Turkey’s political system appeared to be sinking deeper into crisis on Tuesday, as nearly 70 police officers, some of them senior, were arrested for illegally wiretapping the telephones of senior government figures, including the Prime Minster and the intelligence chief. At least 67 members of the country’s police force were arrested in raids that took place on Tuesday all over Turkey, while warrants have reportedly been issued for over 100 people.

Many of the arrestees were seen being taken away in handcuffs by security personnel, including two former heads of Istanbul police’s counterterrorism unit. Hadi Salihoglu, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, said in a written statement issued on Tuesday that the suspects were part of a criminal conspiracy that had wiretapped phones belonging to Turkeys’ Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as Hakan Fidan, director of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, known as MİT.

Thousands of other phone lines had also been wiretapped, he added, belonging to journalists and government administrators, including judges and military officials. Salihoglu said the conspirators had concocted a fake police investigation of a made-up terrorist organization called Tevhid-Selam (Al-Quds Army, in English), in order to justify the wiretapping of the officials’ phone lines. However, critics of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s government noted that one of the police officers arrested on Tuesday is the former deputy chief of the Istanbul police department’s financial crimes unit, which earlier this year led an investigation into alleged corrupt practices by senior members of the Erdoğan cabinet.

The investigation led to the exposure of corrupt practices by several cabinet members and their families, and resulted in several ministerial resignations. A few months ago, a wiretapped conversation emerged in the media, in which Mr. Erdoğan can allegedly be heard discussing with his son how to hide large sums of money.

Some observers have expressed the view that the leaked telephone conversation between the two men emerged from the Tevhid-Selam investigation, which may be why Mr. Erdoğan has now decided to shut it down and arrest those behind it. Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Prime Minister said he was determined to prevent the establishment of a “state within a state”, referring to police and security forces who are historically loyal to Turkey’s secular political elite. Mr. Erdoğan represents the more conservative religious political elements in the country.

Tuesday’s arrests come a few weeks before the presidential election, in which Mr. Erdoğan is one of the candidates. In December of 2012 the Turkish Prime Minister had claimed that four unauthorized wiretapping devices had been detected in his parliamentary office and government car.

The post Turkey Arrests 70 Cops For Spying On Prime Minister appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Following yesterday’s rocket strike that resulted in most foreign airlines cancelling flights to Ben Gurion International Airport, the Israeli government says they let the rocket through without intercepting it because they could see it wasn’t going to hit the airport.

The Jerusalem Post reported:

Similarly to an incident last week, when a large chunk of shrapnel crashed through the roof a house in the Tel Aviv area, this strike was also in a run-down neighborhood of dilapidated houses.

It would appear that for low-income Israelis, their government doesn’t believe it’s worth the expense of firing Iron Dome missiles that may themselves be worth more than the houses likely to be destroyed. The government appears to have as little regard for the occupants of those houses.

“We knew about that rocket,” said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. “We were tracking it for about three minutes, our Air Force. We could have taken it down, but because we saw that it wasn’t going to hit inside the airport, we let it through.”

In an interview on CNN, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had just flown to Israel on El Al, said: “If you don’t feel safe here, I don’t know where you would feel safe.”

He also said: “If you have a standard [like the FAA is applying to Ben Gurion] you would close every airport in the United States. You’d close down every airline.”

Really?

Yehud, where the Hamas rocket struck yesterday, is on the north side of the airport. That means that during its descent, the rocket almost certainly passed within hundreds of feet of aircraft touching down, taking off, taxiing on the runway, or at their departure gates.

What Bloomberg is calling an “overreaction” by the FAA would by most people’s standards be a prudent and necessary response to what was in fact a very close call.

If what Mark Regev said is true — that the rocket was being tracked — then however effective Iron Dome might be when deployed, the judgement of its operators seems to be severely impaired.

Meanwhile, when Bloomberg claims that Israel is the safest country in the world, how does that square with the repeated claims that Israelis are living in an intolerable situation?

It would appear that what really worries Israel more than Hamas is a hit to the economy and a dip in tourism.

Everybody seems comfortable, everybody thinks they are well protected by a army and an air force that knows how to fight and is out there trying to protect them. And when they walk down the streets and they send their kids to school and they go to the parks, when they get to a concert, they feel safe.

Who cares about the rockets? Just don’t shut down the airport.

The post Israel Air Force Didn’t See Any Need To Protect Tel Aviv Suburb From Rocket Strike – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Following up on my nationally syndicated column on the pending re-authorization of the Export-Import Bank (“Let the Ex-Im Bank Fail”), the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives issued a press release on July 21, 2014, stating that

“Two of the four Russian firms targeted with new sanctions announced last week by the Obama administration have received more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer-financed subsidies from the Export-Import Bank.Vnesheconombank (VEB) and Gazprombank—two state-owned Russian banks—have together received more than $1 billion in Ex-Im financing since 2003.

“Here are the deal details: In 2003, Gazprombank received a five-year loan guarantee worth $22.6 million from Ex-Im. VEB alone has received over $1 billion in Ex-Im backed loan guarantees. This includes a $496 million loan guarantee in 2012 and a $703 million loan guarantee in 2014.

“The sanctions do not apply to these existing arrangements, ‘meaning Ex-Im is under no obligation to cancel previous deals it has with either company’, according to one report.”

So, in addition to financing the exports of Boeing, Merck, Caterpillar and other very large domestic corporations, which hardly need taxpayer subsidies to sell overseas, the Ex-Im Bank also is financing purchases of U.S. goods by buyers located in countries increasingly hostile to American interests.

Free and unfettered international trade is the path to peaceable relations with the rest of the world. (Can anyone think of a benefit from the longstanding embargo of Cuba that possibly offsets the harm suffered by U.S. cigar smokers?) But, the Ex-Im Bank should not be a subsidizer of Vladimir Putin’s Russian-centric geopolitical strategy to bring the Ukraine under his hegemony.

The Kremlin, it turns out, is funneling money to environmental activist groups in Europe to stop or delay the introduction of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking” is a U.S. technology) in order to keep Europeans dependent on Russian natural gas. In that respect, at least, the Ex-Im Bank and the KGB’s successors seem to be on the same page (see my column in Forbes here).

If a better reason exists for ending the crony capitalism of the Ex-Im Bank on or before the current fiscal year expires on September 30, I cannot think of one.

The post Your Tax Dollars At Work At The Ex-Im Bank – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By John Feffer

The most bizarre conspiracy theory surrounding the recent downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine comes from a leading pro-Russian separatist, Igor Girkin.

Relying on second-hand information, Girkin asserted that many of the passengers from the crash had already been dead before the plane had even taken off. His underlings had reported to him that the bodies were badly decomposed and drained of blood. This, of course, was news to all the families of the victims who’d seen off their loved ones at the airport in Amsterdam.

The separatists have denied responsibility for shooting down the plane and have pinned the crime instead on the Ukrainian government. Until recently, the rebels restricted access to the crash scene and the bodies, which gave them ample opportunities to tamper with the evidence—such as sawing the cockpit in half and lugging away pieces of the plane. Now that the bodies are in the hands of outside investigators, presumably the rebels have moved on to more plausible exculpatory explanations.

The United States, meanwhile, argues that it has conclusive proof that the rebels not only shot down the plane but also gloated over their success on social media (before deleting the posts). Moreover, Washington argues that Moscow is ultimately responsible for the disaster because it gave the separatists the surface-to-air missile system in the first place.

Russia denies delivery of the Buk missile system and has claimed that a Ukrainian fighter jet was near the civilian airplane shortly before it was hit. The problem with the latter claim is that the fighter jet that Moscow asserts was trailing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17—a Ukrainian SU-25—couldn’t actually reach that particular altitude and doesn’t have the weaponry onboard capable of taking down a plane 10,000 feet further above.

The Ukrainian government has denied having any missile batteries within firing range of the flight that day. But, strangely, Ukraine didn’t completely shut down the airspace over the disputed territory and direct traffic to safer routes. It was permitting overflights above 32,000 feet, and Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was cruising at an altitude of 33,000.

Moreover, as Russ Wellen points out in the FPIF blog Focal Points, the Ukrainian government knew that the rebels possessed the capacity to bring down planes that high up, and yet Ukrainian air traffic controllers rejected a request from MH17 to fly 2,000 feet higher. Was the government in Kiev guilty of poor judgment, or was some darker motive at play?

Unless a plane completely disappears—a truly unlikely scenario until it happened to another Malaysian airliner back in March—it’s usually possible to get to the bottom of air disasters with the help of black box recordings, satellite data, and the scraps of wreckage. But it takes time to sift through the evidence. And during that time, all manner of wild speculation can take place.

Sometimes that speculation is idle and produces only flame wars on the Internet. But sometimes it can lead to a very dangerous escalation in tensions between armed combatants.

I was returning to college in 1983 when news broke that the Soviet Union had shot down Korean passenger jet KAL 007, killing all 269 people on board. For a couple days in early September, the campus worried that this tragic incident would spark something even worse: a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan had been rapidly escalating his anti-Soviet rhetoric. Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov, directing Soviet policy from his hospital bed by that point, was firmly convinced that Reagan was planning a first nuclear strike. Indeed, a false alarm later that September—Soviet satellite sensors had mistaken high-altitude clouds for incoming nuclear missiles—nearly triggered a Soviet launch. Only a single quick-thinking lieutenant colonel in Soviet military intelligence saved the world from nuclear annihilation.

There were plenty of rumors back in 1983 about KAL 007. The jet had veered more than 200 miles off course to enter Soviet airspace, so perhaps it was gathering intelligence for the CIA or testing Soviet air defenses. Or maybe the Soviets deliberately downed the airliner knowing that it was a civilian craft. You can still find conspiracy theories on the Internet claiming that the airplane was never shot down in the first place and the Soviets had taken all the passengers into custody (obviously some people have watched too many Lost episodes).

After a number of exhaustive investigations, including an analysis of the black box recordings, the shooting down of KAL 007 turns out to have been the result of error, misinterpretation, and incompetence.

Five years later, it was the United States’ turn to engage in criminal negligence when the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board. The Iranian government used language very similar to Reagan’s in 1983, calling the attack a “massacre” and an “atrocity.” The United States denied that the attack was deliberate. It eventually paid reparations to Iran and expressed regret for the incident, though it did not issue a formal apology. Here, too, it appears that errors of judgment determined the tragic outcome. The evidence that the Iranian plane was civilian should have been clear to the U.S. warship, but the chain of command was apparently so convinced that it was dealing with a military target that it ignored all contrary indicators.

