(EurActiv) — Rebecca Harms, Co-Chair of the European Greens, was denied entry into Russia Thursday (25 September) after being held at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for four hours.

Russian border guards gave no official reason for stopping Harms, only to later admit it was because she had voted in favour of EU sanctions against Russia.

It is the first time Russian authorities have stopped a member of the European Parliament from entering the country since the EU imposed sanctions on Russia over its conflict with Ukraine.

On 12 September, the EU banned a total of 119 Russian politicians and businessmen from traveling to the EU, as part of those measures.

Harms, a German national, was made to sign a document declaring herself “persona non-grata” before she was put on a plane back to Brussels. The document also states that if the legislator tries to enter Russia again, it would be considered a criminal offence.

The MEP traveled to Moscow in order to meet with civil society organisations working on human rights issues. She was also supposed to attend the trial of the Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who is accused of espionage, and of the death of two Russian journalists in Ukraine.

Speaking at a press conference in the European Parliament today, Harms said the situation reminded her of Soviet times.

“It was a charade,” she said.

Blacklist

According to Harms, the Russian airport authorities said that her name appears on a “stop list”, but gave no further details. Until now, Russia has not made the blacklist public.

The German embassy in Moscow and the European External Action Service, the EU’s foreign affairs arm, sent letters of complaint to the Russian authorities and are making inquiries about the list.

Both the European Parliament and the European Commission condemned Russia.

“It is completely unacceptable to withhold the passport and papers of an elected MEP and to threaten that entry into Russia would be considered as a criminal activity,” Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, said in a statement.

“The lack of transparency by the Russian authorities with regard to blacklisted persons is regrettable, and goes against the spirit of the Visa Facilitation Agreement in place between the EU and Russia,” a Commission spokeswoman said today.

The post Russia Bans German MEP In Retaliation For EU Sanctions appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Kenyan authorities shut down one madrassa and announced restrictive measures for other Islamic schools teaching radical doctrines, in a bid to combat extremism and “terrorism”.

The first madrassa that was closed is in Machakos, 60km east of the capital Nairobi. The order came after the arrest of 30 youths suspected of links to the al Shabab insurgents, the Somali armed group that last year claimed the attack against Nairobi’s Westgate Mall.

According to Ndegwa Muhoro, director of Criminal Investigations Department, there are madrassas that teach Jihadism and recruit youths for radicalisation also in Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa.

The post Kenya: Madrassa Shut Down In ‘Counter-Terrorism’ Operation appeared first on Eurasia Review.

More than 100 civilians and an unspecified number of Afghani security force members were killed in the Ajristan district, in the Ghazni province, south-west of Kabul, in a vast offensive by the Taliban underway for five days. According to the deputy governor of the province, Ahmadullah Ahmadi, the militants beheaded 15 people in four villages.

Ghazni’s deputy police chief, Asadullah Ensafi, denounced a situation that “is out of control” and stressed the “urgency of military reinforcements”, already requested to Kabul. The provincial authorities claim that the central authorities have not responded to the call.

During the summer period the Taliban already launched offensives in provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Logar, gaining more positions. The military activism of the insurgents is an indirect consequence of the weakness of the central state, in a nation engaged in a political and institutional transition, and where foreign NATO troops of the ISAF mission will withdraw by the end of the year after 13 years.

After the June 14 vote and a long struggle between the two presidential candidates, Afghanistan is attending for the President elect, the economist Ashraf Ghani, take office and the formation of a unity government with his rival Abdullah Abdullah.

The post Afghanistan: Taliban Offensive South Of Kabul, Dozens Of Victims appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Kim Hwan Yong

A team of foreign medical workers appears to have visited North Korea to treat its leader, Kim Jong Un, a South Korean government official said Friday.

The official, who preferred to remain anonymous, told reporters that Kim appeared to have been limping and that the Seoul government is trying to get details about the medical team that may have visited the communist country.

The North Korean leader was nowhere to be seen at the second session of the 13th Supreme People’s Assembly Thursday, spurring speculation about his health. The state-owned Korea Central News Agency reported on the high-level meeting in the capital Pyongyang but did not name Kim Jong Un as one of the attendees.

The South Korean government official was not sure whether the 31-year-old leader had injured a leg or an ankle. He also could not confirm reports from North Korea watchers that Kim has had arthroscopic surgery on his ankle.

The source says Kim was last seen in public at a concert on September 3rd, and he has sent letters to various state-sponsored events as late as last week.

The official explained Kim may have considered the second session of this year’s Supreme People’s Assembly as relatively unimportant, assessing the current political situation in North Korea as more or less stable.

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification has yet to make an official announcement on these developments.

“We are paying close attention to the situation, keeping in mind a wide range of scenarios are possible at this point,” said Park Soo-jin, the vice spokesperson for South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

Since assuming office in early 2012, Kim has attended all four sessions of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

Kim Jong Un was seen limping at official events in the past two months. Experts since speculated that he is suffering from either high blood fat levels or diabetes due to heavy drinking and binge-eating.

North Korea experts say they will be watching to see if Kim attends the Workers’ Party anniversary celebration on October 10.

Jee Abbey Lee contributed to this report.

The post Foreign Medics Treat North Korean Leader – Source appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A man fired from an Oklahoma food processing plant has decapitated one of his co-workers and attacked another one before being neutralized. The FBI was called to investigate suspect’s background, who recently converted to Islam, police announced.

Soon after he was fired, the 30 yo production line employee Alton Nolen walked into the front office of the Vaughan Food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma on Thursday, and attacked and killed an employee with a knife severing her head, according to police.

“Yes, she was beheaded,” Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis confirmed to the Associated Press.

After killing Collen Hufford, Nolan stabbed a second woman, Traci Johnson whose life was saved only when Mark Vaughan, the company’s top executive shot him. Vaughan is a reserve deputy with the Oklahoma County sheriff’s office.

Police were called to the scene shortly after the attack began but by then the suspect was injured.

“He was also trying to kill her (Traci), too. It should be noted this off-duty deputy definitely saved Tracy’s life. This was not going to stop unless he stopped it, obviously he (Mark) is a hero in this situation,” Lewis told reporters.

The knife used in the attack was the same kind used by workers at the plant, said the police.

Nolen is hospitalized and has not been arrested or charged yet until he regains consciousness. Johnson is also in hospital in a stable condition.

Police said they interviewed co-workers at the planet who said that Nolen had recently started trying to convert several employees to the Muslim religion. For this reason the FBI was called in, and is conducting a background investigation into Nolen, who has a criminal record.

The post Recently Fired Man Beheads Co-Worker At Oklahoma Food Plant appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Nick Simeone

Defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will require a long-term commitment by the United States and its allies on many fronts and will not be achieved by airstrikes alone, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters today.

“This will not be an easy or brief effort,” Hagel said at a Pentagon news conference, where he took questions alongside Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We are at the beginning, not the end” of efforts to degrade and destroy ISIL, Hagel said.

Airstrikes continue

Since August, the United States along with France have carried out more than 200 airstrikes against terrorist targets in Iraq. The impact of more than 40 airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria this week — including against a little known group of al-Qaida veterans called Khorasan which U.S. officials say was plotting attacks against the United States and its allies — is still being assessed.

The air attacks to deny ISIL freedom of movement are just one element of a strategy announced by President Barack Obama earlier this month to defeat the group, which has declared a caliphate spanning the Iraqi-Syrian border, threatening minority groups and non-adherents while forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

“No one is under any illusions that airstrikes alone will destroy ISIL,” Hagel said. He also emphasized that the strategy must include diplomatic, economic and intelligence components along with cooperation from the new Iraqi government, and “will require a long term commitment from the United States and all of our partners and allies.”

The key to the strategy in Syria will be training and equipping moderate Syrian opposition forces to take on the battle against ISIL on the ground. Hagel said U.S. military assessment teams have arrived in Saudi Arabia where Syrian fighters are set to be trained. Congress has approved $500 million in funds to train Syrian opposition forces but the Defense Department has said it could take up to a year before the first vetted Syrian rebels are sent into battle.

The post Hagel: Defeating ISIL Is Long-Term Endeavor appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Pentagon officials provided an update on Friday concerning the campaign being waged against militants from the so-called Islamic State and said the operation remains a ways from being over.

In a press conference from the United States military’s headquarters near Washington, DC on Friday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said the US-led campaign against the group also known as ISIS, or ISIL is still in its infancy, but continues to garner support from the international community. In order to succeed, however, an infantry of up to 15,000 fighters may need to be trained to take on the extremists.

The US began launching attacks at ISIS strongholds in Syria for the first time this week in addition to targets in Iraq, and Gen. Dempsey said at Friday’s presser that those efforts may have already begun to pay off.

