin also mentioned the dissent between Russia and the U.S. during the implementation of the first conference. The U.S. is trying to solve the problem through external actors, but at the same time it is excluding some of them.

Yegin also underlined that the major issue for the U.S. in Syria and the Middle East is Al-Qaeda. In this regard, USAK Middle East expert Osman Bahadır Dinçer also pointed out that Al-Qaeda has been mentioned frequently in the past month in the Iraqi and Syrian contexts. Therefore, he warned that the issue might be reduced to Al-Qaeda and terrorism.

Dinçer also evaluated the essence of the conference within the framework of Syria, mentioning the huge difference between the active opposition on the ground and the “legitimate” Syrian National Coalition outside. This raises a question how the end result will be implemented in the field even if the conference reaches a positive solution, adding “I have no positive expectations.”

USAK Russia expert Habibe Özdal stated that Geneva II, which is leading by Russia and the U.S., and coordinating by the United Nations, is seen as an alternative to military intervention through providing diplomatic solutions. Özdal continued her statements: “Determination of the conference’s date took a long time both because the issue is multilateral and the expectations and preconditions of the parties differ from each other. Under these conditions, it is obvious that Geneva II will not make a miracle in terms of solving the Syrian crisis in a short term and providing stability in the country. On the one hand, the representation capability of the opposition is questioned due to the fragmented structure of the Syrian opposition; on the other hand, the consequences of the Geneva II does not offer positive expectations because the solution of the problem does not seen as ‘emergency’ by the international actors. Moreover, it is not likely to find an agreed road map at the end of the conference.”

There is ambiguity about the aftermath of the conference, such as the situation of the Syrian refugees and the continuation of the proxy-war.

The article Evaluating The Geneva II Peace Conference appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Geopolitical Monitor

By Marc Simms

The Iraqi Army has been trying to regain control of Anbar province and in particular the city of Fallujah after clashes between tribal militias and Al-Qaeda in Iraqi (AQI) forced security forces to withdraw from the region towards the end of December.

This article will examine the recent deterioration of Iraqi security and the likely response from Saudi Arabia, a state that is fast emerging as a key security player in the region amid growing US reluctance to commit military forces to the Middle East.

The Context of Iraq’s Deteriorating Security

Despite a lack of media attention in recent years, the security situation in Iraq has continuously hurdled towards a critical state. The country was ranked with the highest terrorism incidence rate on the Institute of Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index. And although this index counts the impact of terrorism over the past decade, it is telling that, even years after the peak of the violence, Iraq is still considered the country with the most terrorist incidents in the world, and in terms of casualties it accounts for a third of all terrorist victims.

Ongoing violence can be traced to both the post-invasion situation, with insufficient planning by US and allied forces, and the post-war political settlement, which resulted in sectarian political parties, utilising ethnic-tribal divisions and political machine-style patronage networks to obtain power in the Iraqi Parliament. Divides between Sunni, Shiite and Kurd populations are exacerbated by this kind of political system, which, in the greater context of regional and global politics, has produced an unstable and conflict-torn state.

Despite notable differences in party affiliation, Shiites make up a majority of Iraq’s population, and in particular, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Islamic Dawa Party lead two of the major coalitions within the Iraqi Parliament. Both have a long history of collusion with Iran, and the Supreme Council also controlled the Badr Corps, a paramilitary group who infiltrated Iraqi security forces and carried out a number of sectarian killings during Iraq’s civil war.

AQI uses this kind of communal tension in Iraq to promote its own agenda, positioning the organization as a defender of Sunni Islam against the “heretical” Shiites.

AQI benefited from its participation in the Syrian civil war during the summer of 2013, and it used the resulting influx of foreign fighters and funds to unleash a bombing campaign in northern and central Iraq. In response to the deteriorating security situation, the Iraqi government planned the creation of the Special Baghdad Division – ostensibly a state security force, though made up of elements of former Shiite private militias, possibly including the Badr Corps.

The creation fuels fears that Prime Minister al-Maliki is arming Shiite paramilitaries, who themselves were primary actors in sectarian killings during the civil war, and is taking a step towards ensuring Shiite dominance over the Iraqi state. Autumn also saw an increase in the deaths of Sunni community leaders in southern Iraq – most likely by Shiite militias, though it is not entirely clear who was behind the wave of assassinations and kidnappings.

Sectarian Tensions Boil Over Again

In Anbar, AQI ambushes on Iraqi Army patrols have triggered a declaration of military operations to curtail AQI activities in the region – which has long been a hotbed of Sunni radicalism and a former operating area for AQI militants. However, al-Maliki also decided to use the army to counter the political threat posed by the Ramadi protest movement. Claiming it was the centre of AQI operations, he ordered the camp to be disbanded by force, inflaming Sunni public opinion. Maliki further exacerbated tensions by arresting MP Ahmed al-Alwani, who is believed to have influence over the Ramadi protestors.