In this case, however, the Airbus disaster didn’t escalate the war between Iran and Iraq (in which the United States had intervened on the side of the latter). Within two weeks of the downing of the plane, Iran signed a UN ceasefire. The eight-year struggle was over within the next two months.

The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 can produce either of these results. It can serve as a wake-up call to the combatants that, because their actions are resulting in inexcusable civilian casualties, they should negotiate an immediate truce. Or it can lead to the most serious escalation in tensions between Moscow and Washington since 1983.

Back in the early 1980s, the United States was convinced that the Soviet Union was fomenting instability in an “arc of crisis” that stretched from the Horn of Africa to South Asia. Moscow, or so Washington asserted, was bent on seizing a warm-water port, securing access to Middle East oil, and picking up allies in its Cold War competition with the United States.

It was yet another example of Washington overestimating Moscow. Certainly the Soviet Union wanted the region along its vast borders to be friendly. But there was no secret plan for Eurasian dominance. The Soviet Union was acting more out of weakness than strength when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Its rash intervention was not the beginning of a neo-imperial surge to the south, but the beginning of the end for the overextended Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea and involvement in eastern Ukraine—taken alongside Russia’s encouragement of separatists in Georgia and Moldova and its support for Assad in Syria—might look like a sequel to the arc of crisis. And indeed some on the right are dusting off some of the language from this period. But Putin’s ambitions are circumscribed. He is not interested in reconstituting the Soviet Union, much less the former Soviet sphere of influence incorporating Eastern Europe and client states elsewhere in the world.

At most, Putin wants to recreate a greater Russia, which involves some swathes of the “near abroad.” But even that plan has its limits. Latvia and Estonia, where there are large numbers of ethnic Russians, are both firmly in the EU and NATO. Kazakhstan, home to the second largest number of Russians outside of Russia, has already proposed new laws criminalizing separatist rhetoric. And given the sheer incompetence of his Donbas allies, Ukraine may well turn into Putin’s Afghanistan.

What Putin has done so far in Ukraine is inexcusable. But it’s not part of a plan for global or even regional domination.

All of which is to say that the United States should not overreact to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. This should be an opportunity for Washington and Moscow to work together on investigating the tragedy, which Putin has agreed to do. This is a chance for the combatants to lay down their arms, which Putin has also urged.

Yes, sometimes Moscow’s words and deeds do not match, but Washington suffers from flare-ups of the same disease. Before this war in Ukraine claims more victims and sends U.S.-Russian relations into a deep freeze, both Obama and Putin need to realize that both sides benefit a great deal more from cooperation than confrontation.

A full reset in U.S.-Russian relations is obviously not in the offing. But returning to the status quo ante that existed before the change of government in Ukraine would at least prevent a replay of those perilous scenarios of 1983.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.

The post MH17: Cold War Replay? – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Amit Saksena

On 1 January 2014, the flag of the newly sanctioned XVII Corps was hoisted at its interim headquarters in Ranchi, which kick-started the process of fielding a credible Indian deterrent force on the Northeastern front, from Arunachal Pradesh to Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir. In a largely Pakistan-centric architecture of troop distribution, this Mountain Strike Corps (MSC) is the first China-oriented offensive formation to be deployed by India. However, based on the Indian experience in weapon procurement, as well as the disjointed collaboration between auxiliary agencies, the viability of this endeavour is doubtful. The feasibility of playing catch-up, at the expense of modernisation and strategic development on other fronts, must be validated by the Government of India.

Fiscal Constraints

Monetary apprehension is a very strong factor against the operationalisation of this corps, and an analysis of the 2014-15 defense budget validate these concerns. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has reportedly commissioned a massive INR 64,000 crore over the next 7 financial years to float the MSC. This fund will cover all the major expenses of the project, from infrastructure to recruitment and logistical expenditure of the additional 80,000 troops that the Army intends to commit to this corps. With an alarmingly high revenue expenditure (almost 82 per cent) vis-à-vis its existing force of 12,00,000 troops, the addition of a further 80,000 troops will send the fiscal budget through the ceiling. Out of the INR 73,444 crore capital allocation for the three forces, 96 per cent has already been earmarked for installments on previous purchases, leaving a meager INR 2955 crore free for new acquisitions. Compared to the annualINR 8,000 crore needed to float the MSC, there is no overt indication of where the rest of the money is coming from.

Logistical Development and Topographical Constraints

Till very recently, one of the major stumbling blocks in military infrastructure development along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has been the delay in environmental clearance. This project will require close collaboration between the Ministries of Finance and Environment, the Border Roads Organisation, and the Indian Army and Air Force (IAF). It should be noted that China presently fields five fully-operational airbases, an extensive rail network and over 58,000 km of roads in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). This allows Beijing to move over 30 divisions (each with over 15,000 soldiers) to the LAC, outnumbering Indian forces by at least 3:1.

In addition to the roads, the Army and the Air Force will require credible contractors to take on the task of building and developing military-centric installments in the region. High-altitude bases for light and stationary artillery, barracks for troops, ammunition, intelligence and logistics nodes, and training centres will have to be developed. The inhospitable weather conditions in which contractors may be unwilling to work can prove to be a serious roadblock. For instance, since 2009 the IAF has been trying to recruit contractors for upgrading the existing Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) along the Chinese border, with no success.

Empowering the Mountain Strike Corps

India, despite being the largest importer of defense equipment, does not have an ironed-out procurement policy. The military industrial complex in India fares worse than most other countries.

A Hasty Decision?

Many strategists and defense personnel have noted the impetuous nature of the decision to instate a MSC. If Chinese incursions have acted as a catalyst for raising this strike corps, then the government should have better evaluated other alternatives before making this decision. As articulated by Rear Adm (Retd) K Raja Menon, “A geographically limited one axis offensive will not destabilise the PLA, but a flotilla of nuclear submarines and a three carrier air group in the Indian Ocean can economically cripple mainland China.”

Another concern is the increasingly ‘infantry heavy’ nature of the Indian Army. Most major militaries of the world today are concentrating on modernisation efforts rather than adding extra boots on the ground. In the last three decades, the PLA has reduced and restructured its divisional formations to slash troop count by almost half. The Ministry of Defense’s ambitious Future-Infantry Soldier as a System (F-INSAS) programme initiated in 2007 is past its 2013 deadline as the government continues to spend on projects such as the MSC.

Indeed, looking ahead, a conventional war between India and China in the future appears to be a unlikely prospect. China recently overtook the UAE as India’s largest economic partner, with bilateral trade reaching US$49.5 billion halfway through the 2013-14 fiscal year. Both India and China also have in place countless bilateral treaties, and are collaborators in many international forums on economic development and scientific research. A border dispute spawning into a war would be detrimental to both. In the same vein, the concept of a MSC against China is a necessary routine threat assessment exercise, and should go forward. What is paramount to this endeavour is a clear and transparent synergy of all the involved parties, and a well-structured, time-stamped blueprint for its successful implementation and operationalisation.

Amit Saksena
Research Intern, IPCS
Email: amit.saksena@ymail.com

The post India: XVII Mountain Corps – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Martin Khor

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sounded a loud alarm bell that many types of disease-causing bacteria can no longer be treated with the usual antibiotics and the benefits of modern medicine are increasingly being eroded.

On April 30, 2014, the WHO released a comprehensive 232-page report on antimicrobial resistance with data from 114 countries showing how this threat is happening now in every region of the world and can affect anyone in any country.

Antibiotic resistance – when bacteria evolve so that antibiotics no longer work to treat infections – is described by the WHO report as “a problem so serious that it threatens the achievements of modern medicine.”

“A post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can kill, far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century,” said Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general who coordinates its work on antimicrobial resistance.

“Without urgent, coordinated action, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill,” he said.

“Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine. Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating,” Dr Fakuda added.

The report, “Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance”, shows resistance is occurring in many bacteria causing different infections.

The report focuses on antibiotic resistance in seven bacteria responsible for common, serious diseases such as bloodstream infections (sepsis), diarrhea, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and gonorrhea.

Also “last resort” antibiotics ineffective

What is especially alarming is that the bacteria’s resistance has also breached “last resort” antibiotics, which are the most powerful medicines that doctors resort to when the usual ones do not work.

When patients do not respond to the usual medicines (known as first-line or first-generation medicines), doctors prescribe newer (second line medicines) which also usually also cost more.

When these also don’t work, newer and often more powerful (but sometimes with also more side effects) antibiotics are used, and they are even more expensive.

If these third-line or “last resort” medicines are not available or too costly for the patient, or if they don’t work on a patient because of antibiotic resistance, the patient remains ill or dies if the infection is a serious one.

New antibiotics have been discovered in the past to treat infections when the old ones became useless due to resistance. But these discoveries dried up in the past 25 years. The last completely new classes of anti-bacterial drugs were discovered in the 1980s.

Pathogens that are becoming increasingly resistant including to the more powerful antibiotics include E. coli, K. pneumonia, S. aureus, S. pneumonia, salmonella, shigella and n. gonorrhea.

Key findings from the report include:

Resistance to the treatment of last resort for life-threatening infections caused by a common intestinal bacteria, K. pneumonia – carbapenem antibiotics – has spread worldwide. K. pneumonia is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, infections in newborns and intensive-care unit patients. In some countries, because of resistance, carbapenem antibiotics would not work in more than half of people treated for K. pneumonia infections.

Resistance to one of the most widely used antibacterial medicines for the treatment of urinary tract infections caused by E. coli – fluoroquinolones – is very widespread. In the 1980s, when these drugs were first introduced, resistance was virtually zero. In many countries today, this treatment is ineffective in more than half of patients.

The sexually transmitted disease, gonorrhea may soon be untreatable unless there are new drugs. Treatment failure to the last resort of treatment for gonorrhea – third generation cephalosporins – has been confirmed in several countries. In 2008, there were 106 million new cases of gonorrhea.

Antibiotic resistance causes people to be sick for longer and increases the risk of death. For example, people with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are estimated to be 64% more likely to die than people with a non-resistant form of the infection. There are many cases of patients being infected by MRSA in hospitals.

More useful information

The report also gives useful information on the worrisome building up of resistance in four serious diseases – tuberculosis, malaria, HIV and influenza.