This week’s strikes supplied by the US military and a coalition of five Arab nation partners disrupted the Islamic State’s command and control and logistics ability, Dempsey said, and has helped deny the militants the freedom of movement in the area following a months-long campaign that already allowed ISIS to take over towns across the region.

Sec. Hagel said that the Pentagon has so far launched 43 airstrikes in Syria and, combined with ongoing efforts in Iraq, will continue to strike targets as the international community comes together to fight ISIS as well.

In the few days since the US began striking Syria, Hagel said, “the governments of Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands have announced their intention to participate” in the American-led campaign against ISIS, with the UK’s parliament voting in favor of doing as much only moments before Friday’s briefing began at the Pentagon.

According to the US government, more than 40 nations — including Syria’s Middle East neighbors of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saud Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan — have so far pledged support to the anti-ISIS campaign. As the US continues to insist that American forces will avoid taking on a combat role on the ground in Iraq or Syria, however, the Pentagon officials acknowledged that a properly trained army must be assembled in order to conquer the Islamic State since an aerial campaign alone can’t solve the conflict.

“No one is under any illusion — under any illusions — that airstrikes alone will destroy ISIL,” Hagel told reporters. “They are one element of our broader, comprehensive campaign against ISISL.”

On his part, Dempsey said that neither an air assault nor a military campaign will truly win the war against the group, and that troops must be trained to fight ISIS on the ground while the US and other nations take a broader approach towards eradicating the extremists.

The US Central Command, Dempsey said, is actively working with “Iraqi military leaders to ensure that what occurs on the ground is their campaign, not our campaign,” and that the Pentagon continues to talk with leadership in neighboring Turkey “about their different ways to contribute to the coalition.”

“Yes, there has to be a ground component to the campaign against ISIL in Syria,” the Joint Chiefs chairman said later during the briefing, adding that earlier figures pertaining to a group of 5,000 prospective US-trained forces may be but a fraction of what is truly required. Instead, he said, upwards of 15,000 combatants may need to be trained in order to take on the ever growing Islamic State.

“This will not be an easy or brief effort,” Hagel said. “We are at the beginning not the end” of the administration’s effort to degrade and destroy the Islamic State.

Hagel and Dempsey’s remarks came two days after US President Barack Obama appealed before an international audience to assist in America’s anti-ISIS campaign during an address at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

“No God condones this terror,” he said of the group. “No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.”

On Friday, Sec. Hagel said that “there has been no coordination, nor will there be, with the Assad regime,” suggesting the Pentagon will continue to launch strikes in Syria without the permission of that country’s president. “Nothing has changed about our position that has shifted our approach to Assad and his regime because President Assad has lost all legitimacy to govern,” he said.

The post Pentagon Ready To Train Up To 15,000 Syrian Rebels appeared first on Eurasia Review.

A new Oregon State University study of children with autism found that they are more sedentary than their typically-developing peers, averaging 50 minutes less a day of moderate physical activity and 70 minutes more each day sitting.

The small study of 29 children, some with autism and some without, showed that children with autism perform as well as their typical peers on fitness assessments such as body mass index, aerobic fitness levels and flexibility. The results warrant expanding the study to a larger group of children, said Megan MacDonald, an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

“These kids, compared to their peers, are similarly fit,” MacDonald said. “That’s really exciting, because it means those underlying fitness abilities are there.”

The findings were published this month in the journal “Autism Research and Treatment.” Co-authors are Kiley Tyler, a doctoral student at OSU, and Kristi Menear of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The study was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education with additional support from OSU.

For the study, researchers tested the fitness and physical activity levels of 17 children with autism and 12 children without autism. The fitness assessments, conducted in the Movement Studies in Disability Lab at OSU, included a 20-meter, multi-stage shuttle run to measure aerobic fitness; a sit-and-reach test to measure flexibility and a strength test to measure handgrip strength; as well as height, weight and body mass index measurements.

The fitness tests were selected in part because they are commonly used in schools, MacDonald said. Children in the study also wore accelerometers for a week to measure their movement, and parents filled out supplemental forms to report other important information.

Even though they were more sedentary, the children with autism lagged behind their peers on only one fitness measure, the strength test. The results were surprising but also encouraging because they show that children with autism are essentially on par with their peers when it comes to physical fitness activities, MacDonald said.

“That’s really important for parents and teachers to understand, because it opens the door for them to participate in so many activities,” she said.

More research is needed to determine why children with autism tend to be more sedentary, MacDonald said. It may be that children with autism have fewer opportunities to participate in organized sports or physical education activities, but if that is the case, it needs to change, she said.

“They can do it. Those abilities are there,” she said. “We need to work with them to give them opportunities.”

MacDonald encourages parents to make physical activity such as a daily walk or trip to the park part of the family’s routine. She’s also an advocate for adaptive physical education programs, which are school-based programs designed around a child’s abilities and needs. Some communities also offer physical fitness programs such as soccer clubs that are inclusive for children with autism or other disabilities, she said.

“Physical fitness and physical activity are so important for living a healthy life, and we learn those behaviors as children,” MacDonald said. “Anything we can do to help encourage children with autism to be more active is beneficial.”

The post Children With Autism Are More Sedentary Than Their Peers appeared first on Eurasia Review.

(Tadmon and Kafr Sousa neighborhoods, Damascus) — To my knowledge this observer has never been-nor likely ever will be-accused of being particularly astute and certainly not the least bit prescient. Yet, the more Syrians I meet in Damascus neighborhoods –seemingly from a fairly broad spectrum of political views, I am changing some earlier assumptions and tentative judgments about ’”this interminable Syrian war.” While any sort of a timetable to end this horror is not yet discernible, the beginnings of putting much of it behind this ten millennia birthplace of civilization may be fairly imminent.

Eighteen months ago, more than a dozen neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs were engaged in moderate to intense fighting between rebels and the Syrian army. Today, only four neighborhoods are under fairly heavy fire, Jobar, Daraya, al-Qabun and Yarmouk. In most of the others, the government and rebels appear to be seeking an accommodation of sorts.

Residents from Tadmon as well as some Damascus University students offered this observer some examples of how both sides of the civil war are trying to work positively with their sworn enemies despite the conflict approaching its fourth year.

One major quality of life necessity is electricity in our homes. Supplying power to its areas is a major concern of both sides in this conflict. Frankly even the current Syrian system appears far better than in Lebanon which regularly sees road blockades and burning of tires to protest the nearly half century of incompetence and indifference of politicians in delivering as few as six hours of daily electricity and that depending on area and which confession control relevant cabinet ministries.. These days of civil war in Syria the government delivers power two hours on and two hours off and full power during the night from 10 pm to 10 a.m. Not too bad by Levant standards. Even rebel groups in an increasingly number of neighborhoods, and to a lesser extend in the countryside, get government power. In some rebel neighborhoods electricity is being delivered to residents 24/7. This is achieved by militia stealing power via cables they run to other neighborhoods. They quite often seem to get away with it but occasionally they fight among themselves as happened earlier this month in Al Qudsayya when a dozen or so Nusra fighters routed around 50 FSA types caught hooking up wires under neighborhood buildings. Nusra and the FSA fight over a myriad of issues and especially over high-rise buildings. Tall buildings are at a premium for obvious reasons including being desirable for sniper nests and mortar launchings. Many neighborhood clashes occur in full view of army checkpoints that control neighborhood egress. Whether or not the army has orders not to interfere or engage with militias, they reportedly often do. Militia and army commanders, if not on exactly friendly terms, sometimes meet and parley as deemed necessary in an effort to create and maintain neighborhood peace. This practice appears to work for the benefit of both sides and is reportedly spreading, particularly around Damascus.

When rebel factions fight one another, as they often do and endanger a neighborhood, the army appears increasingly ready to will “mediate.” If their orders to end the residents endangering fight are not immediately followed the army can and often does cut power to all sides until they receive pledges to honor the governments ‘recommendations.”

Rebel and government “contracts” as the locals call them, cover many subjects, some seemingly odd if not very bizarre. One example. As news reports suggest the government’s policy is to pacify the neighborhoods so refugees can return and it has made remarkably progress around Damascus despite an increase in rebel mortar firings into Damascus from approximately 6 per day a year ago to as many as 23 per day currently.