These aggressive moves made various tribal militias and Sunni groups, including the Grand Mufti of Iraq, view the Iraqi Army and al-Maliki as a looming threat, and since it appeared that their grievances against Baghdad had no political recourse – they took up arms instead. Violence undertaken by tribal militias allowed AQI to stage attacks on Iraqi Police stations and free prisoners. Since then, some tribal militias have allied with local police units, but notably not with the Iraqi Army, in order to drive out AQI gunmen.

Saudi Arabia and a Region in Flux

Since the start of the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia has taken a leading role in the conflicts and disputes that have risen in its wake. In particular, Saudi Arabia coordinated the military response to unrest in Bahrain, and it has supplied rebels in the Syrian civil war, in addition to supporting the Egyptian military against the Muslim Brotherhood and providing support for the Lebanese army as a counterweight against Hezbollah.

As such, it would be reasonable to expect Saudi Arabia is closely monitoring events in Iraq. Especially as it would seem Saudi interests are closely tied to ongoing Shiite-Sunni tensions, which are in and of themselves a reflection of Saudi insecurity over the role of Iran in the Middle East. Given the close relationship between Iran and Iraq and the sectarian nature of the current Iraqi crisis, we should expect Saudi Arabia is, at least on some level, considering becoming involved in the conflict.

The Saudi strategy towards Syria requires some examination, as Syria, another regional ally of Iran, is suffering from sectarian conflict as well.

Initially Qatar took the lead on Syria, in keeping with its leading role during the Libya conflict of 2011. Qatar hoped to utilise the Muslim Brotherhood, under the auspices of the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, to force Assad to step down and get a brokered deal to assume power.

Conversely, Saudi Arabia began with a maximalist approach, with Prince Saud al-Faisal calling a negotiated settlement “inconceivable.” Instead, Saudi Arabia has backed, financed and armed several Salafist Sunni groups, who together now form the Islamic Front coalition. While the AQI group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (hereafter ISIL), was officially excluded from the coalition, both organizations cooperate militarily and the military leader of the Islamic Front’s own forces have flown the Black Banner, a symbol strongly associated with Al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Islamic Front has also explicitly rejected the Geneva II peace talks, in line with Saudi Arabia’s wishes for the Syrian conflict.

It is also believed that a large number of the ISIL fighters in Syria are in fact from Iraq. Thus the possibility is that increasing levels of violence in Syria will inevitably involve Iraq, with the decisive difference between ISIL-aligned factions and those of the Islamic Front being their attitude towards Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia maintains a steadfast and vocal policy of opposition to Al-Qaeda as an international actor, while for its part Al-Qaeda continues to denounce the House of Saud as corrupt and irreligious. However, some analysts believe the relationship between them may be more complex than simple adversarial animosity. In particular, despite the vocal condemnations of many Saudi officials, some have wondered if ISIL forces in Syria were receiving support from the Saudi state, given the relative ineffectiveness of the Free Syrian Army and the fragmented nature of the Islamist opposition not affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Given the formation of the Islamic Front, it seems likely that Saudi Arabia is attempting to create a bulwark against a possible ISIL-led dissolution of the Syrian state, backing more “moderate” Sunni radicals who do not share Al-Qaeda’s ideological hostility towards Saudi Arabia, while still allowing it to pursue maximalist policies of state disintegration against Iranian allies in the region.

Thus we would expect in the case of Iraq, where armed Sunni networks and militias opposed to Al-Qaeda already exist, that Saudi Arabia would choose to back the Anbar tribal militias. This achieves the dual policy aims of both destabilising the Iraqi state while not allowing Sunni fundamentalists hostile to Saudi Arabia to take power. We would look in particular to Saudi Arabia trying to assert control over the Iraqi protest movement in predominantly Sunni regions of the country, to leverage political support for the Anbar militias and provide legitimacy in their dispute with the Iraqi government.

However, should the Anbar tribal militias come under sustained assault, either from the Iraqi state or from ISIL-sponsored militants, to such a degree that significantly degrades their ability to fight, it may well be that Saudi Arabia would be willing to temporarily embrace their activities. In the long-term, Saudi Arabia would look to less radical Sunni allies, but as a stop-gap measure the author believes they are willing to cooperate with ISIL when it comes to undermining the Iraqi state.