The re-emergence of tuberculosis (TB) is especially of great concern. Increasing cases of TB cannot be treated by most known antibiotics. In 2012, 8.7 million people developed TB and 1.3 million died; 3.6% of new cases and 20% of previously treated cases had multidrug-resistant TB.

The malaria-causing bacteria have become increasingly resistant firstly to chloroquine and pyrimethamine and now resistance to artemisinin, which has been identified in some cases in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. In 2010, 219 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide and 660,000 died from the disease.

A major factor accelerating resistance is in the animal husbandry sector, where there is a liberal use of antibiotics mainly to promote the growth of the animals used for food, for commercial purposes.

This builds up resistance in the bacteria present in the animals. These resistant germs are passed on to humans who consume the meat.

The WHO report has a small section on the animal-food chain, which has been identified as a major problem. The European Union has banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animals, but it is still allowed in other countries.

The WHO report mainly provides information on the prevalence and problems of microbial resistance, rather than what to do about the emerging crisis.

However, a WHO press release on the report calls for some actions. These include: setting up basic systems in countries to track and monitor the problem and preventing infections from happening in the first place to reduce the need for antibiotics.

The report also calls prescribing and dispensing antibiotics only when they are truly needed; and prescribing and dispensing the right antibiotic(s) to treat the illness. Further it stresses the need for regulating and promoting appropriate use of medicines.

Patients should use antibiotics only when prescribed by a doctor and complete the full prescription, even if they feel better, and never using leftover prescriptions, says the report, and pleads for developing new diagnostics, antibiotics and other tools to stay ahead of emerging resistance.

Martin Khor is the Executive Director of the South Centre and can be contacted at: director@southcentre.int. This article originally appeared in SouthNews on July 23, 2014. It is being re-produced by arrangement with the South Centre.

The post WHO Warns Of A Post-Antibiotic Era appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nick Simeone

Despite questions about its possible role in last week’s downing of a commercial airliner over Ukraine, Russia continues to arm and train pro-Russian separatists in the region and has dispatched more than 100 additional pieces of military equipment across the border in recent days, a Pentagon spokesman said today.

“We know that they sent, for example, last week a column of over 100 vehicles which included tanks, artillery, multiple launch rocket systems,” Army Col. Steve Warren said, adding that these actions are consistent with Moscow’s behavior in eastern Ukraine for several months.

Warren spoke as an international investigation was just beginning into the downing of a Malaysian airliner over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine on July 17. U.S. and European officials have said a Russian-made, anti-aircraft missile fired from the region brought the plane down, killing all 298 people on board, an attack that President Barack Obama has described as “an outrage of unspeakable proportions.”

In an exchange with reporters today, Warren said the United States does not know who, in particular, fired the missile that blew Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 out of the sky, but he made clear Russia must share in the blame.

“There is no question that the Russians are backing these separatists and they bear responsibility … for what happens in eastern Ukraine,” he said. Moscow, he added, continues to maintain as many as 12,000 troops along the Ukrainian border.

Russia has denied involvement in the downing of the airliner.

Warren said he was aware of fresh reports from Ukraine that two Ukrainian fighter jets were shot down today over an area held by separatists.

“We are continuing to work with the Ukrainians and through our own channels to determine the exact circumstances surrounding that incident,” he said.

The post US Claims Russia Continues To Arm, Train Ukraine Separatists appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Defying mounting calls for restraint and a UN vote to investigate its deadly offensive in Gaza, Israel pushed on with its air strikes early Thursday, killing at least 18 more mostly civilians and raising the Palestinian death toll to more than 700.

Palestinian emergency services said the latest casualties include a family of six, including two young children, who were killed in an Israeli air strike in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“Six members of the Al-Aftal family, including a five-year-old girl and a boy of three, were killed,” said emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra, bringing the number killed Thursday to 18.

Israeli forces have also succeeded in destroying at least 475 houses and 2,644 have been partially damaged. Some 46 schools, 56 mosques and seven hospitals had also suffered varying degrees of destruction, say Palestinian officials.

Israel has defended such strikes on civilian sites by saying that Gaza’s Hamas rulers hides weapons and fighters there or that tunnels into Israel originate in such places.

However, three-fourths of the Palestinians killed in more than two weeks of Israel-Hamas fighting were civilians, according to UN figures. One in four was a minor, it said.

A Palestinian health official put the death toll at 695 as of Wednesday and said more than 4,100 were wounded, with civilian casualties rising sharply since Israel sent tanks and troops into Gaza last week in its first ground operation in five years.

Israel has not offered its own count, but Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said Wednesday that 210 Gaza militants were killed since the ground operation began.

The heavy civilian death toll leaves Israel increasingly vulnerable to accusations that it is using excessive force and possibly committing war crimes — though in Israel, most of the discourse has focused on the rocket attacks.

While most of the rockets have been intercepted and the damage caused has not been great, the furor over them has been powerful among Israelis. Only in recent days has public opinion started to focus more closely on the devastation in Gaza and the question of disproportionality in Israel’s actions.

Turning tide

In a blow to Israel’s economy and image, American aviation authorities extended a ban on US flights to Tel Aviv for a second day, spooked by rocket salvoes out of the Gaza Strip, with many other global airlines also avoiding the Jewish state.

“Hamas’ success in closing the Israeli air space is a great victory for the resistance, a terrible failure for Israel that wrecks the image of Israeli deterrence,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Adding to the pressure on Israel, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Wednesday that some of the recent Israeli attacks, including those on homes and on a care center for the disabled, raise “a strong possibility that international law has been violated in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”

She also condemned indiscriminate Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians — including some 3,000 rockets fired since July 8 that have killed three Israeli civilians — and said storing military equipment in civilian areas or launching attacks from there is unacceptable.

But, she said, “the actions of one party do not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law.”

The UN Human Rights Council voted later Wednesday to establish an independent commission to investigate possible violations of international law during the fighting.

Israel has said the goal of its Gaza operation is to hit Hamas targets, weaken the Islamic militant group’s ability to fire rockets, and destroy Hamas tunnels leading into Israel. The military said Wednesday it has carried out about 3,250 strikes against “terrorist locations,” including what it described as Hamas command centers, tunnels and rocket launching sites.

However, in most cases, the army does not explain why a certain location is being hit, particularly when asked about strikes on private homes in which several members of the same family are killed, an increasing common occurrence in recent days.

The Palestinian human rights group Mezan said that 477 homes have been destroyed in targeted hits since July 8, and that 332 people died in their homes as a result of military operations.

On Wednesday, Palestinian officials reported an airstrike on the Shamea Mosque in Gaza City and said Red Crescent cars and a Red Cross convoy came under heavy fire when they entered a small Gaza town near the border with Israel to evacuate the dead and wounded.

In another incident, witnessed by Associated Press journalists, Red Cross staff and members of the Palestinian civil defense came under fire as they approached the Israeli front line in an attempt to remove casualties from the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah.

The airstrike on the Shamea Mosque came just before noon. One man was killed, identified by police as 25-year-old truck driver Nidal Al-Ijla. Forty-five people were wounded, said Palestinian health official Ashraf Al-Kidra.

Hussam Odeh, a clothing shop owner who was hit in the face by shrapnel, said he and other merchants were sitting outside when a large explosion went off. No warning was given, said Odeh, 27, and a cousin, as they were patched up in a hospital emergency room.

Lerner, the military spokesman, would not say why the mosque was hit.

Blaming Hamas

As the battle for international public opinion intensifies, the military has published more material it says shows the militants use civilian sites for cover — including videos purporting to show missiles launched from urban areas and secondary explosions in neighboring buildings that suggest there were explosives stored there.

It also released drone footage showing two black-clad figures, presumably fighters, getting into an ambulance and issued maps of purported rocket launching sites close to homes and a hospital.
Israel says militants had stored rockets near the Al Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza where four people were killed and about 30 wounded by Israeli tank fire earlier this week.

The army also portrayed the Al Wafa Hospital in the Shijaiyah neighborhood, hard-hit in several days of fighting, as a Hamas military compound. Several access shafts led from the hospital to the Hamas tunnel network, it said. The hospital was repeatedly hit by Israeli tank shells, and after initially refusing, the director agreed to evacuate 17 patients.

Israeli officials have also alleged that Hamas prevents Gaza civilians from fleeing their homes when they receive warnings to clear an area ahead of Israeli strikes. In the early days of the fighting, before Israel’s ground offensive, Hamas authorities issued statements urging residents to stay and dismissing Israeli warnings as “psychological warfare.”

However, displaced Gaza residents describing their ordeal have said consistently that they fled in haste, with few belongings, and made no mention of attempts by Hamas to keep them in their homes.
Nahed Sirsawi, 30, a displaced resident of Shijaiyah, said her husband had received a call from the Israeli army late last week, telling him the family had five minutes to leave the house before bombing would begin.

The call set in motion a terrifying odyssey, with the family of seven seeking refuge in a series of homes of relatives, only to be exposed to more tank shelling or told again by the army to evacuate.

Eventually, the Sirsawis found refuge in the St. Porphyrios Church in Gaza City along with dozens of others from their area. Yet even the church wasn’t safe, she said. This week, several missiles hit a nearby cemetery, sending debris flying into the church courtyard.

“I don’t feel safe anywhere,” she said, pointing to where shrapnel hit inside the church library where her family was sleeping.

Discordant voices from within

Israel said that it can’t be held hostage by Hamas’ decision to fire from within densely populated areas, and that it has an obligation to defend Israeli civilians. Government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel’s response is “both measured and proportionate.”

But even in Israel, some — still a fringe — are questioning this.
In a letter to Israel’s defense minister, a number of local aid organizations demanded Israel ensure the humanitarian needs of the civilian population, especially water and electricity. A few celebrities have spoken out against the airstrikes, then faced a flood of criticism for doing so.

News shows are still dominated by calls to let the army “complete its job.” The attitude derives from a widespread sense in Israel that Hamas is evil incarnate and that the militants actually want civilians to be killed for the propaganda value.

Gideon Levy, a prominent leftist Israeli columnist, said a longstanding “dehumanization of the Palestinians” has resulted today in a “total lack of any kind of empathy” with them.

One concern in Israel is the effect the rising civilian casualty count will have on international public opinion.

Numerous Israeli campaigns ground to a halt amid world pressure over civilian casualties on the Arab side. That included the previous two rounds with Hamas in recent years and operations against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon in 1996 and 2006 — all of which ended amid the same kind of global condemnation being heard this week.