It is reported on good authority from eyewitnesses, that certain army checkpoints will actually allow armed militiamen to pass through army checkpoints freely if they will head to Jobar or Duraya or other ‘fighting fields” to challenge the army there and keep local peace in their local community. Some do. Last week, according to a student who lives in al-Qabun, there was a potentially serious problem but it was solved at one of the periodic meetings between rebel leaders and army officers. The unusual problem was that when a dozen or so rebels headed to the army checkpoint to go fight the same army near Jobar they were observed carrying two AK-47’s each. The local army commander was livid because by the expressed terms of an earlier agreement each rebel fighter could only safely pass and return through the neighborhood army checkpoint if he was carrying only one AK. The rebels protested complaining that they need two, always fight with two and it was no big deal for the army to let them pass. The army insisted on only one AK-47 per rebel fighter and threatened to not only stop rebels from exiting and entering their neighborhood but that if they did not keep the earlier agreement the army would attack the rebel positions, preassembly with artillery or airstrikes. This caused panic among the local civilians, many of whom have relatives in the FSA, Nusra, and even Da’ish. Long story made short, the rebels listened to their parents and relatives as well as to the reasoning of the army and finally agreed that they would carry only one AK-47 each thru the army checkpoints on route to fight the army a few kilometers away. According to two eyewitnesses to these events, all sides shook hands at the checkpoint as the rebels handed their second AK-47’s to the army for “safe keeping.” An unwritten rule between the army and their sworn enemies en route to try to kill them is that if the rebel gets killed the army checkpoint guys gets to keep his weapon. This is not to say the army and the rebels are in league, but the Syrian government is working to secure the neighborhoods and does not want to resort to bombing if they can obtain their objectives by other means. One hears of many ‘contracts’ being made among sworn enemies around Syria in order to try to end this slaughter.

Another brief example. Last week saw the doors of 17,486 of Syria’s 22,192 public schools open their doors. This according to Dr. Farah al-Mutlak, Deputy Minister of Education of the SAR, who generously gave this observer his time to discuss the current challenges for children in Syria. The gap of approximately 4,500 schools between the above figures is caused by the fact that 2,613 of Syrian schools, as of opening day were controlled by rebels including Da’ish. 688 former schools are now being used to house homeless refugees, 1, 385 are war damaged and currently can’t be used. The figure was higher but over the past year the government has been able to repair 435. In addition, approximately 128,000 children are attending “school clubs” in particularly volatile areas of Syria. This year alone, 72,000 children in Syria and 587,000 child refugees have received psychosocial support.

Excited, and sometimes apprehensive children by the thousands are arriving for the new school year and according to Janet Hasan, Principal of the Salahedine Primary and Middle School in the Mezzeh neighborhood of central Damascus which was among those this observer visited, her school which normally teaches 600 girls now has 1,436. According to Principal Hasan, due to the crisis, attending school is enormously important for the children to experience as least some love and normalcy with peers and authority figures while learning about more than the just effects of war on their lives.

If militias are in control of an area with a public school, efforts are being made by both parties to keep it peaceful and toward this goal the government and the militia, “cooperate” with the exception of Da’ish (IS) who have set up essentially Madrassas that do not teach anything much at all-but memorizing the Koran. Da’ish forbids teaching music, dancing, studying philosophy, western literature or other ‘secular subjects.’ Al Nusra does not, unlike Da’ish, insist on a Madrassa type education in public schools which so far are a big success this new year and working to the benefit of the children and their exhausted and often destitute families.

Virtually every educator, government official and critic of the Assad regime with whom this observer has discussed what the Syrian government is doing to provide quality education for youngsters these days have agreed that all sides, except Da’ish, are trying at different levels to cooperate to help Syria’s cherished youth. All also express abhorrence at what is happening to Syrian school children forced to take refuge in Lebanon. In Lebanon, there’s simply no space in many schools nor much political will left to help Syrian or Palestinian refugees plus the education system is overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of child refugees. Around 80 percent of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon don’t attend school, according to Save the Children and UNHCR.

One positive sign is that partly due to the Syrian Ministry of Education seeking international help, more than $316m was pledged this week, according to Dr. al-Mutlak, to support Syrian children affected by the conflict. This assistance is part of a UN-led initiative to alleviate the impact of the crisis on young people. Despite this wonderful and much needed help a funding gap of more than $ 200 million remains.

Another issue that both sides are trying to resolve at citizens request is to open the neighbors on the weekends so resident can move around. Currently in as many as a dozen Damascene neighbors the rebels prevent residents from leaving their area on Friday because they believe they should pray and stay at home. Some militias close the neighborhoods they control during both Friday and Saturday. Both sides have indicated that a mutually agreed resolution may be near so residents can head to the beautiful parks and old city for sightseeing or visit friends and family.

There is growing evidence here that the government and the rebels are trying to collaborate in various ways in order to save and entire generation of their children from being denied education due to the ravages of ongoing civil war. This massive catastrophe for Syria and the region can be ended if the above noted trend continues.

The post Syria: Engaging The Opposition With More Than Weapons – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

The United States strives for the ratification of a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the international community, US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

“I come here to reiterate the Obama Administration’s unshakable commitment to seeing this treaty ratified and entered into force,” Kerry said, addressing the Friends of Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty meeting held in UN headquarters Friday.

“Though we have not yet succeeded in ratifying it for pure political, ideological reasons – not substance, I assure you – we nevertheless are pledged to live by it, and we do live by it, and we will live by it,” Kerry explained Washington’s stance on the issue.

The Secretary of State concluded the address by underscoring the importance of the agreement “so that we will never again see additional nuclear powers, and so that the existing nuclear powers will continue to move to eliminate these weapons from Earth.”

The CTBT, prohibiting all kinds of nuclear explosions for military or civilian purposes, has been adopted by the UN General Assembly back in 1996. However, the document failed to enter into force, as eight nations, including the United States, China, Iran and Israel, have not ratified it.

The post Kerry: US To Press For Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Ratification appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ann Schneible and Alan Holdren

To mark the impending beatification of Alvaro del Portillo, who led Opus Dei from 1975 to 1994, those attending the celebration are being invited to contribute to initiatives aimed at bringing aid and support to the people of Africa.

Headed by Harambee Africa International, whose aim is to promote awareness-raising activities throughout Africa, the goal is to raise funds for four separate projects, each of which owes its existence to the impetus of the soon-to-be Blessed.

Alvaro del Portillo y Diez de Sollano will be beatified Sept. 27 in Madrid. He was appointed head of Opus Dei on the death of its founder, St. Josemaria Escrivá. When the group was made a personal prelature in 1982, he was made its first prelate, and he was consecrated bishop in 1991.

Over the years he spent as head of Opus Dei, Bishop del Portillo promoted the start of activities of the prelature in 20 new countries, on every continent.

As prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop del Portillo also inspired the start of many social and educational initiatives, including the Monkole Hospital in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo); the Niger Foundation Hospital in Enugu (Nigeria); and the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise in Cebú (Philippines).

In an interview with CNA, Rossella Miranda, who works with Harambee Africa International, described a 1989 visit of the bishop to such places as Ivory Coast and Nigeria as “his great gift, his great legacy.”

During these visits, she said, Bishop del Portillo never offered his own solutions; rather, “he encouraged the people to grow and to form themselves and professionally” so that they might serve “their own families, their own societies, and their own countries.”

The initiatives to which those attending the beatification will be asked to contribute include a mother and child care wing at the Niger Hospital and Diagnostic Centre, which will directly benefit the 200,000 inhabitants of Ezeagu, a rural area where the hospital is located.

The faithful are also invited to contribute to the Social and Cultural Development to eradicate malnutrition in the Bingerville area of Ivory Coast.

A third initiative is the strengthening of three health clinics in the outskirts of Kinshasa, offering aid to the 10 million mostly impoverished inhabitants.

Finally, patrons are invited to support a scholarship program which would allow African priests to study in Rome, “giving them the possibility to come … to study and become formed at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, close to the Holy Father.”

Born of St. Josemaría’s desire to begin a center of higher education for ecclesiastical studies at the service of the universal Church, Bishop del Portillo brought this desire to fruition in 1984 by establishing the Rome Academic Center, which would later be given the title of Pontifical University.

As the Harambee members await the pilgrims who will attend the beatification, Miranda noted their “joy and desire to also thank those contributing, through these projects, to the aid of persons and families who live in great difficulty.”

“It is for this reason that I chose to support these four initiatives,” she said, “encouraged by Don Alvaro in his journey to Africa, just to support people in difficulty.”

The post Beatification Of Opus Dei Head Sparks Call For Global Generosity appeared first on Eurasia Review.

By Ambassador Omar Saif Ghobash

World Foreign Ministers have just met in Paris to decide how to defeat ISIS. But military action is only a small part of the strategy that they need because ISIS is above all an ideological movement, which gains its strength by winning recruits and sympathizers across the Arab world and beyond. So how can ISIS be defeated ideologically?

Although I am the UAE Ambassador to Moscow, I also see myself – first, as a liberal, in the positive and broad sense of the word; second, as an Arab who insists on thinking as deeply as possible about the Arab world; and third, as an individual. That’s how I would like to you to hear me: as a liberal, a conscientious thinker and an individual, not as a government official.