Thus far, there has been no evidence of Saudi involvement in Iraq’s sectarian fighting. However, Saudi Arabia has no faith in al-Maliki, as leaked US diplomatic cables show: “He expressed lingering doubt on the Iraqi government’s willingness to resist Iran. He also repeated his frequently voiced doubts about Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki himself by alluding to his ‘Iranian connections.’ The Saudi monarch stated that he does not trust al-Maliki because the Iraqi prime minister had ‘lied’ to him in the past by promising to take certain actions and then failing to do so. The King did not say precisely what these allegedly broken promises might have been. He repeated his oft heard view that al-Maliki rules Iraq on behalf of his Shiite sect instead of all Iraqis.”

Obviously, this policy would put Saudi Arabia in conflict with the United States, which has been supporting Al-Maliki’s security efforts against the resurgent AQI since US forces left the country. However, Saudi Arabia has been acting increasingly independent of the United States, citing its failure to deal with the Syria conflict as their main reason, though it is almost certainly the case that Saudi Arabia also fears US rapprochement with Iran.

Splits with the US could also be seen in Saudi Arabia’s backing of the coup in Egypt this summer. While the US had been cooperating, albeit uneasily, with the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, Saudi Arabia backed the military leadership and the coup they initiated. In addition to scaling back cooperation with US intelligence, Saudi diplomats have also been airing the idea that European powers, such as France or the UK, could take over the US’ role. This may account for France’s attempted “spoiler” role in recent Iranian negotiations.

Nevertheless, the implications are alarming. Saudi Arabia, as a major regional player, is more than willing to undergo a split with the United States in order to support its own policy of regional regime change. The situation in Iraq will need to be closely monitored as, if the past is any guide, it seems very likely that Saudi Arabia will attempt to manipulate the conflict to its own benefit – and against the interests of the United States.

Marc Simms is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com

The article Iraq: The Next Strain On US-Saudi Arabia Relations? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Iran Review

Interview with Gholamali Khoshroo
Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Islam

Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon on Monday rescinded a previous invitation he had extended to Iran for participation in the forthcoming Geneva II conference on Syria, noting that the conference will be held in the absence of the Islamic Republic. The announcement came after Tehran clearly indicated that it will not support the communiqué that was adopted at the end of the Geneva I conference in June 2012. At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed regret over the UN secretary-general’s measure for withdrawing its invitation for Iran to take part in the Geneva II conference, which is apparently aimed at finding a final solution to the ongoing crisis in Syria. The measure came despite a previous announcement by the secretary-general in which he claimed that the Iranian officials had accepted decisions made in Geneva I conference and, therefore, an official invitation for the participation in the Geneva II conference had been extended to Tehran. However, the Iranian officials moved fast to deny those remarks. At the same time, the foreign-backed opposition groups in Syria set a deadline for the secretary-general to rescind his invitation to Iran and this is why many analysts believe that the latest decision by the UN chief has been made under pressure from the United States and the Syrian opposition groups. At the same time, news services reported that although the incumbent Syrian government has announced that it will send its representative to Geneva II conference, the Syrian government has not officially accepted the Geneva I communiqué which clearly speaks about the necessity for the establishment of a transitional government in Syria and the need for the Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down. The Geneva II conference opens on January 22, 2014, though it is quite difficult to predict its final result due to the wide gaps that exist among its participants and the conflicting positions they have already adopted. The Syrian opposition groups have explicitly noted that they will not accept any solution to the Syria crisis which would not have the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s government as a component. On the other hand, the Syrian government has been insisting on the solution proposed by Bashar Assad which includes total disarmament of the opposition groups and holding elections under the oversight of his government. In view of the above facts, such issues as the main reason(s) behind inviting Iran to the Geneva II confab and later withdrawal of that invitation by the UN secretary-general, factors influencing this development, and the future outlook of Geneva II conference in the absence of the Islamic Republic of Iran have been discussed with Gholamali Khoshroo, the former Iranian deputy foreign minister for international affairs. The complete text of the interview follows.

Q: A few days ago, Mr. Ban Ki-moon claimed that in a phone call with Mr. Zarif, the latter had told him that Iran had accepted the decisions made in Geneva I conference on Syria and, therefore, he had extended an official invitation to the Islamic Republic for participation in the Geneva II conference on the crisis in the Arab country. However, after his remarks were rejected by the Iranian officials, his spokesperson told reporters that Ban Ki-moon has decided to exclude Iran from the two-day conference that will open in the Swiss town of Montreux. He mentioned Iran’s insistence on rejecting the Geneva I communiqué as the main reason behind Ban’s decision. Some sources have noted that Ban Ki-moon has made the decision to rescind his invitation to Tehran under tremendous pressure from different quarters despite the fact that he was a supporter of Iran’s participation in the event. Is this true that external pressures have been behind Ban’s decision or other factors have been at work as well?

