Quantcast
Channel: Eurasia Review
Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live

Iran’s Cyber Police Arrest Dozens For Online Actions Linked To Islamic State

0
0

Iran’s Cyber Police Commander Kamal Hadianfar reports that 53 people have been arrested for internet activities linked to the extremist group Islamic State.

ISNA quoted him on Monday December 7 saying: “Fifty-three individuals who were acting in support of Daesh (ISIS) ideology on the internet inside the country were detained.”

He added that the individuals have been handed over to the judiciary, saying: “Those who were acting inadvertently were released after having signed commitments to never repeat such actions; the others were arrested.”

He added that most of the detainees were residents of Iran’s border regions.

Hadianfar said 175 pages associated with ISIS have been eliminated from Telegram, adding that in the past year and eight months, the cyber police have identified 285 websites linked to terrorist groups.


Russian Oil Giant Rosneft Ready To Invest In Iran’s Oil Projects

0
0

By Fatih Karimov

Russia’s giant oil company, Rosneft has expressed readiness to invest in the Iranian oil projects.

The issue was discussed during a meeting of the Rosneft Chief Igor Sechin with Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh in Tehran on Dec. 8, the Iranian ministry’s official Shana news agency reported.

Rosneft has already announced readiness for the development of Iranian Changouleh oilfield.

The company, as well as Russia’s Zarubezhneft and Lukoil, have said they intend to participate in the Iranian project, Ali Abbasi Larki, the development manager of the oilfield, said last month.

He added that Iran is considering these companies’ applications for involvement in the project.

Located in the west of Iran, the untouched-by-drilling Changouleh oilfield is shared with Iraq, and is projected to be developed in two major phases.

Representatives from Rosneft also discussed oil, gas and oil products swap with Iranian oil ministry officials during a visit to Tehran Nov. 11.

The two parties plan to form a joint committee to continue their negotiations on the issue. If realized, Rosneft will for the first time ever export or swap gas with another country, breaking Gazprom’s monopoly.

Russian firms are keen to participate in developing oil and gas fields in Iran and projects for increasing Iranian oilfields’ recovery rate, according to Amir Hossein Zamaninia, the Islamic Republic’s deputy oil minister.

The issue of oil and gas swap was discussed during the visit of Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak to Tehran in October.

Prior to the introduction of sanctions, Iran was an active participant in swap operations, which began in 1997 on the basis of signed contracts.

Novak said earlier that Russia can deliver gas to Iran’s northern regions and receive Iranian LNG in the Gulf.

Iran has an LNG plant, which is only 50-percent developed and is projected to become operational by 2019.

Why Are Prescription Prices Higher In United States? – OpEd

0
0

Jeanne Whalen of the Wall Street Journal has written a feature article comparing U.S. prescription drug prices to those overseas. Unsurprisingly, she find prices in other developed countries lower, and credits government price controls in other countries with (pretty much) all the difference.

A vial of the cancer drug Rituxan cost Norway’s taxpayer-funded health system $1,527 in the third quarter of 2015, while the U.S. Medicare program paid $3,678. An injection of the asthma drug Xolair cost Norway $463, which was 46% less than Medicare paid for it.

Drug prices in the U.S. are shrouded in mystery, obscured by confidential rebates, multiple middlemen and the strict guarding of trade secrets.

The state-run health systems in Norway and many other developed countries drive hard bargains with drug companies: setting price caps, demanding proof of new drugs’ value in comparison to existing ones and sometimes refusing to cover medicines they doubt are worth the cost.

(Jeanne Whalen, “Why the U.S. Pays More Than Other Countries for Drugs,” Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2015)

I do not dispute the facts of the article. I take issue with the article’s misidentification of the primary reason why drug prices are different. The piece actually does a good job of differentiating between countries where the state exercises monopsony power over drug purchases (like Norway) and countries where the state does not exercise purchasing power but imposes price controls on all sales (like Canada).