Why am I speaking about this topic today and why do I intend to speak on this subject in other places? Because I, and many others like me, are horrified by the violence shown by ISIS in the name of Islam and in the name of the Arabs.

ISIS has slaughtered its critics, including many among the Sunni Arab community, which it claims to defend. It strangely and arrogantly claims a right to rule over all Muslims everywhere in the world. It has persecuted minorities which every decent Muslim individual should cherish and protect. It’s not unique in that respect, because other Islamist movements have done much the same. And indeed one of the points that I shall make in this lecture is that other Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, also need to be confronted.

Most coverage of the reaction to ISIS has been of the West and its Arab allies marshaling a coalition to defeat ISIS militarily and eradicate it from the territories it claims. But ISIS is much more dangerous as a model in the minds of my fellow Muslims. It is the shell into which any substance can be inserted. And it is this aspect of ISIS that must be fought above all. I have five proposals for how to do so.

They aren’t exhaustive by any means. I am not focusing on the measures that need to be taken to stop individuals from funding ISIS; and I am not going to set out economic or political measures, such as concessions to Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority or policies to reduce unemployment. That’s not because I think these are unimportant; but there are others who can discuss them better than I can. I want to talk about the ideological debate within the Arab world, and how it can be turned against ISIS and other Islamists.

This is a debate primarily to be had between Arabs. And it should be done in terms that Arabs understand. Worrying whether Western society or media will like what we say distracts us from speaking to each other. When we talk of moderate Islamists, or Islamic democracy, it is often clear that we are not talking to each other, we are talking to an imagined Washington. These are not coherent concepts – at least not yet, and they are not high up the real list of priorities.

So as a Sunni Muslim, as distinct from a Sunni Islamist, what are my concerns? I, and many of my compatriots, are deeply concerned about:

1. Our moral state

2. The violence within our Arab Muslim society

3. Our theological leadership

4. The role of laymen and people of goodwill in redirecting the path of the Arab and Muslim worlds

5. Jobs and the economy

These five themes – morality, tolerance, religious moderation, inclusivity and good government, or what I will call technology – are critical ones for undermining the appeal of militant Islamist movements like ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood.

We should:

First, point out that although they say they will make Muslims more virtuous, they do not. Their prospectus of forced morality and imposed religious norms is not just illogical, it is also bound to fail.

Second, we should highlight that their program of violence and intolerance is in contrast to the historical Caliphate. It is a reductive sketch of Islamic history.

Third, we should tackle the issues of the Muslim clergy who either back the extremists and license their violence, or do not interest themselves in their pastoral duties to Muslims in, and of, the 21^st century.

Fourth, we must tackle the question of how our societies should be guided – what the right path is to a better future, with inclusive government and security for all citizens.

Last, we must show that Islamists govern badly. They govern badly not just because of inexperience but because their ideology prevents them from governing well.

“ISLAM IS THE ANSWER”: WHAT IS THE QUESTION?

Islamists are fond of saying that “Islam is the Answer.” This was a motto promulgated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and also by Shi’a militant movements in Iraq. Many of the rest of us have asked: what was the Question? Islam is our religion, and it is a deep and powerful influence over our lives. And for many of us it is the answer to our spiritual and existential needs. However, when it is reified by Islamists and used as a promotional tool for their lust for power, then we need to push back.

One way of pushing back is by asking why Islam is the Answer to specific questions, and why specifically in their hands. The Islamists’ explanation never moves beyond vague assurances that all will be good when we implement Islam. But that still does not answer the question why a purely technical or administrative or biological, or societal problem will be solved through piety. In fact, it seems that utilizing our religion in this way is a disservice to it. The focus of our religion is ethical, moral and spiritual in its essence. Deciding pension fund politics is not the realm of religion. Nor is economic development directly the realm of religion. There will be ethical matters to take into account – principles of fairness, equity, justice – but it is too much to say that there is an Islamic answer to these matters. The truth is that there are many answers to these questions.

I often find it interesting that corruption is cited as one of the vices that will be stopped by implementing Islam under the Islamists. We are told that pious people will hold positions of responsibility and that this will bring corruption to a halt. This is wishful thinking at best. Why not try some tried and tested administrative procedures that will ensure enough transparency to make corruption much more difficult to hide?

My worry is that we are asking too little of our great religion. When our holy text and our moral principles can be directed towards personal regeneration, we instead demand of it to convert the publicly pious into the morally infallible. We can more easily and quickly build administrative systems that will perform this function without regard to the moral worth of the administrator and be of greater service to our fellow citizens.

What is also worrying is to see religion’s noble goals being used to justify evil and cowardly means. It is used, for example, to glorify violence, which is something that ISIS’s religious propaganda does all the time. And it can be used to cover up another kind of violence – the violence of bribery, corruption and exploitation. It is also a kind of psychological violence that we do to each other when we enforce religious standards on each other to the point where we monitor each other’s mental states searching eagerly for moral weakness.

TOLERANCE VS. VIOLENCE

ISIS and other movements are reading history incorrectly and selectively when they claim to be the modern successors of the early Muslims. There is no doubting the power of the claim that they make. Let me focus on ISIS for a moment. Although both ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood are Islamist movements, and fundamentally hostile to the kind of Arab society that I want to see, ISIS is more worrying for me than the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? The Muslim Brotherhood is a more cult-like organization, a fraternity of sorts with all sorts of tests and demonstrations of absolute loyalty to a religious-administrative leadership. It is a closed system that is mired in its own mythmaking and worldview. The Muslim Brotherhood is a modern hierarchy that is not reflected in the early history of Islam.

ISIS, on the other hand, is an open system. It is violent and makes an appeal to the basic elements of Islamic history. ISIS intends to replicate the spread of Islam by the sword throughout the region – in a kind of replay of 7^th century history. It is a seductive approach that makes use of many commonly held references. It claims the forms of ancient Islamic history for itself in a way that many Muslims recognize, including me.

ISIS recalls the Caliphs and the battles where so many early Muslims proved themselves or sacrificed themselves to defeat the enemies of Islam. ISIS appeals to this sense of re-enactment and this is where its true danger lies. They have articulated and referenced a misleading and one-dimensional narrative that, unfortunately, has wide purchase in our region. Why? Because of institutional pressure that refuses to examine and re-examine the implications of poorly understood beliefs about our religion, our history, our present societies and the ways in which we can improve our lives.

Here, we Sunni Muslims need to ask ourselves some critical questions: Why would the form of an Islamic State and the declaration of a Caliphate so excite certain populations on social media? Do they know what they are excited about? Do they understand the difference between the form of an announced Caliphate and the substance of daily murder in the name of our dear religion? Do they realize that ISIS would likely behead them if they were under its rule?

Do they know enough history to realize that in the time of the actual Caliphate, the Caliph Yazid was said to spend his evenings in long and friendly discussions with his Christian Minister, who later became a Christian saint? Or that the Caliph al-Mansur sought advice from Hindu astronomers before choosing the time to lay the foundation stone of Baghdad?

ISIS’s so-called Islamic State is a perversion of history – but it is not a completely alien proposition. The set of actions ISIS has taken, and the set of references they make, are very well known in the Arab world – at the very least. And that makes it particularly dangerous. This is where our religious authorities need to step up and devise narratives that attract a new generation of young Arab Muslims. Let me turn now to the question of those religious authorities, how they behave and how they are constituted.

THE NEED FOR NEW RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP

I believe in free speech: indeed, I am exercising it here. Yet there are limits to it. Religious leaders, who claim in effect to speak for God, have great power to sway people’s minds, especially the minds of those who have not been taught to think for themselves. It is unconscionable in my opinion that a cleric with such authority as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who lives in Qatar and has great influence with the Muslim Brotherhood, can be allowed to say as he did in 2009 that Hitler “put [the Jews] in their place” and that “the next time will be at the hands of the believers.” In the context of Syria, though obviously the Assad regime has done many terrible things to the Syrian people, those clerics who have encouraged viciously violent Islamist groups like ISIS have done a great disservice to the Arab world and to humanity.

But perhaps militant clerics give license to these groups because of their own insecurity. Perhaps, in turn, this insecurity is a result of their apparent inability to engage with the questions thrown up by modernity, telecommunications and globalization.

One of the key problems of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS narratives is that they are one-dimensional, disconnected, reductive sketches of Islam’s history and that of the modern world. However, this is precisely why they appeal to existentially disenfranchised young Muslims. If our traditional religious authorities are unable to recognize that their grasp of Islam’s narrative in the minds of our youth is slipping, then it is for laymen and people of goodwill to take up the baton.