A: It was a totally rational decision to organize an international conference on the situation in Syria and invite Iran to take part in the event which is aimed at finding a regional solution to the Syria crisis. However, it was not rational to both invite Iran, and set preconditions for the Islamic Republic’s participation in the event because the international community does not approve of such behavior. When a country seems eager to take part in a conference, it will make sense to set preconditions for its participation. Now, when for any reason – including not being invited or not being in agreement with the conference – Iran has not been a party to Geneva I conference, what does it mean to expect the country to concede to decisions, which have been made without its agreement and whose contents are not acceptable to it? This is a totally irrational expectation. At the same time, there are many viewpoints and interpretations on the Geneva I conference. The viewpoints of Russia and the United States on that conference are different. It is not clear whether the proposed transitional government will also include the incumbent president or not? Let’s assume that the Geneva I conference’s communiqué has pushed for the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s government. Now, at a time that a military solution for the Syria crisis has hit a dead-end and has been practically a catastrophe – in that it has only fueled armed conflicts, growth of terrorism and extremism, and the possibility of foreign intervention in the Arab country – they have decided to come together in the Geneva II conference in order to find a political solution to the crisis. All these factors have turned the Syria crisis into a human crisis as a result of which millions of people have been displaced and are being threatened by hunger, cold weather, and famine. They have destroyed the economic infrastructure of the country without having achieved the favorable result they were looking for. How come that despite all the havoc that they have wreaked on the country without achieving their desirable result, they have decided to come together in a meeting to announce that Assad must step down?

Q: After the UN secretary-general declared that he had officially invited Iran to take part in the meeting, we witnessed a sharp reaction from the opposition groups in Syria that set a deadline for the UN, noting that the world body should withdraw its invitation for Iran or they will not take part in the conference. Do you think that deadline was effective in making Ban rescind his invitation?

A: Opposition groups in Syria are affiliated to different countries and are supplied with money and weapons by those countries. These groups and the countries that support them are pursuing their own specific interests. During the past three years, they did their utmost to make Assad give up the power. [They took every measure] from waging outright war to conducting terrorist operations and even infiltrating the country’s security and defense meetings. However, their take on the real situation in Syria has been proven wrong. They wanted to goad NATO to militarily intervene in Syria and repeat the Libya model in another Arab country, but they failed. They also wanted to implement the model which had been previously experienced in Egypt or Tunisia, but they lacked the Syrian people’s support. Even the model applied to Yemen was not effective in Syria. The government of Turkey, on the other hand, was following another model reminiscent of the political changes that had taken place many years ago in Kosovo or Serbia. This means Ankara was trying to convince NATO to take unilateral action by deploying its troops to Syria without waiting for the approval of the United Nations Security Council. However, Turkey’s efforts were also rendered vain as a result of the strong resistance from Russia and China. On the other hand, anti-Syria countries embarked on sending Takfiri and terrorist groups into Syria, but this measure also failed. So, [after so many failures in Syria,] why they are still setting conditions [for participation of involved parties in the Geneva II conference]? These countries [that are against Syria] must get back to a political solution. I believe that the Geneva II conference should have multiple focuses. Firstly, [it should focus on the fact that] a political process in Syria [for ending the ongoing crisis] should be based on people’s votes and democratic mechanisms. The requisite for this is to establish truce and peace in the country. The truce should be both between the Syrian government and the opposition groups, and among various opposition groups as well. It is not clear how many groups, and under what names, are currently operating in Syria. There are even armed opposition groups that do not recognize the authority of those people who take part in the Geneva conferences as representatives of the opposition and do not accept their decisions. Nobody should deliver arms or any other kind of aid to terrorists in Syria. On the other hand, foreign intervention in Syria should be stopped in order to make way for the reconstruction efforts to get under way in the Arab country. At the same time, a solution should be found for the Syrian refugees and asylum seekers to get back to their homes. All residential areas should be spared in all kinds of conflicts. On the whole, the international community should help with efforts that are aimed at reconstructing Syria, instead of infusing terrorist groups operating in the country with financial resources and weapons. On the other hand, such regional countries as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar should stop their intervention in Syria’s internal affairs and own up to the mistake they have made with regard to the strategic game in Syria. They assumed that the Syrian government will fall in a matter of two or three months and they will be able to prevent further increase in Iran’s regional influence by expanding their own influence. However, they failed to achieve that goal.

Q: Have all the countries invited to the Geneva II conference already accepted the Geneva I conference’s communiqué? Many of these countries have not been informed of the decisions made in that conference and have not even attended it. Do all of them seek regime change in Syria, or will take part in the Geneva II conference in a bid to help with the reconstruction of the country which is quite necessary due to the huge damages that have been done to its infrastructure?