It is easy and intuitive to conclude that such government interventions reduce prices. However, contrary evidence shakes that thesis. The price differences are better explained by relative purchasing power. I showed this by example in a paper I wrote 15 long years ago, in which I compared prices for other goods and services which are the fruit of intellectual property. The markets for these goods and services are substantively the same in Canada and the United States. Despite the great similarity, Canadian prices were significantly discounted (Table 3).20151207-Rx-International-660x226

Consider Quicken personal finance software. No law forced Intuit to sell the Canadian version of Quicken for significantly less than the U.S. version. The lower Canadian price was just the profit maximizing price, given market conditions.

Let me throw in a couple of other observations. As noted in the article, the prices of goods which do not contain a lot of intellectual property (or, perhaps more property stated, the prices of goods for which manufacturing and distribution costs are a very high share of total cost per unit) are lower in the United States than in other countries. I won’t try to go through the entire argument in this blog post, but it is clear that the prices of groceries, gasoline, clothing, et cetera, are not lower in the U.S. because the government drives a hard bargain on consumers’ behalf. No, they are lower because of competitive markets.

Further, the prices of all these items, even a simple can of soda pop, “are shrouded in mystery, obscured by confidential rebates, multiple middlemen and the strict guarding of trade secrets,” as the article describes the prescription market. I am referring, of course, to items like Coke or Pepsi, which nobody argues are expensive. The relevant difference in market structure between soft drinks and prescription drugs is that consumers spend their own money directly on the former, instead of spending it indirectly through insurers and government. Nor does it take 12 to 15 years to get a new soft drink on the market to compete with incumbent suppliers, like it does for prescription drugs.

Wyden Opposes Feinstein’s ‘Social Media Reporting Bill’– Statement

0
0

US Sen. Dianne Feinstein filed legislation Tuesday to require Internet companies that are aware of undefined “terrorist activity” to report it to law-enforcement. US Senator Ron Wyden released the following statement.

*****

Let’s make sure the record is clear: The Director of the FBI testified a few months ago that social media companies are ‘pretty good about telling us what they see.’ Social media companies must continue to do everything they can to quickly remove terrorist content and report it to law enforcement.

I’m opposed to this proposal because I believe it will undermine that collaboration and lead to less reporting of terrorist activity, not more. It would create a perverse incentive for companies to avoid looking for terrorist content on their own networks, because if they saw something and failed to report it they would be breaking the law, but if they stuck their heads in the sand and avoided looking for terrorist content they would be absolved of responsibility.

I’m for smart security policies. If law enforcement agencies decide that terrorist content is not being identified quickly enough, then the solution should be to give those agencies more resources and personnel so they know where to look for terrorist content online and who to watch, and can ensure terrorist activity is quickly reported and acted upon.

Ron Wyden is a US Democrat Senator from the State of Oregon

Bangkok Meeting: Setting Stage For Modi Visit To Pakistan? – Analysis

0
0

By C Uday Bhaskar*

The unobtrusively arranged, below the radar meeting between the National Security Advisers (NSA) of India and Pakistan in Bangkok on Sunday (December 6) may be seen as a case of a belated but welcome review of the stalled bilateral engagement and hitting the reset key in a calibrated manner.

In an interesting departure from the traditional format wherein only one senior official from either side would form the core of the bilateral meeting, the Bangkok meeting had the NSA and Foreign Secretary (FS) from both nations engaged in a four-hour meeting .

The joint statement reads: “Pursuant to the meeting of the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in Paris, the NSAs, accompanied by the Foreign Secretaries, met in Bangkok today. Discussions were held in a candid, cordial and constructive atmosphere. They were guided by the vision of the two leaders for a peaceful, stable and prosperous South Asia. Discussions covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquility along the Line of Control (LoC). It was agreed to carry forward the constructive engagement.”

Reconstructing the events of the last week one can deduce the pattern that led to the Bangkok traction, It may be recalled that the two Prime Ministers – Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif – met briefly in Paris on Monday (November 30) at the Climate Summit and the official statement about the hand-shake was reticent to the extreme – particularly on the Indian side wherein it was described as a “pull-aside meeting” where “courtesies” only were exchanged. Senior officials went the extra mile to brief the Indian media and assert that there were no bilateral meetings planned for the near future.