Today we need to think in terms of Islamic structures and institutions that are more responsive to people’s existential needs; and of how they can be of service to the people, rather than how the people can be of service to their visions of glory. We need religious leaders who show a concern for the well-being of each and every individual in their community. We need a religious leadership that thinks about the modern world, that understands political science and economics, that is well-read in the social sciences, that speaks multiple languages and that looks at young Muslims, Arab or not, as individuals to be educated and cared for, not as cannon fodder in an Islamist onslaught against modernity.

DEMOCRACY OR INCLUSIVENESS?

I don’t see democracy as the answer to the Islamists – and would rather focus on inclusion instead. Here’s why.

When I saw the protests in Tahrir Square in 2011, and protests against Ben Ali in Tunisia, and uprisings against Gaddafi in Libya, I and many of my friends wanted to believe. I wanted to believe, as the Western press did, that these protests were an expression of the noble aspirations of the Arab people, a flowering of the demand for freedom by the oppressed of the region, and the end of the Arab exclusion from history.

Now in 2014, we see that Tunisia is unsettled and that the question of Islamist control of government is still undecided. Libya is in great trouble with the proliferation of arms and militias threatening the unity of the state. Egypt experienced its non-coup and is at the heart of the battle between an ideological Islamist worldview and a worldview that is more inclusive in scope. Yemen does not make the headlines these days, but the economy is suffering tremendously and various low level conflicts continue to tear at the fabric of the country. Syria is the shame of the Arab world with over 200,000 dead and a merciless and brutal civil war that has morphed into the specter of radical and violent religious extremists dominating more and more territory.

What has gone wrong?

First, despite the virtues of democracy, it can be divisive – much more so when it is coupled with Islamism. It can be a puzzle to people new to democracy to understand that winning the election does not mean that the minority has no further role to play and no rights that remain. Many Islamists will welcome democratic elections on the basis that we are all Muslim societies and that therefore the most Muslim of parties will win. And win again, and again and again. The point of designing political systems that are genuinely just and stable involves the expression of wider and deeper principles such as the protection of all, winners and losers, majorities and minorities, men and women – so that the chance of renewal always remains a possibility, and so that people can still live in peace and security irrespective of their personal religious beliefs.

Islamist election winners in Egypt and Iraq were not willing to make any such concession. Yet in our society, which is still divided along regional, tribal, ethnic and religious lines, there are many minorities. Faced with the threat of suffering from arbitrary power, many are willing to fight when confronted with the prospect of democracy, as they would fight any change that may threaten their freedom. It is no coincidence that ISIS was born in Iraq, which is an electoral democracy of just this kind – one which is run by Shi’a Islamists. Those who benefit from dividing the country on religious lines, and can then appeal to their home base for votes, have no interest in treating citizens on an equal basis regardless of their religion. It is partly because of Islamist movements that democracy in the Arab world will be so difficult to implement.

It is also because of the lack of institutions that can rise above partisan politics. When every Minister who is elected, in a country like Iraq, evicts the existing staff and replaces them with his or her own partisans, the stakes in an election are raised very high. Given the social, cultural and educational realities of our part of the world, many of us recognize that an introduction of electoral democracy that precedes the development of effective, impartial institutions may exacerbate tribal and sectarian divisions. Even the voting in something as apparently innocuous as a regional poetry competition in the UAE often takes place along tribal lines. This does not mean that western style democratic processes will never happen; simply that overnight changes in civil relationships are fraught with dangers.

On the other hand, the Islamists demand that we all obey the utterances of a shadowy Spiritual Guide and his business-savvy henchman. Islam is the Answer to all questions, and I emphasize this ALL Questions – and the conveyor of those Answers is a person whose infallibility is never in doubt. What happens when such a movement is elected? How can it ever be expected to yield up power peacefully? When is the last time that any movement which saw itself as having a God-given right to rule, stood down in favour of an allegedly “godless” opposition?

So the challenge is to find a way to include all citizens and give them a voice, without risking the ripping apart of the social fabric.

GOOD GOVERNMENT, TECHNOLOGY, AND UNFETTERED INQUIRY

I’d like to address the issue of good government: how to deliver jobs and security. Let me address this first through the lens of technology.

The Arab and Islamic world has an illustrious history with technology. The Muslim world produced some remarkable technological achievements, in the areas of mathematics, astronomy, geography and medicine.

Modern-day Islamist movements are not as open-minded. They want to accept the technological product but refuse the premises upon which the technology came into existence. We are always in search of a pure and idealized past where ethics, morality and the path to the Good Life were clearly set out and where the right choices were always clear.

Introducing an environment that would allow for us to flourish technologically means that we would have to open the doors to inquiry. And the best inquiry is free inquiry. Given that our current theological masters are not ready yet to face the puzzling questions of science and modernity, they prefer to dictate against the inquiry, but to accept the product of the inquiry. And thus we have the injunction against innovation, invention, importation of foreign and alien ideas. What is the area of application of this injunction? Who decides its limits? The reality is that this injunction may be of limited scope in theory. The way it is taken up by various groups in the Muslim world is less selective.

This is a point I would like to emphasize, as it is critical for the future of the Arab world. Technology is the product of inquiry and is premised on the creation of a free space of inquiry. Without the freedom to inquire, to question, and to challenge, we have no ability to create. However, inquiry cannot be limited to those areas permitted by religious authority. Inquiry quickly escapes its master’s grip – just as radicalism does. This inquiry is limited more by religious injunction and ideologists of religion than political censorship.

Does this attempt to limit our interaction with the ‘immoral’ world of inquiry mean that we will be saved from evil? No. In fact, we are doubly disadvantaged.

Firstly, it puts us in a place where we will find our lives produced and manipulated by other people’s design of technology.

And secondly, we lack the ability to create it ourselves. We want the product but reject the principles that led to the creation of the product.

The spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood said recently that God had produced the West to provide Muslims with technology. And thus there was no need for us to create our own. At the very least, this is an incoherent approach.

It seems that when it is a Western invention, we do not have the moral burden of the consequences of the product. We are merely its weak and weakened object.

What does make sense is that this approach will increase the tension in the Arab and Muslim worlds between those who insist on going backwards in time, and those who are in the present time. This tension is reflected in the battle between radicalism and progressive thinking; and between those who want time to stop still, and those who recognize that life is about mastering change. This is not a moral issue; it is simply the logic of contrasting existences.

As well as physical technology, let me speak briefly about political technology.

You will be pleased to know that the time I have spent in Russia has been put to good use. As I am out of the way of home politics, I enjoy the privilege of letting my mind wander.

The Russians often refer to political technologies in their public discourse. This is interpreted in the West as a euphemism for political manipulation. This may or may not be the case, but it did prompt me to think of political systems as intentional systems – by which I mean systems that are intended to produce certain outcomes.

So rather than dividing the world up into those that are democratic and those that are authoritarian, I began to see political systems more in terms of the outcomes they were likely, or, in some cases, guaranteed to produce.

So one interpretation of the demonstrations in Tahrir Square is that the protesters were demanding political change – the fall of Mubarak, democratic elections, the victory of youth over age.

Another view of the events says that people were demanding firstly, social justice, secondly, an end to corruption and thirdly, jobs.

What they got was the Muslim Brotherhood.

I was puzzled by the enthusiasm that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated in the pursuit of political power in the 2012 Presidential elections. I simply could not understand what they wanted to do with political power in case they won. They already had tremendous social and cultural power through their compelling though reductive and vague narrative that Islam is the Answer to any problem facing individuals or the nation.

In order to better understand this matter, I looked at the election platform of Morsi and compared his platform to those of other parties. My reading of the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda was the following:

1. They wanted to correct the moral state of the Egyptian people first, and then that of others later.
2. They wanted to enforce Sharia law.
3. They wanted to root out corruption.
4. They wanted to ensure social justice – however vaguely defined.

How did they propose to achieve all of these aims? The moral state was to be corrected with personal piety, Sharia law was to be enforced by a pious Parliament, corruption was to be eradicated by the piety of government administrators, and social justice was to be the outcome of overall and generalized piety.

This is not a caricature of their approach. It is the legacy of years of insisting that Islam is the Answer, without delving into how and why piety, Sharia law, prayer, devotion and the range of religious exercises that are central to our lives as Muslims, was going to translate into administrative and economic excellence. Moral excellence, perhaps, but in a state of failed economics and disastrous public services.

In conclusion, piety and holiness are key to our lives as Muslims, but they are not systems or technologies of governance.

THE UAE MODEL

Having spoken about five themes that must be emphasized in the fight against radical Islamism, I would like to say something about my own country and its political system.