A: No. They had based their assumptions and agenda on the regime change in Syria. There are two categories of opposition groups that are taking part in these conferences. Some groups are seeking regime change in Syria while others simply follow in the footsteps of the former groups. The first category of groups, which seeks regime change in the country, is actually trying to change power equations in the entire region. Their ultimate goal is to expand their own sphere of influence in the region while cutting off Iran’s contact with the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. Their second goal is to cut the relations between Iraq and Syria and, on the whole, undermine the entire resistance front in the Middle East region. The second category of Syria opposition groups, which follows suit with the first category, includes those opposition groups that simply take steps only after opposition groups in the first category have taken a specific measure. Without exaggeration, more than 100 meetings have been so far held on Syria in such countries as Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia. During the first meeting, the representative of the Saudi government left the meeting in protest and told other participants that instead of sitting and talking, they should send arms to the opposition forces that were fighting against the Syrian government. That attitude and viewpoint has now evolved into a major strategic color blindness for anti-Syrian countries in the region. They are now caught in a dire situation. Other countries that are taking part in the Syria conference are either not very important, or do not care much about what is going on in the conference. In the meantime, the issue of Syria is really important to such countries as Iran, Russia, China, Iraq and Lebanon. The certain point is that the UN Security Council should not repeat in Syria the same mistake that it made in the case of Libya. It allowed foreign military forces to enter Libya conflict on grounds of supplying humanitarian aid to the country and then they destroyed the entire Libyan army. Now, the North African country is under the control of terrorist groups. At present, certain Libyan tribes are training terrorists in special bases before sending them to Syria. Before long, they will be sending those terrorists to European countries as well. In this way, the Western states made their biggest mistake in Libya. At the moment, Syria has turned into a breeding ground for extremism and Takfiri groups. Therefore, every effort should be made to prevent the wave of sectarian violence that has primarily targeted Shia Muslims in the region. At the present time, the entire region is grappling with a crisis of extremism and Iran can play a very effective role in this regard. Iran is a stable and secure country which can help to establish peace, security and stability across the region. Iran is taking a very basic stance on these issues and if the opposite side is willing to avail itself of Iran’s effective role, it should first own up to the strategic mistake it has made.

Q: Despite the fact that all governments, including Russia and even the United States and the United Nations, have underlined the importance of Iran’s role in finding a solution to Syria crisis, why preconditions are set and opposition is shown to Iran’s presence in Geneva II conference?

A: The main problem is the absence of a single voice among them, and the fact that every one of them pursues their own specific interests. Saudi Arabia is doing its utmost to bring about the overthrow of Assad’s government in any possible way in order to expand its influence in Syria. Riyadh, in its bid, only thinks about a military solution while everybody knows that the approach taken by Saudi Arabia will lead to a global crisis if terrorist groups manage to win control over Syria. These groups are much more dangerous than terrorist groups that snatched the political power in Afghanistan. The region is still grappling with the consequences of the war in Afghanistan. These groups may even return to Saudi Arabia, or move into European countries and create very dangerous terrorist groups in Europe. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia is treading a wrong path and its current attitude toward Iran is totally hostile. That attitude should change. The course of events in the region should change from one of war and bloodshed to increased cooperation and interaction. The processes that have led to the spread of Shiaphobia and Iranophobia in the region and the world should be stopped. I believe that Iran shoulders a crucial responsibility for getting closer to Arabs and should get closer to regional Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, should give up its Takfiri policies. Saudi Arabia is an established and independent government and should not act like a Takfiri terrorist group.

Q: Since Bashar Assad has announced that he is ready to take such steps as releasing the prisoners, declaring cease-fire and paving the way for humanitarian aid to be delivered to his people, why the opposite parties are not ready to engage in negotiations to find a political solution for the crisis?

A: The first step is for countries taking part in the Geneva II conference to become committed to finding a political solution to Syria crisis. These countries should note that a military solution will only lead to the destruction of the country and its people and will have no other result but to deal serious blows to Islam and the national interests of an independent country. Therefore, they should put a leash on terrorism and do not allow foreign terrorists to enter Syria. At the same time, measures should be taken to stop both the intervention of foreign states in Syria, and operations by terrorist groups in that country. The United Nations has good experience in the area of peacekeeping and establishment of peace. [The UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria] Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi is a very experienced and seasoned diplomat and can find ways for the release of prisoners, the return of refugees to their country, and the initiation of the democratic process in Syria. The Geneva II conference can take emergency measures to resolve such issues as the situation of prisoners and those injured in the armed conflicts, while finding ways to help the Syrian people and do away with the shortage of foodstuff and famine in the country. The new presidential elections in Syria are expected in less than five months. In the meantime, a political solution should be found to the Syria crisis and the country should be helped to get out of the dire straits in which it is currently caught. Every military process should be complemented by a political process.