The post Israeli Offensive Hits 56 Mosques, 7 Hospitals appeared first on Eurasia Review.

First Lady Michelle Obama, her and her husband’s Hollywood sycophants, the U.S. news media and most of the world’s governments may have moved on to other causes and issues, but the parents of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls are still suffering daily and 11 of them will never kiss or hold their daughters again. Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan met Tuesday with many parents of the 219 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls and some classmates who managed to escape from Islamic extremists, but some of the parents of those children are now dead themselves.

Although the children are still being held captive by the bloodthirsty, Islamist group Boko Haram, Mrs. Obama and others who posed for photos with signs pleading with the terrorists to “Bring back our girls” have moved on to other causes celebre.

Since the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram perpetrated a mass kidnapping of schoolgirls three months ago, at least 11 of the parents are now dead and their village of Chibok is ruled by Muslim extremists, according to reports.

For example, one report indicated that seven of the fathers of kidnapped girls were among the more than 50 corpses laying in Chibok Hospital’s makeshift morgue. The civilian men were killed in an attack on the nearby village of Kautakari earlier this month. Besides those killed by terrorists, four parents died from stress-related illnesses such as heart attacks, strokes and other causes.

Boko Haram is said to be closing in on Chibok and attacking nearby villages. Those who manage to survive the assaults are swarming into the town and creating crisis with shortages of food, fuel and other necessities.

Boko Haram sent the local news media a video in which the Islamist terrorists threatened to sell the students into slavery or as child brides. The video also showed a couple of the girls describing their alleged “conversion” from Christianity to Islam.

Chibok and nearby villages are targets because they are the homes to many devout Christians in predominantly Muslim area of northern Nigeria.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in a new video released this week repeated his demands that Jonathan release detained extremists in exchange for the girls.

The post Parents Of Nigeria’s Kidnapped Girls Still Suffer; Mrs. Obama Moves On – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

About six years ago, as part of his Bar Mitzvah, my son Jed did a project on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, producing his own graphic novel about the underground fighters who used courage, creativity and the city’s sewer system to, in some small way, offer resistance to the murderous program of the Nazis to exterminate Poland’s Jews.

In the course of his research, Jed interviewed a friend of my father’s, a Polish man who had been a teenager in Warsaw during World War II. He told my son how one day, as he was riding the streetcar to a job, the tram came to a halt near the wall of the ghetto. Everyone was told they had to get out. Standing there in a crowd outside the wall, he saw vast amounts of smoke and heard and enormous gun and cannon fire, and bombs exploding. Asking what was happening, he said he was told by a Polish woman near him, “They’re barbecuing the Jews!”

It was, it turned out, the final catastrophic leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto that he was witnessing, and this man recalled, still in horror at the memory, that people had gathered from all over the city to watch it happen, like going to a fireworks display.

Now we’re seeing the same phenomenon in Israel, as the Israeli Defense Force enters its second week of bombing and invading the walled-in ghetto of Gaza, where some 1.8 million Palestinian men, women and children have been trapped for years with nowhere to go to escape the bombs, rockets, cannon fire and IDF snipers.

And like the horrific case of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, here too we have a small-scale, improbable, resistance being put up by fighters who use home-made rockets, small arms and a network of tunnels to challenge their much better armed attackers. We also have people — ironically this time it’s Jewish citizens of Israel — dragging lounge chairs and refreshments out to hillsides in the evening to watch the fireworks as the IDF’s tanks, bombers and ships off the coast of Gaza pulverize this huge ghetto that is fully under Israeli control.

As the New York Times reported in an article about the Israeli spectator sport of watching the leveling of Gaza, where by July 22 nearly 600 Palestinian, including over 100 children, had been killed by Israeli weapons, this was nothing new. Similar crowds gathered, equipped with comfortable seating and refreshments, during the prior bloody assault on Gaza in 2008-9 in which between 1160 and 1400 Palestinians were reportedly killed.

As in the prior Gaza assault, the IDF has been found to have targeted children, hospitals, mosques and populated residential areas. The Times reports that Danish reporter Allan Sorensen said at 9 pm local time, when he took his photo of the Israeli spectators, who were cheering each explosion in Gaza, the IDF had just fired what it called a “precision strike,” that by either error or design hit a beachside cafe in Gaza where people had assembled to watch the Soccer World Cup semi-final between Argentina and Netherlands. At least eight people died in that bombing.

I know war is always vicious and ugly. But at least, by International Law, it is supposed to be fought between combatants, not by slaughtering innocents and terrorizing an entire population. According to the UN, at least 75 percent of those killed by the IDF in this latest war on Gaza have been civilians, a large percentage of those being children. That compares to two Israeli civilians killed by Hamas fighters, who have also reportedly killed over 30 IDF soldiers.

Sadly, the hatred against Palestinians that has been stoked by politicians in Israel has been so vicious that seemingly civilized people can sit munching popcorn while cheering explosions and gunfire that are slaughtering little kids just a short distance away over a wall. That’s not to say that Palestinians don’t also cheer when they learn that an Israeli has been killed. I’m sure they do. But let’s be real here: the Palestinians trapped in their exploding ghetto hell are in no position to be sitting on couches munching popcorn while watching Hamas’s pathetic homemade rockets whiz off into Israel only to be, for the most part, knocked down harmlessly by the IDF’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

Years ago, when President Nixon ordered the criminal “Christmas Bombing” of Hanoi and Haiphong, including hospitals, schools and dikes along the Red River, I wrote an editorial in the Middletown Press, where I was a reporter, saying that to the Vietnamese under the bombing onslaught, delivered by giant planes flying almost too high to see, it was like living near an erupting volcano, but I pointed out that we, the Americans, controlled that volcano, and had the power to stop it from erupting.

This one-sided bloody-minded slaughter by the Israeli Defense Force has to stop. Once again, as with Nixon’s carpet bombing of North Vietnam, as the major supplier of Israel’s arms, the US is in a position to make that happen, but so far, as in prior assaults on Gaza, Washington is not demanding a halt to the killing. Neither, sadly, are most American citizens.

The post Now It’s Israel’s IDF Leveling Gaza – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Manoj Joshi

Earlier this month, this writer travelled to China as part of a media delegation invited by the All-China Journalists Association (ACJA). An engaging feature of the trip was the visit to two Chinese military facilities, and a briefing by China’s top military spokesman, Senior Colonel Yang Yujun, and a team of military officers.

There were other meetings, with think tanks, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials and, of course, sightseeing. But, the military component was striking because it was new. Beijing- based journalists were first invited to visit the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) 4th Helicopter Regiment in 2012. But, the visit by journalists from India in July 2014 was a first, and the unit stationed in the Tongzhou suburb of the capital was clearly putting its best foot forward.

Its commander, Senior Colonel Zhang Zhilin, told us that this 900- man unit was the first armed helicopter regiment of the army and was formed in June of 1988. It has 72 aircraft — 39 Z9WZ attack helicopters, 27 Mi 17 I and 6 fixed- wing Yuan 7 and 8 aircraft. So, clearly, its functions were both for war- fighting, as well as battlefield support.

Equally fascinating was the visit to the Shanghai Naval Garrison, which involved a briefing by Senior Captain Wei Xiaodong, the chief of staff of the garrison, at his main office at the Shanghai naval base at the mouth of the Whangpu river, as well as a ship- board visit to the Type 056 corvette Ji’an. What was striking for an Indian viewer was that the spanking new ship, which was commissioned earlier this year, took a year and a half to build. Indian public sector yards take years to build a similar ship. The Bangladesh Navy is expected to get some of these type of ships as well.

The briefing at the Ministry of Defence was interesting because the Chinese spokespersons took on all the questions that were thrown at them, ranging from the China- Pakistan connection, the reasons for the Depsang incursions and other incursions on the LAC, to issues arising from the fact that the PLA’s Second Artillery Force holds both nuclear and conventional missiles.

Not all the answers were clear or satisfactory, but the Chinese intention to engage was.

The question that obviously arises from this is: Why? In my view there are two reasons for this. First, as China becomes an economic and military power, it is gaining in self-confidence.

The openness is a measure of the fact that it now has a well- equipped and well- led military and, in engaging Indian journalists, the Chinese are attempting to respond to the charge that their military doctrine and policy is opaque.

The other reason is more complex.

It has to do with deterrence. In many instances in India, the armed forces are secretive about their facilities and capabilities because they feel a need to hide the fact of their weakness. For years, the Indian Army has bravely soldiered on with a defective personnel weapon — the INSAS assault rifle. Yet, only now has the army made a fuss and insisted that they cannot carry on with the deception and would like to get a replacement. There are several other such areas which are shielded from public knowledge and are often revealed inadvertently, as was done when General V K Singh’s 2012 letter complained that the state of artillery, air defence, and infantry as ” alarming”, and that the Army’s tanks were ” devoid of critical ammunition to defeat enemy tanks” and air defence was ” 97% obsolete”. What the PLA is seeking to do is to show the world, through such media interactions, that it is now a confident, well- equipped military and you mess with it only at your own peril. In the past thirty years, the PLA has undertaken a great deal of restructuring and reform, and the quality of equipment has become better. There was a time when its shoddy products had to be hidden from public view; now, through a strategy of incremental innovation of imported products, it has developed a pretty impressive array of attack helicopters, frigates, tanks, fighter aircraft and so on.

According to a report of the US President’s National Science Board, China’s research and development ( R&D) activity is growing in a range of areas, and its share of global high- technology economic output has risen sharply from 8% in 2003 to 24% in 2012. In the area of defence, China has used an array of tactics — better civil- military integration, stepped up R& D, technology imports and cyber theft — to come up with a range of products like the WU 14 hypersonic vehicle, the DF- 21 anti- ship missile, the J- 20 and J- 31 stealth fighters.

Back in the 1990s, the Chinese opened up their nuclear weapons complex to an American nuclear scientist, Danny Stillman, who was Director Technical Intelligence at the US nuclear weapons complex at Los Alamos. The Chinese convinced him, and presumably the US leadership, that the Chinese had an extensive nuclear programme, which was technologically at par with that of the US. The goal was obvious — to leave the US with no illusions about China’s deterrence capabilities.

In the case of India, China is reluctantly coming around to the view that New Delhi has its own ambitions of emerging as a power centre of sorts. While the size of its economy is well behind that of China, it is still huge. More germane is the fact that Indian military capabilities are being enhanced with respect to China, both in the conventional and nuclear fields.