With the events of the Arab Spring and the loud calls for immediate democratization or Islamization, many of us in the UAE asked ourselves the following question: did it make sense to risk or sacrifice what we have achieved up until now, for an idealized democratic polity, or for an Islamist state, either of which could unleash destructive forces that we know are within us?

Why do I say this? For two reasons:

1. In establishing the Emirates, our leadership overcame divisions and antagonisms that were deeply rooted in tribal, nomadic culture. These features of our society are never too far from the surface. This is a feature common to all Arab societies. The fact that we overcame these obstacles of distrust and competition for limited resources and built an economic success in our region is to be commended.

Once upon a time, we in the Emirates could have been like Libya today – a war zone of militias and Islamists and smugglers and terrorists. But we in the UAE are the product of a judicious understanding of what we have within our historical tribal selves and what we could become.

Changing our system by a radical reordering of existing relationships is highly likely to lead to people falling back on traditional allegiances of family, tribe and blood to the detriment of the social cohesion we have today.

2. We also know what happened in country after country in the Arab world. Extremists are better at grabbing power than moderates who take an accommodating system for granted.

Rather than being radical and revolutionary, our approach has been to uncover our own potential, and to reveal to ourselves what is already present.

I will go further, and propose that key features of the UAE system can form the basis of positive development in other parts of the Arab world. Why? Let me return to the five themes with which I began this talk: morality, tolerance, moderation, inclusivity and technology.

Firstly, I would say that in contrast to the Islamists’ relentless and often hypocritical focus on moral virtue, we recognize human weakness. Though we set high standards for ourselves, we recognize that perfection is an attribute of Allah and not people. There is a remarkable readiness to forgive errors and move on. This translates into the rise of the entrepreneurial class amongst Emirati youth, as well as a lenient approach to other people’s moral conduct. We believe these matters are a choice for the individual. We do not engage in moral witch-hunts.

Secondly, I would say that the UAE’s rulers are decidedly tolerant Muslims and definitely not Islamists. The Islamist assumes that he is right and that you are wrong. The President and founder of the UAE, HH Sheikh Zayed, God rest his soul, made clear his opposition to movements like IS:

“In these times, we see around us violent men who claim to talk on behalf of Islam. These people have nothing whatsoever that connects them to Islam. They are apostates and criminals.” He also rejected the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda. He met with the Brotherhood’s leaders in the 1970s and refused their proposal to set up an office in the capital Abu Dhabi. When asked why he responded: “If you are the Muslim Brothers, then who are we?” In our approach, all are included – as long as they include others. This key feature translates into the allied notion of tolerance. If we are prone to error, and we do not exclude those who are different, this expresses itself as a deep tolerance and acceptance of other ethnicities and other faiths. We have over 190 nationalities in the UAE and over seventy churches. Mosques are full and churches are full.

Thirdly, the UAE takes action to suppress religious hatred and extremism by maintaining rigorous controls on the content of clergy’s sermons. It also hosts the International Centre of Excellence against Violent Extremism (“Hedayah”) in Abu Dhabi. The Centre is engaged in capacity-building and best-practice exchanges in countering all forms of violent extremism. In order to further promote peace in Muslim communities, the UAE announced on 19 July 2014 the establishment of the “Muslim Council of Elders,” an independent, international body of scholars from Muslim countries, promoting the core tolerant values and practices of our faith.

Fourthly, our system is both consensus and leadership driven. The UAE does have some explicitly democratic mechanisms allowing for formal voting and voicing of opinion. However, more significantly, the UAE has social mechanisms and platforms for debate, analysis, polling, idea-testing and consensus-building. These are not immediately visible to the outsider, but they are there and they exist. Going forward, there will inevitably be a need to further develop and refine these indigenous systems of signaling. And that will be done, and done by us. Consensus is allied with leadership. Historically, the leaders of the tribes of the region were men who had proven themselves with natural leadership abilities. It is the combination of communal consensus and strong, decisive leadership that we move as a society. And as a society, we face the uncertainty of the future, not as a source of anxiety and an excuse for autocracy, but rather as a challenge and with determination.

Fifthly, we are not afraid of technology. We focus on getting things done, in a manner that can be measured in the welfare of our people. This means that we focus on technological innovations like:

1. Rule of law.

2. Efficient judicial systems.

3. Administrative effectiveness, measured encouraged and rewarded by the state.

4. Schools and a broad education.

5. A functioning and adequate health system.

6. Airlines that connect us with the world.

7. Government as a platform provider.

8. An economy that is open to outside investment, and is freeing itself from dependence on oil.

These are some of the key features that explain the success of the UAE over the last forty odd years. The first step involves leadership with a vision for what is possible, and the second step is the vital work of building and reinforcing trust between key members of society. This work of trust building cannot be underestimated. We want our fellow Arabs to engage in the same step-by-step approach that we have followed always reaffirming and demonstrating goodwill to each other.

TOWARD A NEW ARAB WORLD

In my analysis, I tentatively put forward the idea that we in the Arab world are pursued by a variety of fundamentalisms, by rigid ideas and preconceived notions of what people are like, and of what the outcomes should be. And it is these dogmas that distract us from building our societies today, as well as tempt us with instantaneous Utopias that we may want but need to work towards.

ISIS is the proof that we all needed in Sunni Islam to recognize that there are, and must be, different interpretations and that laymen of goodwill are obliged to enter the fray. Laymen need to wrestle back Islam from the embrace of violence. ISIS makes a mockery of all the values that we believe and know Islam to embrace.

There are three thoughts I want you to take away today:

1. We in the United Arab Emirates believe wholeheartedly that the Arab world has the capacity, and the knowledge to create a path of intellectual and economic productivity. And that violence is the least effective means of achieving what the silent majority wants – an Arab world that is at peace with itself and confident in its position in the community of nations.
2. Most young Arabs prefer our model to that of the Islamists. The 2014 Arab Youth Survey showed – not for the first time – that when asked what country their countries should emulate, Arab youth name the UAE above all other countries – above the US and UK, above Turkey and Iran.
3. We Muslims, and the Muslim communities of the Arab world in particular, have within us the capacity to reformulate our approach to ourselves and to the rest of the world, and thereby to share the beauty of our great religion with all.

Thank you.

All inquiries to the Ambassador should be directed to Emily Goodrich, Editorial Assistant to His Excellency Omar Ghobash, Ambassador from the UAE to Russia, emgoodrich@gmail.com.

This article was published by FPRI, and may be accessed here.

The post Winning The War Of Ideas In Arab World: A View From The UAE appeared first on Eurasia Review.

Dear Speaker Boehner,

While millions of hardworking Americans are working more and more for less and less, you and your House of Representatives seem to have no problem working less and less for more and more.

If a mother of one in Butler County, Ohio — your home county — working at the Ohio minimum wage ($7.95 per hour) wanted to make a living wage — according to MIT’s Living Calculator for the county — she would have to work 88 hours a week, which adds up to a little over 12 hours of work per day, 7 days a week. You once defended the placement of Ten Commandments on public property. If this mother wanted to obey the Fourth Commandment — “Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy” — by not working one day a week, she would have to work over 14 hours per day, leaving her with only two hours left to spend with her child, given eight hours of sleep. For millions of Americans, the fair deal of eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of discretionary time has been broken.

Meanwhile, the work schedule of you and your fellow Representatives cannot be more different. You took a month in August off, as well as the first week in September. Last week you worked a four day week to start the month and then another four in the second week, and then cancelled a four day session that was set to begin on September 29. As one count pointed out, over the course of 103 days between the start of August and the middle of November, you will have been in session for eight days. You are out of control. Give a listen to Republican Rep. David Jolly:

“I believe in the radical notion that Congress should work. Congress should govern. And Congress should work more, not less…By increasing the days that we are in session, I believe we will create an environment where Republicans, Democrats and Independents can work together, substantively, thoroughly, and with great deliberation. We will create a Congress that works.” (http://1.usa.gov/1obUcMi)

Congresspersons are paid $174,000 a year, meaning that your pro-rated salary for 103 days of the year is $49,101. Presuming a 10-hour work day during those eight hard days of work in September, you earned the following hourly wage: $614 per hour. That mother of one making the Ohio minimum wage of $7.95 in Butler County would have to work 77 hours to make the $614 hourly wage for your colleagues during your September House session. (This is all without mentioning that specifically you, as Speaker of the House, make $223,500 a year, meaning you make $63,070 during this 103-day period this fall: a $788 per hour wage for your eight days in session, which would take the Butler County mother of one working minimum wage 99 hours of work to catch up to your earnings for one hour of work.)

If the 1968 minimum wage kept pace with inflation, it would be $10.92 per hour, over three dollars higher than the paltry $7.25 per hour level to which Congress has let it erode. Should not hard, full-time work pay at least as much as minimum wage workers made 46 years ago? As twenty-six Republicans, spearheaded by Rep. Frank LoBiondo, wrote in a 2006 letter to you when you were Majority Leader urging you to raise the minimum wage: “nobody working full time should have to live in poverty.”