Q: At the beginning of the Syria crisis, some European countries like Britain and Germany insisted that the entire government of Syria should change. However, by and by, they have modified their stances and now believe that they can accept the current Syrian government and cooperate with Assad, though after some slight changes are made to the power structure in the country. This new stance has its root in previous experiences which have clearly proved that putschist measures taken to change an entire hierarchy of power in a country have generally failed to produce positive results. The current situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia are tangible examples of this reality. Now, why some countries like Saudi Arabia still insist on their position that the entire Syrian government should change in defiance of such tangible experiences?

A: This is a failed project. The Americans are, for the time being, following on the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, though they may actually have different viewpoints on the situation in Syria. The American officials have admitted that they are currently confused about the situation in the Middle East. They have already failed to establish peace between Palestinians and Israel and have been also unable of having a correct political understanding of the overall situation in the region as well as the ongoing developments in Yemen and Egypt. If they are really planning to go ahead with the democratic process, they have to take advantage of democratic means. For example, they cannot instigate the military in Egypt to come into the streets, suppress the popular protests, hold a referendum under the threat of tanks, and then expect the same people to accept a military commander as their new president. Such measures have been already taken in, for example, Afghanistan and have led to deplorable results. The United States should return to the recognized conventional principles of international law, which include fighting against the violence, occupationism and foreign intervention. It is reminiscent of the law of the jungle that a few neighboring countries would reach the conclusion that they do not like a specific country and then deploy forces to that country in order to change its government. Saudi Arabia is spending a lot of money, but did all the money it spent on stoking unrest in Iraq bear any fruit? Did the investment it made to bring Taliban to power [in Afghanistan] produce any good results? Saudi Arabia has been practically behind all military, political and security crises and challenges in the region and in all cases, it has been the main loser as well. As a result of the strategic relations that the United States has with Saudi Arabia, Washington is, for the time being, following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia.

Q: Now that the UN has rescinded its invitation for Iran and in view of Mr. Lavrov’s remarks that the absence of Iran [in the Geneva II conference] is a mistake, how do you predict the final result of the conference?

A: I don’t believe that the Geneva II conference is as important as mass media claim to be. This is just a meeting like hundreds of other meetings that have been held so far without reaching a conclusive result. What was the importance of previous meetings [on Syria] which were held in Tunisia or Egypt? Apart from making the situation in Syria more complicated, what has been the result of all other meetings that have been held so far? [This meeting will not be useful] unless the participants in the conference change their approaches and attach more importance to a political solution for Syria. Perhaps, Russia and Syria will be ready to follow this issue on the basis of a political solution, or perhaps [the anti-Syria countries] have become tired with the bloodshed in the country. It is even possible that the issue of terrorism and its growth in the Middle East region will be discussed as an imminent threat to the Western countries. Perhaps, the situation of Syrian refugees has wrenched the heart of the international community. If, in this meeting, all the participants reach conclusive solutions for these issues and decide to act on the basis of a political solution, then Iran will be able to offer its constructive help to them regardless of presence or absence of Tehran in the conference. Also, the countries that have sent terrorist forces and stoked conflict in Syria should be held to account. Here is a crucial question: Has Saudi Arabia taken Syria to the point where it is now, just for the sole purpose of promoting democracy in that country?

*Gholamali Khoshroo is the Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Islam and Former Deputy Foreign Minister for legal and International Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran (2002-2005). Khoshroo is assistant of President Khatami on “Alliance of civilizations” and Dialogue among Civilizations”. He has served as the Dean of the School for International Relations (1983-89); Ambassador to the United Nations (19890-95); Deputy Foreign Minister for Research and Education,  Member of OIC Commission of Eminent Persons on “Enlightened Moderation”. In recent years, he has extensively worked on the development of contemporary political Islam and its implication for western societies. As a sociologist he studied at Tehran University and New School for Social Research, New York, He has published several articles and books on political and cultural affairs.

Source: Iranian Diplomacy (IRD)
http://www.irdiplomacy.ir/
Translated By: Iran Review.Org

The article Iran’s Opponents In Syria Case Suffer From Strategic Color Blindness – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Monish Gulati

The Indian debate on Afghanistan, particularly on issues post-2014, has centred on security concerns regarding influx of militants from Afghanistan into Kashmir, the Pakistani agenda in Kabul, opening of an alternate trade route with Afghanistan through the Iranian port of Chabahar, India’s development programmes and economic cooperation with Afghanistan, and the more contentious issue of providing military aid to the Afghan defence forces. The last subject is stirred up periodically during the frequent visits of the Afghan president to India.

In Afghanistan, besides the flux over the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections, President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US, essential to ensure sufficient US military presence in Afghanistan after 2014, has further heightened the uncertainty over some key determinants of Afghanistan’s future.

In Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), an al-Qaeda affiliate, has been increasing its presence in the country’s Anbar province, and early this month captured positions in Ramadi and Fallujah. Liberated from al-Qaeda in 2004 at a cost of 122 US deaths, Fallujah is 65 km west of Baghdad in the vast Sunni-dominated and largely desert province of Anbar, which borders Syria. This development is the most serious challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government since the departure of the US forces two years ago after Maliki failed to sign the BSA between the two countries. Iraqi government troops have since surrounded Fallujah and Maliki has made an appeal for international support saying that failure to counter ISIS would lead to “the creation of evil state-lets that would wreak havoc with security in the region and the world”.

The situation in Iraq is catching the analyst’s attention as the unfolding developments are similar to some of the likely scenarios predicted for Afghanistan post-2014. Specifically, these could provide tangible pointers to the fate that might befall Afghanistan due to a resurgent al-Qaeda, in the eventuality that the BSA is not signed and the US exercises the ‘zero option’ to completely pull out from the country post 2014. Indian analysts would be particularly interested to see how US responds to the current situation in Iraq and negotiates the option of military aid, including air support assets, given the tenuous regional dynamics of the Middle East post the Iran nuclear deal.

Situation in Iraq

Analysts attribute the situation in Iraq largely to the government’s vengeful style of politics which has targeted the Sunni minority. The government has also reneged on its promise to pay the Sunni tribal militias that the US had mobilized in 2007 and 2008 to battle al-Qaeda in Fallujah and other areas of Anbar province.

Also causing concern to the US on the situation in Iraq is Tehran’s willingness to step in and send military equipment and advisers on Baghdad’s request. It is felt that any direct Iranian assistance to Iraq has the potential to exacerbate sectarian tensions in the country, as Iraqi Sunnis accuse Tehran of backing the government’s repressive policies against them.

As part of its response the US has sought to accelerate the deliveries of US military equipment, comprising missiles and surveillance drones, to increase the Iraqi military’s capacity for robust surveillance and intelligence capability as they counter the al-Qaida. The US is providing shipments of 100 AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, as well as aerostat balloons, 10 ScanEagle and 48 Raven drones to Iraq.

Iraq has also sought to purchase an unspecified number of Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the US. However, analysts feel that the Apaches cannot help Iraq in the current conflict against al-Qaeda as it would take years to absorb and field these helicopters, even if their delivery was expedited. Having equipment is not the same as being able to use it effectively. The counter view is that sending the helicopters now would be an indication of increasing US support and influence.

Amongst the other issues that the US government is considering is the possible use of these helicopters against the Iraqi government’s political opponents, including attacks on the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that found refuge in Iraq. Baghdad has sought to push back Kurdish control in areas disputed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). It is also felt that the Apache sale may cause the Sunni community to become less willing to help in the fight against al-Qaeda. US is therefore evaluating the impact of its arms sales on all possible interest groups and eliminating the possibility of further aggravating the situation.

The US is also factoring in the likely regional consequences of its arms sale. One being that Sunni-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia could perceive the arms sales as an indication that Washington is favouring Shiites; on the other hand, Tehran could interpret the same as a sign of US strategic realignment toward the Shiite axis. This could also result in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies pursuing policies such as arming and funding of radical groups in Syria. US would like its Sunni allies in the Middle East to view its strategy as balanced and neutral. According to latest reports, US has decided to withhold its sales of attack helicopters to Iraq for the time being.

India in arriving at a decision to provide military aid could face similar challenges of sectarianism, tribal/ethnic factionalism, Islamist extremism and competing interest of neighbours in the Afghanistan post-2014.

Indian Position

India though appears to have arrived at some sort of position, at least for now, on the issue of left over US military equipment in Afghanistan. According to media reports, India has asked the US not to leave combat force multipliers, like night vision devices, mine protected vehicles etc, after it exits Afghanistan this year on the concerns that these might fall into the hands of Taliban and eventually Pakistan. The Indian apprehension over US hardware had been raised by National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, and Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh with their counterparts.

To that end US Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asia and Pacific Security Affairs, Peter Lavoy, who was in India recently, has reportedly assured that US will not leave behind heavy weaponry and ammunition during its drawdown from Afghanistan. There has also been concern of Pakistan passing on captured high-tech US weaponry to China. India has impressed upon Washington that Afghanistan National Army (ANA) should be equipped suitably for counter-terrorist tasks only and not with high lethality weapons which are more suited to conventional war making.

This report brings some clarity to the Indian position on the issue, and at the same time it closes the loop with what many analysts believe is Pakistan’s stand on US supply of lethal equipment to the ANA. In the past few years, Pakistani and Afghan armies have engaged in short but sharp skirmishes along the border and Pakistan has its expressed reservations on US equipment supplied to the ANA being used against Pakistani soldiers.

While the current Indian stand on US equipment in Afghanistan is influenced by competing Indo-Pak interests in the region, the US dilemma in Iraq indicates that the decision to provide Indian military aid to Afghanistan post-2014 will be far more complex.