Seasoned Pakistan watchers sensed that red herrings were being deliberately strewn and Nawaz Sharif’s remarks in Urdu to his media about the Paris hand-shake that dwelt on the “doors to dialogue” being kept open seemed to indicate that something was afoot. However the speed with which the Bangkok meeting took place after the two political principals had met – a mere week – from Monday to Sunday has caught all India-Pakistan observers including the media by total surprise.

Paris is an instructive location for this resumption of engagement between the two South Asian neighbors. The French capital was subjected to a ruthless terrorist attack by the Islamic State on November 13 and this has one again triggered a global focus on the cessation of support to radical Islamic ideologies – and hence Pakistan.

It may be conjectured that Rawalpindi, the HQ of the Pakistan Army and the more relevant Sharif – General Raheel Sharif the powerful Pakistan Army Chief – has come to the conclusion that engaging with India in the backdrop of a post Paris security ambiance would be more prudent. Hence the olive branch offered by Nawaz Sharif in Malta at the Commonwealth Heads meeting (November 28) where he indicated that Pakistan was ready for resumption of talks without attaching any pre-conditions.

The sub-text of the Bangkok joint statement is to adopt an inclusive semantic, wherein the primary concerns of both countries are accommodated, viz terrorism for India and Kashmir for Pakistan and to assuage potential sensitivities by throwing in a catch-all “and other issues” clause.

The July Ufa meeting in Russia between the two Prime Ministers that had a disastrous end has been a learning curve for both countries by way of keeping the domestic media totally out of the loop. No statements were issued by either side about Bangkok till the Sunday meeting concluded and the innovative NSA-FS framework may allow for the resumption of other tracks.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will attend the December 9 regional conference on Afghanistan and popular revenue generating issues like cricket are on the anvil, even as firing across the Line of Control and infiltration continues leading to the loss of precious lives .

The bottom-line for Delhi is the nettlesome challenge of managing the South Asian neighborhood and to keep all the bilaterals on even keel and in relatively good cheer. This objective remains elusive in relation to Nepal and Pakistan remains the obdurate neighbor invested in nuclear weapon enabled terror.

Bangkok may well be the basis for negotiating a Modi visit to Pakistan for the 2016 SAARC Summit.

*C Uday Bhaskar is Director, Society for Policy Studies. He can be contacted at cudaybhaskar@spsindia.in

Nakhchivan Region Welcomes Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev – OpEd

0
0

On December 1, 2015 the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev arrived in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic to conduct a working visit and inaugurate a number of impressive public projects in the following sectors: infrastructure, health services, transportation, industrial parks, a renewable energy project and a fresh water supply infrastructure.

During his visit, the Azerbaijani head of state was accompanied by the Chairman of Supreme Assembly of Nakhchivan Mr. Vasif Talibov, and his cabinet of Ministers. In the early morning hours the President of Azerbaijan met with members of the government of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, who informed the Azerbaijani leader on many economic accomplishments, led by Nakhchivan’s administration. Afterwards, President Aliyev attended the opening of the Nakhchivan Industrial Complex. The brand new industrial park occupies a total area of nine hectares, it manufactures a number of pervious concrete products in various plants that utilize gypsum, drywall, lime and other materials; automatic management and video surveillance system has also been installed in all its premises. This facility has an annual production capacity of 150,000 tons of pervious concrete.

It must be noted that: the lime plant has an annual production capacity of 36,000 tons; the gypsum plant has an annual production capacity of 40,000 tons; the drywall plant has an annual production capacity of 2 million square meters. In this occasion the Azerbaijani head of state launched the production line of this state of the art factory that will play an important role in the economic development of Nakhchivan as well as set high standards in the working conditions of its employees not only in Azerbaijan but throughout the Southwestern Asian Region.

Moreover, President Aliyev inaugurated the “Eastern Terminal” of the Nakhchivan International Airport. Chairman Vasif Talibov and Mr. Jahangir Asgarov informed the head of state about the recent technical indicators of the terminal and shared the high level convenience indicators that this airport has to offer after its recent remodeling project.

The terminal is equipped with special elevators for passengers with limited mobility; a 41 meter-long baggage conveyor system and escalators were also installed in the terminal. All these additions will allow an increase in the airport`s passenger traffic from 150-200 to 400-450 passengers per hour.