China sees its primary focus as on neutralising the US- Japan challenge on its eastern seaboard. To that end, maintaining an even keel in its relationship with India makes good sense.

(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi)

Courtesy: mid-day, Mumbai, July 22, 2014

The post China’s Increasing Openness And Self-Confidence – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Empires are not easy to sustain given the multiple enemies that they provoke: at the international level (imperial rivals and emerging new powers), at the national level (national resistance movements, unreliable clients and untrustworthy ‘Sepoy’ armies) and at the local level (boycotts, sabotage and strikes).

Imperial difficulties are multiplied when an empire is in economic decline, (loss of market shares with growing debt), facing domestic unrest as the economic costs to the taxpayers exceed the returns by a substantial margin; and when the political elite is internally divided between ‘militarists’ and ‘free market’ advocates.

The US Empire today is in the midst of a long-term decline, during which it has suffered a series of costly defeats. In addition, Washington has assumed long-term burdensome commitments to allies who have imposed their own ambitions of seeking ‘mini empires’ (Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia).

The US White House has increasingly adopted a military definition of ‘imperial leadership’ at the expense of reconfiguring imperial relations to accommodate potential new political and economic partners.

As the empire slides, the political elite, operating with a highly militarized mind set, has expanded its intrusive global intelligence networks to spy on allies, adversaries and its own citizens. Washington has risked deepening hostilities among key allies (Germany and Brazil), and exacerbating conflicts with conciliatory competitors (Russia), by refusing to curtail its massive espionage. Spying is a clear hostile act and part of the policy of military-driven empire building.

Empires Depend on Alliances

The entire edifice of the US Empire, like the earlier British Empire, is sustained through a series of complex alliances.

US military forces are injected into a country to orient and ensure that local military and police forces efficiently control their population and become available as mercenaries to fight overseas wars for the US Empire.

In the past two centuries, European colonial empires, especially the French and English, invaded and subjugated nations using colonial solders of color under the command of European imperial officers.

Today, the US empire builders are making their transition back to the 19th century colonial model. The Pentagon has been moving from reliance on US ground troops to recruiting colonial troops under US military command.

To that end, Washington’s empire has turned toward creating alliances with regional powers to sustain imperial pre-eminence. These ‘alliances’ are in place in Africa, Latin America, Asia and, in particular, in the Middle East. The Empire’s Middle East alliances have been operative for decades, but in recent years, they have absorbed the greatest resources with devastating consequences to the Empire as we shall see.

The Empire today operates and can only be sustained by these alliances or ‘axes of regional power’, which are therefore worth analyzing in greater detail.

The Axes of Power: The Middle East

The US Empire builders have constructed three regional axes of power in the Middle East. In order of importance, they are: the US-Israeli axis of power, the US-Saudi axis and the US-Turkey axis of power.

The US-Israel axis of power is based on a longstanding agreement. The US militarily and financially supports Israel’s colonial expansion into Palestine and Syria, while Israel backs US projections of military and political power throughout the region. Thanks to US military and financial aid, Israel has become the dominant military power in the Middle East and the only nuclear power in the region. The US has used Israel’s wars and invasions of its neighbors to secure several Arab collaborator client states (notably Jordan and Egypt). More recently the US-Israeli power axis has been expanded to include the client regime in Kurdistan (northern Iraq). In addition, the US-Israeli axis has been deeply involved in financing and promoting collaborator opposition forces in Lebanon (currently the Hariri political formation), sectors of the armed mercenaries in Syria, Kurdish Peshmerga militias in Iraq and the so-called ‘Mujahedeen al Khalq’ terrorists in Iran. The US CIA and Israel’s Mossad engage in clandestine violent operations directly intervening to destabilize secular and Islamic nationalist regimes like Iran, to disrupt their communications and to assassinate Iranian scientists and leaders. Israel has secured political and intelligence agreements with Egypt and Jordan to isolate and dispossess the Palestinians. The US has secured military bases and operational platforms in Egypt and Jordan to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Bashar al Assad in Syria and the Iranian government.

However, while in the past each country benefited from the US-Israel axis of power, recently it has turned into a costly, asymmetrical relation, a zero-sum game, where Israel’s regional power increases as the US Empire deteriorates.

This turn of events is easily understood if one examines the way in which Middle East policy is formulated in the US. Over the past three decades, Israel has constructed the most formidable organized power configuration in the United States that has ever penetrated an imperial state in history. Linked by tribal loyalties and blind obedience, over a half-million Jewish Zionists have embraced Israel’s interests and pursued them with a zeal and single-mindedness that is unmatched by any other foreign-based lobby. Prominent Zionists have permeated key state institutions, from the US Treasury, Commerce and the Pentagon, to the White House and the National Security Council. They dominate the US Congress, the ‘two party’ system, especially the nomination and electoral process, ensuring that only candidates who swear allegiance to Israel are allowed to run and be elected. That way no political debate regarding Israel’s subversive influence is permitted. They dominate the mass media ensuring that all news and commentary is favorable to Israel and all criticism of the Jewish state is excluded.

Here we have the paradox of an imperial ally, Israel colonizing an imperial power and extracting tribute, with foreign aid to Tel Aviv exceeding $3.6 billion this year. More importantly the Zionist power configuration plays a key role in waging wars against Israel’s designated enemies and providing diplomatic cover for the Jewish state’s ethnic slaughter of the people of Palestine.

The Israel-US alliance has been set up wholly on Israel’s terms. Even as Israel rains thousands of tons of bombs on the captive people of Gaza, to the horror of world public opinion, the White House applauds and the US Congress unanimously approves resolutions supporting Israel’s war crimes at the behest of the powerful Zionists ensconced in Washington.

Whatever the US Empire has gained from Israel in the way of intimidating and humiliating Arab leaders in the region it has lost in economic terms. Major oil companies have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in trade and investment from the wars in Iraq, Syria and Libya and from sanctions against Iran. The US domestic economy has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in income and investment as a result of the high cost of oil imports resulting from the wars.

Strategically, the asymmetrical US-Israeli alliance has turned the US into an ‘empire’ dominated by militarists, and one exclusively focused on the Middle East. This transformation into a ‘military-driven’ Empire has resulted in neglect, decline and displacement of the imperial influence in the most dynamic growth sectors of the world economy – Asia, Latin America and Russia.

It is a paradox where the lop-sided strength of the US-Israeli axis in the Middle East has profoundly undermined the US global economic and domestic foundations of empire. Moreover, the brutal ‘colonial-style wars’ in the Middle East promoted by US Zionist strategists in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have destroyed any possibility of re-constructing viable client states and markets out of these conquered nations. Israeli military strategists have long wanted these regimes destroyed, their state institutions dismantled and their societies embroiled in sectarian, tribal strife. As a result, the US wars have not produced a single functioning client state: the US military invaded, occupied and destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan while losing the wars in political terms. This came at no cost to Israel, the unchallenged regional hegemon, while the US Treasury will struggle with a trillion dollar price tag and the US public will experience economic decline for generations.

The US-Saudi Axis of Power

The second most important axis of power in the Middle East is the US-Saudi alliance. From the perspective of the US Empire, the Saudi connection has many advantages, as well as costs. Saudi financing, in collaboration with the US, was instrumental in recruiting, arming and financing the Islamist guerrillas, which overthrew the secular pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. Saudi links to the Pakistani intelligence services and military has ensured Pakistan will remain a client-state of the US Empire. Saudi intervention in Yemen and Bahrain propped-up the pro-empire, anti-democratic puppet regimes while ensuring US access to its strategic military bases.

Saudi Arabia is the principle backer of US sanctions and confrontation with Iran. It provides air bases, military intelligence operations and the funding of anti-Iranian terrorists, like ‘Mujahedeen al Khalq’. Saudi Arabia is the biggest market for US military exports. Saudi increased its oil output to compensate for a decline of oil in world markets due to the US embargo against and the destruction of oil production following the US attacks and devastation of Iraq and Libya. In exchange Saudi Arabia’s absolutist monarchy obtains US protection, security and assistance in repressing its domestic unrest. Saudi billionaires, no matter how brutal and corrupt, have full access to lucrative financial markets in the US. The Saudi theocratic-monarchic dictatorship has clearly benefited from the US destruction of secular nationalist Arab regimes in the region. Indeed, secular nationalism has been the Saudi’s primary target since its monarchy was set up by the British.

Nevertheless, the Saudi-US axis is fraught with tensions. The Saudi regime actively promotes Sunni extremist jihadi movements in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon undermining Washington-backed neo-liberal clients. The Saudi-backed terrorists in Libya have destabilized the US proxies. The Saudis promoted and financed the bloody military coup in Egypt of General Sisi. The Saudi Royals support the brutal military overthrow of the elected President Morsi and the suppression of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood because of Morsi’s rapprochement with Iran. This has ruined Obama’s more ‘moderate’ goal of setting up a Muslim Brotherhood-Egyptian military power sharing arrangement in Cairo.

In other words, the US and Saudi axis converge in opposition to secular-nationalist regimes but diverge on the alternatives. The Saudis tend to choose the most retrograde Islamic extremist groups excluding and antagonizing all other tendencies, from conservative-secular neo-liberals to democratic, nationalist and socialist parties and movements. They end up with political polarizations unfavorable to US long-term imperial interests. The Saudi choice of political alternatives tends to be minorities incapable of sustaining or overtly hostile to the US imperial order. Moreover, Saudi Arabia opposes Israel on religious grounds, the principle US political partner in the region, even as it works with the Jewish state against the secular or nationalist governments Syria, Iran and Lebanon.

Like its alliance with Israel, the US-Saudi axis comes at a very high cost. Saudi financing of the Taliban and other Islamic groups has cost the US empire builders hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of military casualties and a humiliating retreat after a thirteen year war.

Saudi funding for Sunni terrorists in Syria has decimated US-backed neo-liberal armed groups. Equally damaging, the same Saudi-backed jihadi groups have severely destabilized the US-imposed Maliki regime in Iraq. Saudi attacks on the US-Iranian nuclear negotiations have strengthened the Zionist-led opposition in the US Congress.

In other words the US-Saudi axis has buttressed the US Empire in the short-run, but has become a strategic liability. Saudi’s overseas projection of its most reactionary internal politics undermines the US effort to create stable imperial clients. Not to be overlooked is the Saudi role in financing Al Queda and its operatives in the attack on the US on September 11, 2001.