This article appeared at the South Asia Monitor and reprinted with permission.

The article Indian Military Aid To Afghanistan: Lessons From Iraq – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By VOA

News reports in Washington Thursday say an independent government panel is issuing a report that calls for an end to the National Security Agency’s program of collecting telephone records of millions of Americans.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, established by Congress as an independent agency, is said to have concluded NSA’s practices violate provisions of the U.S. Constitution that protect Americans’ free speech rights and prohibit any “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The government had no immediate comment on the accounts of the oversight board’s conclusions, which were reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers.

The board recommendation is likely to trigger a new round of debate over privacy and surveillance issues in the U.S., even after President Barack Obama’s announcement last week of new, tightened guidelines for the super-secret NSA’s data collection. Media accounts said the oversight board voted 3-2 on the main conclusions of its lengthy report.

Obama said he consulted with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, along with a separate review group he established, before deciding on his high-profile public statement about NSA practices. While saying he wanted to find a way to end the government’s collection of bulk data files measuring telephone calls by millions of Americans, the president added that he believes the program’s basic capabilities should be preserved.

The fact that NSA has been gathering enormous quantities of telephone records – supposedly not the contents of conversations, but the access numbers involved and the duration and timing of calls – was revealed last year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden copied millions of secret documents and began releasing them to news media.

Snowden, the target of U.S. prosecutors, is now living in exile in Russia.

Underpinning the U.S. intelligency community’s defense of its data-collection tactics is an intepretation of the Patriot Act, legislation Congress passed in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, that grants investigators sweeping powers in cases involving national security matters. According to version of the oversight board’s report leaked in advance, the data-collection program NSA began “lacks a viable legal foundation … raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value.”

The article US Privacy Panel: NSA Phone Data Tracking Illegal appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By RT

The US Justice Department charged the government’s biggest security background-checking agency of wasting millions of dollars by filing over 660,000 flawed audits on people who would eventually have access to state secrets.

The Justice Department filed a 25-page civil complaint against US Investigations Services LLC, alleging that between March 2008 and September 2012, the private firm “flushed” some 665,000 cases of flawed security checks into the pipeline of numerous federal agencies, including the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency (NSA), thereby possibly opening the door to serious breaches of state security.

The USIS, which employs some 6,000 workers, handles roughly 45 percent of the government’s security checks on potential new hires. It is responsible for some 2.2 million background checks, including that of former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In 2008, USIS developed a program called ‘Blue Zone’ that allowed it to forward cases to specific government agencies even if they hadn’t completed a comprehensive review process as required by their contract, the complaint said.

“Flushed everything like a dead goldfish,” one USIS official joked to the company’s top quality control officials in 2010, according to the Justice Department complaint, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In another internal communication, dated December 27, 2010, an unidentified employee discusses with the company’s director of National Quality Assurance and Quality Control Manager about the “backlog” of work, while discussing a non-work-related topic.

“Scalping tickets for Dick Clark’s Dumpin’ New Year’s Eve!…Who needs 2?” the USIS employee wrote in an email. “Have a bit of a backlog building, but fortunately, most people are off this week so no one will notice!”

About 90 percent of the company’s contracts originate from the US government, which has provided USIS with more than $4 billion in federal work, according to contracting records.

The prosecution’s complaint also mentioned the company’s “fraudulent scheme” to win about $12 million in bonuses from the federal government, which believed USIS was providing legitimate background security checks on potential new hires.

Probably the most famous person to receive a background security clearance by USIS has been Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked classified files on the government’s extensive PRISM surveillance program to journalist Glenn Greenwald, formerly of the Guardian.

Snowden is living at an undisclosed location in Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum.

Although federal officials accused the USIS of performing a flawed background check on Snowden in 2011, USIS officials have defended their work, saying government officials did not mention any irregularities at the time the review was released.

In a statement unrelated to the Snowden case, USIS said that “integrity and excellence are core values” at the company.

“The alleged conduct referenced in the civil complaint is contrary to our values and commitment to exceptional service,” USIS said. “These allegations relate to a small group of individuals over a specific period of time and are inconsistent with the strong service record we have earned since our inception in 1996.”

USIS also did a 2007 security background check on Aaron Alexis, the defense contractor who went on a shooting rampage last September, killing 12 at the Washington Navy Yard before being killed in a gunfight with police.

In a separate lawsuit against USIS, whistleblower Blake Percival, a longtime employee at the company until he left in June 2011, accused the agency of pushing through unsatisfactorily reviewed background check case

The Justice Department had said last year it would join Percival’s lawsuit against the security background firm.

The article Snowden’s Background Security Firm Hit With Fraud Charges appeared first on Eurasia Review.