Yet you continue to prevent even a House floor vote on raising the minimum wage — a cause that is supported by a large majority of Americans. It’s time to ask yourself: while you and your colleagues make over $600 per hour of in-session work between August and November this year, do not the hard working low-wage Americans who cook, clean, farm, serve and care for people like you deserve a vote on restoring their minimum wage to its mid-century inflation-adjusted level?

Why don’t you ask the people back in your Congressional District — residents of Troy, Hamilton, Greenville, Tipp City, Eaton, and Springfield, Ohio; residents of a Congressional District where 62,000 workers would receive a raise if you allowed a vote on a minimum wage raise to $10.10; residents of a state where over 527,000 children live with a parent making less than $10.10 — these questions?

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

The post Ralph Nader: Letter To John Boehner On Congressional Work appeared first on Eurasia Review.

RESEARCH SHOWS that one of the most often used words in Hebrew is “Shalom”. Israelis greet each other with “shalom” and many of them do the same when parting. (The others use the two slang words “yallah bye”, the one Arabic, the other English.)

Shalom is not a synonym of the European word “peace”, as many believe. It is far more. It is based on the root “whole” and conveys the sense of wholeness, safety, wellbeing. In no European language can you say “our soldiers attacked the enemy and returned to their base in shalom”.

In Arabic, Salaam has the same meaning.

But even in its restricted meaning for peace, shalom expresses a profound human longing. From antiquity, people craved for peace and dreaded war. “Dona nobis pacem” – “(God) give us peace” – is part of the Catholic mass. Several composers have set it to music. I remember singing it as a child.

Yet in today’s Israel, using the word “peace” in political discourse is almost indecent. A four-letter word (as indeed it is in Hebrew and Arabic). One may still express a wish for a “political settlement”, but even that sounds a bit suspicious.

It has become fashionable to say that the peace movement is moribund. That the “Two-State solution” is dead, while the so-called “One-State solution” is stillborn.

The safest way to put it is “I am all for peace, but…”

RECENTLY, HAARETZ columnist Ari Shavit, who is popular among American Jews, has written an article in which he equally condemns “extreme rightists” and “extreme leftists”, those who advocate war and those who advocate peace. He succeeded in creating a furor. Leftists protested that they have never murdered any opponent, let alone a prime minister, while the Rightists have done so and much more.

Can one compare, say, the leader of the Meretz party, Zehava Galon, with Miri Regev of Likud? (Recently, Regev, a very good-looking former chief army spokeswoman, sued a blogger for calling her “a whore with the mouth of a cesspool”. The suit was rejected by the court.)

Israel’s best and brightest attacked Shavit. Columnist Akiva Eldar, the word-renowned sculptor Dani Karavan (whose work includes the wall behind the Knesset speaker) and many others condemned his reasoning. How can one compare?

The Right is leading us towards an apartheid state in which a Jewish minority will oppress an Arab majority, while the Left advocates a situation in which both peoples live side by side in peace. Where is the symmetry?

But columnists love symmetry. Condemning both sides gives an impression of superiority and even-handedness. Also, it allows their readers to think that they are free spirits, soaring high above the tumult of the masses.

For politicians, the temptation is even greater. Both Leftists and Rightists claim to belong to “The Center”, on the assumption that that is where most votes are to be found. Also, if you are on the Right, you assume that Rightists will vote for you anyhow, so it is more profitable to invest all your efforts in “The Center”. The same goes for Leftists.

This leads to a distortion of the political process. Both sides hide or play down their real views in order to please a group of voters who hold no views at all, and who, frankly, don’t give a damn.

In other words, those who care least about the future of the nation are deciding who shall lead the nation into the future.

It makes one think of Winston Churchill, who said that the best way to despair of democracy is to talk with a voter for five minutes. However, the same Churchill also said that while democracy is a very bad system, all the other systems which have ever been tried are worse.

SHAVIT DOES not object to peace. On the contrary, he loves peace.

He even advances his generous peace plan: If Mahmoud Abbas unequivocally accepts Ehud Olmert’s peace proposal, and if all the Arab states give up all claims for the return of the Palestinian refugees, he, Shavit, is ready to negotiate for peace.

Sounds a little bit naïve to me.

Olmert submitted his peace proposal when he was already on the way out, after being indicted for corruption. I don’t remember its contents, nor, I suspect, does anyone else. It fell short of the Palestinian terms. Why should Abbas accept an Israeli plan from a bankrupt politician before negotiations?

As for the refugees, that is even more infantile. The refugees claim is by far the strongest card of Arab diplomats. They may give it up, but only after a long and hard struggle in return for an adequate price: a Palestinian state, a capital in East Jerusalem, a connection between the West Bank and Gaza, for starters.

Giving up the claim even before negotiations start is, well, a bit unrealistic. It shows that Shavit is innocent of any understanding of what peace means.

THE ISRAELI left is not dead. It is what the Germans call “scheintot”, still living but left for dead. (It was one of the nightmares of my childhood to be buried for dead while still living.)

The Labor Party is a pitiful remnant of the powerful force that led the pre-state community and the struggle for the creation of Israel. Nowadays it is led by pitiable people, and foremost by the official “leader of the opposition”, Yitzhak Herzog. During the recent war, the party was mute, except for giving Binyamin Netanyahu from time to time unsolicited and ignored advice about how to better conduct the war.

Meretz was scarcely more vocal. As long as the cannons were thundering, its muses were silent.

Neither of the two parties has the slightest chance of changing the course of events. In polls, Herzog attracts one-digit preference for prime minister.

And the Arab parties? Who’s asking? Nobody? OK.

TWO WEEKS ago, on my 91st birthday, I asked myself: if I were 25 and straining for action, how would I go about trying to create a new Left?

My first advice to myself would be: don’t behave like the aborigine, who bought a new boomerang and threw away the old one, which hit him squarely on the head. I would banish the old boomerang to a closed cupboard and acquire a shining new one.

How? First I would get rid of all the old slogans, appellations and trademarks, starting with “Left”.

What does “Left” mean to an average Israeli? To the million and a half “Russian” immigrants it means the hated Soviet Union, Stalin and the KGB. For the millions of “Oriental” Jewish citizens, it means the hated Ashkenazi elite, which still dominates many aspects of the country. For the religious of all shades, it means the secular public that has forsaken God and His 613 commandments. For the Arab citizens, it means a long trail of betrayal by leftist governments.

We need a new appellation, one acceptable and lovable by all the different sectors of current Israeli society: Men and women, Ashkenazis and Orientals, religious and secular, Jews and Arabs.

That is a tall order. I would set up focus groups in each sector, thrash it out among them and between them, find something original, Hebrew, that speaks to the hearts of people, not just to their minds.

Emotions are terribly important. For a long time, the Israeli Left has been dry and sterile, unable to excite. At demonstrations of the “Zionist Left”, there is no enthusiasm, no uplifting songs, nothing like “We shall overcome!”

Peace, democracy, equality, humanism – these are not empty and obsolete slogans. Combined with respect for Jewish and Arab traditions and the wisdom of the ancients, as well as for the unique contribution of each of the different sectors to the common good, they can be an exciting new mixture.

We need, as Martin Luther King so eloquently put it, a dream. A vision. Not just an election program.

A VISION needs an instrument for its realization. Without an exciting new vision, there can be no new political force. But without a political force, the vision will remain a dream.

The old Left is moribund because during the last sixty years it has given up, without a fight, all its instruments of power – from the once powerful Histadrut (trade union organization) to almost all its media. The leftist malaise of fragmentation is still sapping its strength. We have scores of peace and human rights associations, many of them composed of wonderful people doing a wonderful job in the fight against war, occupation, social inequality and oppression, each in a niche of its own. They are, alas, incapable of uniting in order to set up even the most elementary of joint instruments.

Politics is a matter of ideas and power. Both have to be formed from scratch.

FORTUNATELY, I am no longer 25 years old, and gladly leave the task to the younger generation.

According to the Jewish calendar, a new year started on Thursday, two days ago. Let’s hope that it will see the first step towards the awakening.

The post Ah, If I Were 25 – OpEd appeared first on Eurasia Review.

In this week’s address, the President reiterated the forceful and optimistic message of American leadership that he delivered in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week. America is leading the world against the most pressing challenges, including the fight to degrade and destroy ISIL, the effort to stop the Ebola epidemic, and the movement to confront the threat from climate change. The world looks to America and its commitment to freedom in the face of uncertainly, and as the President said, it will continue to do so for generations to come.