The US Turkey Axis

Turkey has been a major US-NATO asset especially during the Cold War. The secular-military regimes in Ankara mobilized the largest number of combat troops on the USSR’s border and provided the US with numerous air bases and intelligence centers. In recent times, under an Islamist regime, Turkey has become the axis for the US and EU-backed mercenary invasion of Syria, providing military sanctuaries, training, arms and financing to overthrow the secular Baathist regime in Damascus.

The Erdogan regime has sought to regain a pivotal role within NATO by backing the Empire’s effort to topple nationalist leaders and movements in the region.

Turkey has worked closely with the US and Israel in building up the political, economic and military capacities of the Iraqi Kurds. They are seen as a counter-force to the Saudi-backed jihadis, the failed Shia regime in Baghdad and Iraqi petrol-nationalists.

While pursuing neo-liberal policies congruent with US imperial design and collaborating with Washington’s clients in ‘Kurdistan’, Turkey has its own regional ambitions. President Erdogan supported the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and opposed the military coup of General Sisi, fearing, perhaps, a similar coup by the Turkish military. Up until quite recently Turkey had its own ‘mini-imperial’ agenda via trade and investment in Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan and Afghanistan. The recent imperial conflicts and regional instability have undermined Erdogan’s dreams of a neo-Ottoman revival. 95% of Turkish public opinion supports the rights of the Palestinian people; this has forced Erdogan to pull away from the Israeli-US axis, at least temporarily. Likewise the Turkish regime, while not in opposition to the Saudi dictatorship, has refrained from overt collaboration apart from trade and Gulf investments.

With the US-EU in the process of isolating and demonizing Russia, it remains to be seen whether Turkey will once again become the military axis for NATO. Russia is an important energy supplier and market for Turkish goods. If Turkey decides to join the new US axis confronting Russia, it will lose out economically and will have to find alternative markets and energy sources in an increasingly unstable region. A weakened Turkey may be more submissive to empire but it will be more vulnerable to internal opposition.

Conclusion

The US Empire, like previous ones, depends on a host of alliances and axes of power to sustain it and compensate for military, political and economic limitations in resources and personnel. With regard to the main region of direct US involvement, the Middle East, Washington has embraced three sets of alliances with partners who have played a paradoxical role in both sustaining and eroding the US Empire.

Israel, the primary ally of the US, is largely a political and military construct of US policymakers over the past years. It was originally designed to serve and police the region for the US. Instead, over the years, the relationship has been totally reversed: US imperial power has been subordinated to serve Israel’s ambitions to impose unchallenged regional superiority over the Middle East. For the first time in the history of empires, a satrap of empire has systematically penetrated the principle imperial institutions. Decision-makers and elites loyal to Israeli interests have expended vast amounts of US military resources and American soldiers to wage wars with the goal of decimating Israel’s enemies. Five hundred thousand well organized and financed American Jewish-Zionist activists have directed the global empire into focusing on one region: the Middle East. The mass media, US Congress and the principle advisory bodies (dubbed ‘think tanks’) in Washington are engaged in formulating US policies in line with Israel’s colonial interests with disastrous consequences for the American people. In effect, the US state and society are ‘colonized’ by unconditional supporters of Israel. The Zionist power configuration’s influence finds its most macabre expression in the US Congress unanimous endorsement of the Israeli slaughter of hundreds of trapped Palestinian civilians and children during the July 2014 terror bombing of Gaza. This repugnant act is the culmination of the forced servility of an ostensibly global imperial power subject to the dictates of its lawless, genocidal ally.

The Israeli-US axis has led the Empire into a blind ally: A totally one-sided relation has inflated the military dimensions of empire in Israel’s interests. Economically, this has become the most perverse of all imperial partnerships, where the satrap extracts billions of dollars a year in political tribute and advanced weaponry in return for nothing! Strategically, the global decline of the US Empire, its loss of market shares and political influence in the most dynamic regions of Asia, Latin America and Africa, can be wholly attributed to its sustained focus on the Middle East.

The disastrous ‘exclusive Middle East focus’ can be attributed to the leadership, organization and policies of the Empire.

The US political leadership, beholden to unconditional supporters of Israel, has committed the most damaging policies in US history. First and foremost, these elite-educated policymakers have degraded the entire economic dimensions of empire by pursuing a relentless military agenda – destroying oil producers, raising world prices, sowing instability and by bleeding the US Treasury of trillions of dollars – with few returns.

This self-proclaimed ‘best and brightest’, with advanced degrees from the most prestigious universities, includes policymakers who have committed the US to endless wars which only benefit Israel. Most of these key policymakers, including Wolfowitz, Emmanuel, Feith, Libby, Abrams, Greenspan, Levy, Cohen, Frohman, Lew, Fischer, Bernanke and Yellen have deliberately pillaged the US Treasury in order to sustain Middle East wars for Israel and Wall Street bankers. The ‘leading lights’ among the Zionist policy-makers, occupying influential positions in the imperial power structures, are responsible for an unmitigated disaster: they have initiated failed wars, dismantled whole societies, fomented financial crises and promoted a one-way ‘partnership’ with a genocidal state. If only they had pursued respectable and successful careers as dentists, doctors, investors, bankers or ivory tower academics – millions of precious lives would not have been destroyed….

However, it is not only the empire’s alliance with Israel which is driving the empire to crisis. The Saudi-US axis has given immense power to the most retrograde satraps and barbaric armed insurgents running amok in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. An empire, associated with the most parasitic Arab ‘rentiers’ who send their own fanatical offspring to self-immolate for a head-beheading new world order has scarce resonance in the modern world.

An empire, organized around axes of evil and directed by political leaders loyal to satraps, has no material or moral foundations to justify its existence.

The post Foundation Of The US Empire: Axes Of Evil – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

South Africa’s Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi says the government has big plans to turn the tide on HIV/Aids by 2030, in line with the target set by delegates at the International Aids Conference in Australia.

“The conference took a very far-reaching decision to add to the already existing international goals … that we need to bring an end to HIV/Aids by 2030.

“The conference defined what is meant by bringing an end to HIV/Aids by 2030. It means 90% of people know their status; 90% of those that are HIV positive are on treatment; 90% of those on treatment are virally suppressed,” said the minister.

He was speaking during his department’s Budget Vote in Parliament on Wednesday.

The 2030 goal coincides with the deadline for targets set out in the National Development Plan.

“So this international target agreed to in Melbourne coincides with this important date on our calendar,” he said.

The minister said while tremendous progress has been made in fighting HIV/Aids, it remained one of the biggest problems and much still needed to be done.

“We have 15 years to achieve these targets globally … Like elsewhere in the world, there are leakages in the HIV/Aids cascade. This needs to be fixed to ensure that those that are prioritised for HCT [HIV Counselling and Testing] are indeed tested, and those eligible for treatment are initiated on treatment and stay on treatment.

“Our next step is to increase coverage in the manner proposed by the 90% approach. This means testing most, if not all, of the population annually, initiating everyone who is positive on treatment regardless of CD-4 count and supporting all those that are on treatment.

“In summary, it will mean mass testing in every possible setting: schools, universities, workplaces, churches and communities,” said Minister Motsoaledi.

Early intervention

In a bold step towards achieving this goal, the minister announced that in January next year, the department will move all HIV positive pregnant women to the World Health Organisation’s option B+, as opposed to the current option B that is operational in the country.

“Option B+ simply means every pregnant HIV positive woman goes on lifelong treatment, regardless of their CD4 status; whereas option B is that they stay on treatment only while breastfeeding and stop after termination of breastfeeding if their CD4 count is >350.

“Option B+ is lifelong treatment regardless of CD4 status,” said the minister.

Also, as from January next year, the department will start HIV positive patients on treatment at the CD4 count of <500, as opposed to the present CD4 count of <350.

Minister Motsoaledi said this was a milestone in the country’s fight against HIV/Aids.

He said the treatment of as many people as possible has been found by research to be also a form of prevention.

This massive treatment programme will be accompanied by a wide range of prevention techniques, including:

• massive condom distribution;

• HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT), preventing mother to child transmission (PMTCT), sexually transmitted infections (STI) management;

• a massive medical male circumcision campaign, where the department will target four million men by 2016;

• the provision of safe blood transfusion, and

• mass education and communication, as well as social mobilisation.

Minister Motsoaledi said keeping girl children at school until matric decreased their chances of pregnancy and contracting HIV/Aids.

He acknowledged that this was a major goal, and government and civil society — as represented by the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) — would have to be a well-oiled machine.

“The task ahead in the next 15 years is huge, and we cannot afford to be flat-footed at this period in the history of the pandemic.”

TB

The minister announced that government will be undertaking a massive campaign to decentralise the management of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB).

“Presently, we have 100 such decentralised cites, and we intend to increase them to 2 500. This will happen through a rapid establishment and scale-up of nurse-led MDR-TB treatment management teams at municipal ward level,” said the minister.

He said the department will also aim to screen all 150 000 inmates in correctional services facilities, all 500 000 miners and the 600 000-strong peri-mining communities in the six districts that have a high level of mining activity.

The post South Africa Launches HIV/Aids 2030 Plan appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The FAA said Wednesday it has lifted its restrictions on U.S. airline flights into and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport by cancelling a Notice to Airmen it renewed earlier today. The cancellation is effective at approximately 11:45 p.m. EDT.

Before making this decision, the FAA said it worked with its U.S. government counterparts to assess the security situation in Israel and carefully reviewed both significant new information and measures the Government of Israel is taking to mitigate potential risks to civil aviation.

The FAA’s primary mission and interest are the protection of people traveling on U.S. airlines. The agency said it will continue to closely monitor the very fluid situation around Ben Gurion Airport and will take additional actions, as necessary.

The FAA initially instituted the flight prohibition on Tuesday, July 22, in response to a rocket strike that landed approximately one mile from the airport.

The post FAA Lifts Flight Restrictions For Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport appeared first on Eurasia Review.

At the 20th EU-ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Brussels on 23 July 2014, the Ministers condemned in the strongest terms the downing of Flight MH17 in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on 17 July 2014.

The Ministers welcomed the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2166 on 21 July 2014 on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and urged its full implementation.

The Ministers expressed their shock and indignation over the tragic deaths of the 298 people of multiple nationalities on board the airplane. The Ministers conveyed their deepest sympathies and condolences to families and friends of those on board Flight MH17 and to the governments and people of the affected countries.

They called for a swift, full and thorough, transparent and independent international investigation into the downing in accordance with international civil aviation guidelines. They demanded all parties in the area of the crash site to provide fullest cooperation, which include assistance to the safe, secure, full, immediate and unrestricted access to the site and surrounding area as well as support to the appropriate investigating authorities, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and representatives of other relevant international organizations according to ICAO and other established procedures.

The Ministers demanded that the armed groups in control of this site and the surrounding area refrain from any actions that may compromise the integrity of the crash site. They further insisted on the dignified, respectful and professional treatment and recovery of the bodies of the victims, and called upon all parties to ensure that this happens with immediate effect.

The Ministers demanded all military activities, including by armed groups, be immediately ceased in the immediate area surrounding the crash site to allow for security and safety of the international investigation.

The Ministers agreed that those directly and indirectly responsible should be held accountable and be brought to justice swiftly. The Ministers called upon all states and parties to fully cooperate toward this end.

The Ministers agreed that the MH17 tragedy is another stark illustration of how escalation of disputes and threat to international peace and security could claim innocent lives in a tragic and senseless manner. They called on all parties to stop the senseless loss of life and to refrain from any escalatory acts. The Ministers underlined the urgent need to agree on an immediate, genuine and sustainable ceasefire by all parties, and called for an end to the conflict.

The post EU-ASEAN Joint Statement On Downing Of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Jyrki Katainen, Vice-President of the European Commission and member of the Commission responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro

EU Council of Ministers – General Affairs, Brussels, 23 July 2014

Honourable Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to be here today to welcome Lithuania as the nineteenth member of the euro area.

Lithuania’s adoption of the euro, our common currency, is a major event not only for the country, but also for the euro area and the European Union as a whole. Lithuania’s readiness to adopt the euro reflects its long-standing pursuit of prudent fiscal policies and serious economic reforms. This reform momentum, driven partly by Lithuania’s EU accession ten years ago, has led to an increase in prosperity as GDP per capita has doubled since 1995.

Thanks to these reform efforts, Lithuania will enter the euro area from a strong position. Lithuania’s GDP has been growing by more than 3% per year since 2011 and the economy is forecast to expand further at a similar pace, one of the highest growth rates in the EU. Moreover, the country has robust public finances, including one of the lowest public debt levels in the EU. The Lithuanian economy is flexible and it has shown its ability to operate and adjust under a fixed exchange rate regime for two decades. I count on the Lithuanian authorities to maintain the culture of fiscal prudence adopted over recent years also as a member of the euro area.

Since the Commission on the 4th of June concluded in its Convergence Report that Lithuania has achieved a high degree of sustainable economic convergence, the legislative procedure has involved the ECOFIN, including its euro area Member States, the European Council, the European Parliament and the ECB. The EU institutions have throughout the accession process shown strong support for Lithuania’s euro adoption. This process was concluded today by the General Affairs Council. This gives Lithuania sufficient time to prepare for the practical changeover on 1 January 2015.

The Lithuanian authorities can now move full speed ahead with practical euro changeover preparations, building on their significant preparatory work so far. Here, preventing irregular price increases and misperceptions of the evolution of prices will be very important. Many Lithuanians are worried about abusive price setting as a recent Eurobarometer survey has shown. However, looking back at previous euro changeovers, there has been no evidence of any significant price increase attributable to the introduction of the euro.

The Commission services will work closely with the authorities to ensure that citizens are adequately informed about the practical euro changeover aspects. Timely and effective communication will further increase public support for the introduction of the euro.

I am confident that introducing the euro will bring a range of practical benefits to Lithuanian companies and citizens, including the elimination of exchange rate risk and lower transaction costs. As a member of the euro area, Lithuania will participate in decision-making in Eurogroup and ECB on issues that have already affected the country during its twelve-year-old peg to the euro. I am convinced that the stability-oriented policy framework of the euro area will support the catching-up process of the Lithuanian economy, including by attracting more foreign investment.

Becoming a member of the Euro area is a hard-earned achievement for Lithuania. Going forward, it will be essential to continue with sound macroeconomic and structural policies in order to realise the full benefits of the monetary union. We welcome the commitment by the Lithuanian authorities to live up to these policy requirements, and look forward to working with them in the context of the policy co-ordination and surveillance procedures in EMU.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

With the accession of Lithuania this year and Latvia last year all three Baltic States will be in the euro area and share the same currency. The transformation of the Baltic States since their still quite recent independence is truly remarkable. European integration has played a major part in this transformation by opening up possibilities for prosperity and trade.

Now this integration is taken a decisive step forward. Lithuania’s euro adoption demonstrates that the Economic and Monetary Union remains an attractive community to be in. The euro area today has more effective economic policy coordination, a robust financial firewall to safeguard stability and, from this year, a banking union. Lithuania’s euro adoption shows the benefits of strong and committed policies for the sake of confidence and growth.

Welcome!

The post Accession Of Lithuania To Euro Area – Speech appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Igor Jovanovic

Serbia’s education minister told SETimes that he will work to strengthen the independent bodies tasked with checking the quality of education following a series of scandals that have beset Serbia’s higher education system.

Minister of Education Srdjan Verbic said the Commission for Accreditation and Quality Control currently lacks the necessary capacity to do its work and needs improvement, but the ministry will not create additional commissions to do similar work.

“Whatever commission the Ministry creates, someone will be dissatisfied and will say that it was selected in a biased manner for the purpose of making this or that decision,” said the minister, adding that an effort to improve education will also be made through the new law on higher education.

Serbia’s higher education system came under scrutiny following the publication by a group of scientists on the Pescanik website, which determined that the doctoral thesis of Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic was plagiarised. Stefanovic claimed that his thesis was original and the website that posted the analysis of the thesis was hacked and shut down several times.

Next, it was found that Stefanovic’s mentor and president of private Megatrend University in Belgrade, Mica Jovanovic, never got his doctoral degree at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, as he had said in his biography. Jovanovic stated that the attack on him was aimed at “toppling the leadership of Serbia,” but resigned as the president of Megatrend.

Finally, on July 5th, the Pescanik website posted a claim by a group of scientists that the doctoral thesis of the head of Belgrade’s Novi Beograd district, Aleksandar Sapic, defended at the private Union University, was also plagiarised. Sapic denied any kind of plagiarism, but added that he may have unintentionally forgotten to cite certain sources. However, Union University announced it would form a commission to deal with suspicion pertaining to Sapic’s thesis. “Union University has no interest in protecting plagiarists. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the university and science in general for there to be no plagiarism at all, and to sanction plagiarists in an appropriate manner,” the university said in a statement.

After this series of scandals, some 1,800 Serbian scientists and professors from the country and abroad called for an investigation into the alleged abuse in Serbia’s high education system. They asked that a commission be formed to look into Stefanovic’s doctoral thesis, that the accreditation of Megatrend University be reviewed, and that all similar cases at private and state universities be checked in the future.

“We call on all the institutions and participants in the debate to approach this problem responsibly and to not present it as a political, but rather as an academic issue,” reads the petition.

One of the signatories of the petition, law professor Vesna Rakic Vodinelic, told SETimes that the affairs had “shaken up the reputation of high education in Serbia.”

“In order to fix the situation, it is necessary to fully clear up all the affairs. In the accreditation of university programs, it is also necessary to take into account compliance with ethical standards and to publicise all master’s and doctoral dissertations in Serbia, regardless of whether they were defended at state or private universities, in electronic form, so that they become available to the broader academic public,” she said.

The head of the National Council for High Education, Srdjan Stankovic, announced the forming of a commission that would review doctoral studies at universities in the country. He said it would be difficult to expect the results before autumn.

Bojana Stojanovic, who is a student at the University of Belgrade, said that there was also the question of degrees in undergraduate studies at certain faculties.

“It is an open secret that at some private faculties all students graduate within term and they have much lower criteria. However, afterwards, in employment, all degrees are equal. It is also not good for our faculties to get a bad reputation abroad. That cannot be good for us students,” she told SETimes.

The post Serbia: Professors Seeking ‘Protection Of Academic Honour’ appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Manpreet Sethi

On 26-27 June 2014, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) held its plenary meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The discussion on India’s membership was reportedly on the agenda. Meanwhile, on 23 June, India announced its decision to ratify the Protocol Additional to the Agreement between the Government of India and the IAEA for the application of safeguards to Civilian Nuclear Facilities (AP). India has been progressively, and on schedule, been implementing the Separation Plan accepted in 2006 as part of the process of India’s exceptionalisation and conclusion of the India–United States Civil Nuclear Agreement. Ratification of the AP was one of the last few major commitments, even though the document itself had been expeditiously concluded in July 2009. The conclusion of this formality too now marks the end of India’s fulfillment of its promises in exchange for its entry into international nuclear commerce.

The idea and logic of India’s exceptionalisation, however, has still not been accepted by many non-proliferation hardliners in the US and other Western capitals, irrespective of the myriad steps that have been taken by India. Not surprisingly, therefore, mischievous reports on India’s nuclear activities surface at opportune times. Expectedly, just before the NSG meeting that was to consider India’s membership, IHS Jane’s sprung an article alleging that India was “expanding a covert uranium enrichment plant that could potentially support the development of thermonuclear weapons.”

The timing and content of the report was mischievous on two fronts: first, from the point of view of the impending consideration of India’s NSG membership; and second, from the point of view of drawing attention away from the import of the ratification of the AP by India.

India’s uranium enrichment plant at Rattenhalli, Mysore, is not covert. It has been well known for decades and is meant to meet the low enriched uranium fuel requirements of nuclear powered submarines. India’s nuclear doctrine, based as it is on the threat of assured retaliation, requires a sea-based deterrent capability to support a credible no first use. This, in fact, is a requirement much greater than the need for a large arsenal of thermonuclear weapons. It is the assuredness of retaliation to cause unacceptable damage that is necessary to deter, and even non-thermonuclear weapons can wreak such damage given the density of population in this part of the world. Therefore, India’s enriched uranium requirements are of greater criticality for assuring survivability through a credible SSBN fleet, than for building an arsenal of thermonuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Indian ratification of the AP is not an insignificant development. Since 1997, when the AP was first concluded as a tool for strengthening the IAEA safeguards system in the wake of the suspected weapons programmes in states of proliferation concern, the AP has been ratified by 123 countries. It is considered a necessary confidence building measure in providing assurance on the exclusively peaceful nature of a national nuclear programme. The US has been amongst the forerunners seeking its universalisation as a pre-condition for civilian nuclear cooperation.