Remarks of President Barack Obama

Weekly Address
The White House
September 27, 2014

Hi, everybody. American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world. That was true this week, as we mobilized the world to confront some of our most urgent challenges.

America is leading the world in the fight to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL. On Monday, our brave men and women in uniform began air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. And they weren’t alone. I made it clear that America would act as part of a broad coalition, and we were joined in this action by friends and partners, including Arab nations. At the United Nations in New York, I worked to build more support for this coalition; to cut off terrorist financing; and to stop the flow of foreign fighters into and out of that region. And in my address to the UN, I challenged the world — especially Muslim communities – to reject the ideology of violent extremism, and to do more to tap the extraordinary potential of their young people.

America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Along with our allies, we will support the people of Ukraine as they develop their democracy and economy. And this week, I called upon even more nations to join us on the right side of history.

America is leading the fight to contain and combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. We’re deploying our doctors and scientists — supported by our military — to help corral the outbreak and pursue new treatments. From the United Kingdom and Germany to France and Senegal, other nations are stepping up their efforts, too, sending money, supplies, and personnel. And we will continue to rally other countries to join us in making concrete commitments to fight this disease, and enhance global health security for the long-term.

America is engaging more partners and allies than ever to confront the growing threat of climate change before it’s too late. We’re doing our part, and helping developing nations do theirs. At home, we’ve invested in clean energy, cut carbon pollution, and created new jobs in the process. Abroad, our climate assistance now reaches more than 120 nations. And on Tuesday, I called on every nation – developed and developing alike — to join us in this effort for the sake of future generations.

The people of the world look to us to lead. And we welcome that responsibility. We are heirs to a proud legacy of freedom. And as we showed the world this week, we are prepared to do what is necessary to secure that legacy for generations to come.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

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Armed British RAF jets have been deployed on their first mission in Iraq since UK lawmakers voted to authorize military strikes against so-called Islamic State (IS) targets in the country.

A Ministry of Defense Spokesman (MOD) confirmed on Saturday that “Royal Air Force Tornados continue to fly over Iraq and are now ready to be used in an attack role as and when appropriate targets are identified.”

UK MPs vote overwhelmingly for ISIS airstrikes in Iraq

The spokesman added that no running commentary on the jets’ movements would be forthcoming, but they “are pleased with the response time achieved.”

On Friday, MPs in Britain’s House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to take part in military action against Islamic State (also known ISIS, or ISIL).

The motion proposed by Prime Minister David Cameron’s government was passed overwhelmingly by 524 votes to 43 – a majority of 481.

Britain’s three biggest parties, coalition government partners the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, plus the opposition Labour party, all officially backed the bombing campaign. The government insisted the intervention was legal under international law because it was requested by the Iraqi prime minister.

The measure did not propose any UK involvement in airstrikes in Syria, where a US-Arab coalition began bombing IS militants on Tuesday. A year ago, British MPs rejected airstrikes on Syria to oppose the government of President Bashar Assad.

Cameron told MPs early in Friday’s debate the situation in Syria is “more complicated” than Iraq because of its “brutal dictator” President Assad, and the civil war that has been ongoing there for the past three years.

He noted, however, that there was a strong case for attacking IS in Syria, a proposition which both Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and Defense Secretary Michael Fallon have cited as a distinct possibility.

Cameron added that there was no “legal barrier” to expanding operations into Syria, though MPs were far from united on such a move.

Shadow Education Minister Rushanara Ali resigned from Labour’s front bench on Friday in order to abstain from voting on the measure.

“I am not confident that this military action will be effective in the short term in just targeting the terrorists and not harming innocent civilians,” she wrote in a letter to Labour party leader Ed Miliband. “Nor can I pretend to have any confidence that there is a credible long-term strategy to build up the capacity of the Iraqi army or that the potential impact on radicalization in the UK has been properly thought through.”

She added that while a majority of British Muslims abhorred the actions of IS, there is a widespread belief in both Muslim and non-Muslim communities that military action “will only create further bloodshed and further pain for the people of Iraq.”

Public opinion, however, has turned decidedly in favor of military action following the beheading of British aid worker David Haines.

A poll conducted for The Sun newspaper, published on Friday, showed that 57 percent of UK residents surveyed said they supported bombing ISIS in Iraq, compared to 24 percent who were against the move.

Support for a bombing campaign is up by one-fifth on a similar poll last month.

Asked whether they backed strikes on IS in Syria as well, 51 percent approved of spreading the intervention while 26 percent opposed it. Meanwhile, 43 percent backed sending ground troops to Iraq, or considering sending them there.

Meanwhile, activists from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that US-led forces had launched airstrikes against Islamic State compounds in the central province of Homs and the northern region of Raqqa on Saturday, AP reports.

The targets included wheat silos west of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour.

On Friday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the Pentagon had already launched 43 airstrikes in Syria. According to the US government, more than 40 nations — including Syria’s Middle East neighbors of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan — have so far pledged support to the anti-IS campaign.

On Friday, Denmark pledged to send seven F-16 fighter jets to Iraq to aid in the struggle against Islamic State militants. Earlier in the week, the Netherlands and Belgium each promised to contributed six fighter jets apiece.

Washington and its allies hope to contain and ultimately destroy the extremist group, which has established a self-declared state in an area roughly one-third the size of Syria and neighboring Iraq combined.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, however, said that airstrikes alone would not be enough to eliminate the threat posed by IS militants. Although the Pentagon has been unwilling to commit ground troops to the region, Dempsey said Friday that up to 15,000 moderate Syrian rebels would been needed to dislodge IS militants from northern and eastern Syria.

Comments from the top US military official came one week after Congress approved a plan to begin training and equipping 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels to counter the IS threat.

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Saying talks over a potential ground operation were underway, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that his country’s troops could help secure zones inside Syria, according to the Hurriyet newspaper.

“We will protect our borders ourselves,” he said, according to the report, adding that coalition countries are now discussing roles for potential ground operations.

Erdogan’s remarks come just days before the Turkish parliament is expected to vote on a motion authorizing its military to conduct operations across the border, the report said. That vote is expected to come Oct. 2.

Air strikes, presumably led by the United States, continued Saturday against Islamic State targets, Reuters reported.

Original article

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An Egyptian court has postponed until November its ruling in the trial of former president Hosni Mubarak, charged with complicity in the killings of protesters during the 2011 revolt that ousted him.

The trial has now been postponed a few times.

Mubarak, his interior minister and six other senior security officers are accused of ordering the killings of hundreds of protesters.

The former president was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for his role in the case, but was released a year later and has been under house arrest at a military hospital, pending results of a retrial.

Since then, Egypt has held democratic elections, but the military helped overthrow the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, when he pushed through a constitution that many Egyptians saw as slanted toward Islamists.

Mubarak’s his former intelligence chief, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, is now Egypt’s president.

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Toshiba made waves about 10 days ago when it announced that it was moving its focus away from consumer PCs and laying off hundreds of workers. Instead, it is shifting its efforts toward business computers, and the company’s first systems launched since that announcement are indeed laptops designed for small- and medium-sized businesses, ZDNet reports.

The new Tecra C50 lineup consists of a pair of value-priced 15.6-inch notebooks with the usual specs for such machine. Those include Intel Core processors, 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, 1,366×768 screen resolution, and a built-in DVD drive. As a result the C50 weighs 5 pounds, and Toshiba claims it gets roughly 7 hours of batter life.

Among connectivity features are a pair of USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and a memory card reader. The laptops ship with Windows 7 installed, but the user can put that DVD drive to use with the included Windows 8.1 discs to upgrade the OS if so desired,ZDNet says.

The cheaper C50 will be priced at $579.99 and ship with a Core i3-4005U Haswell processor. For $120 more, you not only get a C50 with a Core i5-4210U CPU, but also a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) v1.2 for added data security. Both versions offer the Toshiba EasyGuard suite of security tools, including Highly Accelerated Life Testing (HALT) to ensure increased durability. The company also guarantees the C50s against the failure of the display, hard drive, memory, or motherboard for the first six months of ownership, replacing the system with a new version for free.

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By Fatih Karimov

Switzerland’s Foreign Minister Wolfgang Amadeus Brulhart sais his country seeks to boost trade ties with Iran if sanctions against the Islamic Republic are lifted.

Brulhart met with secretary general of Iran’s chamber of commerce Hossein Noqrehkar Shirazi in Tehran, saying that a Swiss trade delegation will come to Iran in the near future, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported on September 23.

However, reaching a final agreement in nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 group will be a prerequisite, Brulhart said.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China – plus Germany – sealed an interim deal in the Swiss city of Geneva on November 24, 2013 to pave the way for the full resolution of the decade-old dispute with Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program. The deal came into force on January 20.

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