There are three types of APs – the Model AP with Non-nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) that accept comprehensive safeguards; Voluntary Offer Agreements with Nuclear Weapon States (NWS); and a version of the Model AP with other States prepared to accept measures provided for in the Model AP. India is the only ‘other State’ that has offered to accept an AP tailored to its specificities but that would pursue safeguards effectiveness and efficiency.

In the case of India, not only does the AP grant special rights to the IAEA to conduct inspections (such as the right to declare any Agency official as an inspector, grant of multiple entry visas to facilitate short-notice/surprise inspections, and unrestricted unattended monitoring on civilian designated sites), but also reinforces India’s commitment to ensure that its export controls conform to the best international standards. Of course, there are some provisions of the Model AP that are applicable to the NNWS that do not form a part of the Indian AP. But this is hardly surprising given India’s particular circumstances. Critics forget India’s exceptional circumstances which necessitated the exceptionalisation in the first place. This in no way undermines India’s intention of placing its declared facilities under IAEA oversight. Of course, there will be others that remain outside the IAEA purview, just as there are in other states with nuclear weapons. The APs of all NWS have conditioned access on the basis of national security exclusions.

However, fears that India will use/expand these to indulge in an arms race or for accumulating a large arsenal belie a complete lack of understanding of India’s concept of nuclear deterrence. Credible minimum deterrence and no first use are the basic attributes of the Indian nuclear doctrine. These are alien to most Western analysts who cannot understand that India has no need to indulge in a foolhardy exercise of warhead accumulation seeking parity or superiority.

As a believer in the security benefits of non-proliferation, even as a Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) non-member, India has displayed more conformity with the letter and spirit of the NPT than many of its subscribers. Its participation in the IAEA safeguards regime by extending enhanced safeguards on an expanding nuclear programme, and committing India to export controls as also international safety and security standards only adds to this.

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

The post Indian Ratification Of The Additional Protocol: Mischievous Reports Miss Significance – Analysis appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Grace Kranstover

Indigenous populations compose an estimated 370 million people in the world today, and are often central to a state’s culture and history. Indigenous people comprise five percent of the world’s total population and live in approximately 90 countries.[1] However, indigenous people also make up 15 percent of the globe’s impoverished population. This is especially true in Latin America, where 40 million indigenous people live in rural areas, often below the poverty line.[2] Yet, as travel to Latin America has soared in the past few decades, tribes living in the region have a newfound source of income in tribal tourism, an emerging industry. However, the social and moral implications of this form of tourism must still be explored.

Tribal tourism refers to a new form of travel in which tribes allow tourists to visit their villages in order to be “exposed to a culture completely different from [their] own.”[3] In recent years, this opportunity to experience “authentic” indigenous life has grown in popularity across the globe. This holds true for Latin American nations with large indigenous communities, such as Peru, Brazil, and Guatemala. One positive outcome from increased tribal tourism has been the financial opportunities that have been created for many tribes. Additionally, tribal tourism has helped foster greater awareness of indigenous people, many of whom face oppression, forced land relocation, and challenges to social and economic integration.

Yet, the social consequences of tribal tourism are more detrimental than beneficial. In regions where tribal tourism has become especially popular, the cultures of some indigenous villages have undergone changes that have turned some important spiritual rituals into spectacles. For example, in the native Guatemalan community of Santiago near Lake Atitlán, where the revered pre-Christian deity Maximon has become more of an attraction than a spiritual figure. Traditionally, Maximon emerges from his shrine once a year during Semana Santa, or Holy Week, for various parades and festivities. However, since tourists have started to come to the area, many visitors have begun paying the guardians of the memorialized deity with money or alcohol to see him throughout the year. This has turned Maximon into an exhibit tourists now disrespect; for example, some tourists have even dressed the deity in Mickey Mouse ties.[4] For many indigenous natives, these displays have degraded the meaning of their tradition.

Tribal tourism has also had a negative impact on indigenous populations that do not wish to be contacted by the outside world. The Guardian estimates that there are about 100 indigenous tribes that have chosen to live in complete isolation around the world.[5] Because of the growth of tribal tourism, many tourism agencies have sought to exploit these secluded indigenous populations. Investigative journalists from The Guardian have also found that some tourism agencies are willing to force contact with isolated indigenous tribes, like the Mashco-Piro in Peru’s Amazonian rainforest if clients are willing to pay enough money.[6]

Scientists and indigenous rights organizations have expressed concern and condemned any agencies offering this service. Two main factors have prompted many to call for immediate government action. One factor is the fear of spreading diseases to secluded tribes like the Mashco-Piro that cannot defend themselves because of their unexposed immune systems. Another is putting the tourists themselves in danger of being attacked by frightened indigenous people, as has occurred with the Mashco-Piro before.[7] “We need governments to act to protect indigenous communities, tour operators need to follow a code of conduct, and tourists need to be educated and informed,” stated Mark Watson, director of Tourism Concern, an organization committed to fighting exploitation from tourism.[8]

The question remains of what can be done to make tribal tourism more ethical and to protect indigenous tribes from foreign exploitation. Most important, perhaps, is educating visitors about the negative effects that tribal tourism can have on indigenous communities. One tourism website dedicated to responsible vacationing suggests that travelers who wish to participate in some form of tribal tourism educate themselves on the tribe they wish to visit, and make sure that any monetary payments go directly to benefiting the indigenous people.[9] Tourism expert Justin Francis, suggests that being constantly aware of any social interactions between indigenous tribes and visitors, whether positive or negative, is also very important.[10] At a more formal level, governments must also take steps towards passing laws and regulations that protect indigenous communities from exploitation. Until such serious measures are taken, indigenous cultures will continue to be at risk and in danger of changing forever.http://www.eurasiareview.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

Grace Kranstover, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

References

[1] Golding, Henry, “Is Tribal Tourism Threatening a Way of Life”, BBC, video, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p021b8k0 (accessed July 1, 2014)

[2] International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, “Indigenous Peoples in Latin America – A General Overview” http://www.iwgia.org/regions/latin-america/indigenous-peoples-in-latin-america (accessed July 1, 2014)

[3] Ward, Terry, “Tribal Tourism: Ethical or Exploitative?,” http://news.travel.aol.com/2010/12/08/tribal-tourism-ethical-or-exploitative/ (accessed July 2, 2014)

[4] Ibid.

[5] Vidal, John, “Are We Here Just For Your Amusement?,” The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2009/jul/25/tribal-adventure-ethical-tourism-jarawa (accessed July 2, 2014)

[6] Hill, David, “’Human Safaris’ Pose Threat to Uncontacted Amazon Tribe,” The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/26/human-safari-threat-amazon-tribe (accessed July 3, 2014)

[7] Capobres, Kacy, “Uncontacted Peruvian Tribe Attacks Eco Tourists,” Fox News Latino, http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/01/31/uncontacted-peruvian-tribe-emerges-attacks-tourists/ (accessed July 3, 2014)

[8] Ibid

[9] Francis, Justin, “Indigenous Communities in Tourism: Visiting Tribal Cultures,” Responsible Vacation, http://www.responsiblevacation.com/copy/indigenous-communities-in-tourism (accessed July 3, 2014)

[10] Ibid

The post Deteriorating Cultures: The Destructive Effects Of Tribal Tourism – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nadin Bahrom

More foreign tourists are coming to Tajikistan every year, a windfall for the country’s economy.

In 2013, 208,000 tourists arrived, up from 183,000 in 2011. In the first half of 2014, 74,000 tourists came, but that number doesn’t reflect peak tourism time.

A growing tourism industry holds the promise of keeping Tajiks from having to go abroad for work. As many as 1m Tajiks are working abroad.

Encouraging foreigners to come

A 2010-2014 government programme to develop tourism simplified requirements for foreigners. Tourists arriving from a country that lacks a Tajik embassy may obtain a visa on the spot at Dushanbe International Airport.

As part of the tourism promotion programme, the government also waived a Soviet-era rule requiring every arriving foreigner to register either at the Foreign Ministry or the local Department of Visas and Registrations (OVIR) within three days. That requirement no longer applies to tourists.

“Tourism is the most profitable area in the world’s economic development,” Akhtam Abdullozoda, chairman of the government Committee of Youth, Sport, and Tourist Affairs, said. “That’s why we are taking steps to attract tourists. Tajikistan is 93% mountainous, and eco-tourism; mountaineering; rafting; guided hunting and cultural, historical and archaeological tourism are all available. Our diplomatic missions abroad annually distribute up to 10,000 leaflets in various languages listing tourist destinations.”

This year, Tajikistan ranked among the top 10 worldwide destinations according to a survey by Globe Spots. The website praised Tajikistan for “a dramatic diverse landscape that will leave you dumbstruck at almost every turn.”

“Tourists mostly visit the Zarafshan Valley, as well as the Pamir Mountains,” Deputy Chairman Ruslan Shodikov said. “Baljuvan, Ramit and Varzob are popular cultural destinations. Residents of these regions can freely host tourists without the help of tourist agencies.”

“We want to introduce home stays, which will allow residents of these regions to earn money while giving tourists relatively cheap places to stay. We also want to put this into practice in Panjakent. Gorno-Badakhshan, which still has few hotels, already has 53 guesthouses.”

Community-based eco-tourism is of particular importance because the majority of Tajiks live in the countryside, Shodikov said.

“Tajikistan has high potential for offering a unique experience, including national parks, Lake Sarez and Islamic holy places,” Kirgizbek Kanunov, ex-chairman of the Pamir Eco-Cultural Tourism Association (PEKTA), said. “People have become bored with typical, monotonous tourism. Residents of rural areas … could become tourism service providers themselves and make decent money.”

More promotion needed

However, the country will have to step up its tourism-promoting efforts, officials and industry observers agree.

“The government officially declared tourism a priority sector, but in practice, it’s failed to … tackle tourism problems,” Kanunov said. “The high cost of tourist services, especially of airfare, makes Tajikistan the least attractive country in Central Asia.”

Pilgrimages to Islamic holy places in Tajikistan also have the potential to draw a large number of tourists, observers say.

“We can, and ought to develop tourism in our country using Islam’s cultural heritage,” member of parliament Ismoil Talbankov said. “Every year more than 6,000 [Tajiks] leave to complete the Hajj. We need to have them pass out leaflets and popularise [our] Islamic holy places to other Muslims.”

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