The Nakhchivan International Airport operates direct flights to Baku, Istanbul and Moscow. It is expected to resume direct flights to Ganja in a few months.

A memorable visit of President Aliyev was his wreath laying ceremony at the statue of national leader Heydar Aliyev in Nakhchivan, located in the center of the city of Nakhchivan. Chairman Vasif Talibov informed the head of state about the landscaping and reconstruction works that have been carried out around the statue.

Lateron President Ilham Aliyev attended the opening of the Shakarabad-Babek settlement-Nehram-Arazkend ring road after its reconstruction (connecting Babek district with a population of 32,000 people and 16km long); inaugurated the opening of Nehram Village secondary school No.2 in Babek district; attended the inauguration of a new children`s music school No 2.

Additionally, the Azerbaijani head of state attended the opening of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Hospital. The hospital facility was commissioned in 1920 as Nakhchivan’s hospital. The construction of the building of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Hospital started in 1979 with the support of national leader Heydar Aliyev, and ended in 1987. The reconstruction of this hospital started in early 2013 and completed at a record timing.

In conclusion to his visit, President Ilham Aliyev attended a ceremony to launch a water supply system of Nakhchivan city. On this occasion the head of state was informed that the construction of the water supply and sewage system in the city was carried out under a loan agreement between Azerbaijan and the Asian Development Bank. Its construction work begun in May 2010, this project saw the construction of a 224,790m long water supply system and a 219,040m long sewage system in the city.

In one of the afternoon events, President Ilham Aliyev, accompanied by Chairman Vasif Talibov, attended the opening of Nakhchivan Solar Power Plant.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of Nakhchivan Solar Power Plant nearby Khal-khal village of Babek district. The power plant occupies an area of 35 hectares. The 20 megawatts plant is a project implemented under an agreement between the State Energy Agency of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and the Belgian Soltech Company. In the project, more than 78,684 modern glass solar panels, stands and 11 electric power substations were installed as well as more than 30 different types of techniques and more than 400 workers have been involved. Nakhchivan Solar Power Plant will produce more than 30 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. After greeting the employees of the State Energy Agency of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and a representative of Soltech Company, President Aliyev wrapped up his very intensive working visit and departed for Baku, from the Nakhchivan International Airport.

This was perhaps the most important visit that President Aliyev has led in 2015.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Seeks Unified GCC Action

0
0

Saudi Arabia’s Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman met GCC Secretary-General Abdul Lateef Al-Zayani on Tuesday to discuss ways to enhance joint cooperation among the six member countries and set the agenda for the two-day 36th GCC Summit Council meeting beginning on Wednesday.

The king met with Al-Zayani at Al-Yamamah Palace, with those in attendance including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif, said the SPA.

Earlier, the GCC foreign ministers held a preparatory meeting to discuss key issues for the final agenda of the session. The meeting was chaired by Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir and his counterparts from the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, in the presence of Al-Zayani.

A GCC official said the meeting discussed various issues of mutual interest especially the response to the growing menace of terrorism and steps taken by the Supreme Council toward regional development. The ministers also discussed the situation in the Gulf region.

Researchers Create World’s First Ibuprofen Patch

0
0

Researchers at the University of Warwick have worked with Coventry-based Medherant, a Warwick spinout company, to produce and patent the World’s first ever ibuprofen patch delivering the drug directly through skin to exactly where it is needed at a consistent dose rate.

They have invented a transparent adhesive patch that can consistently deliver a prolonged high dose of the painkiller ibuprofen directly through the skin. The University of Warwick researchers and Medherant have found a way to incorporate significant amounts of the drug (up to 30% weight) into the polymer matrix that sticks the patch to the patient’s skin with the drug then being delivered at a steady rate over up to 12 hours.

This opens the way for the development of a range of novel long-acting over-the-counter pain relief products which can be used to treat common painful conditions like chronic back pain, neuralgia and arthritis without the need to take potentially damaging doses of the drug orally. Although there are a number of popular ibuprofen gels available these make it difficult to control dosage and are inconvenient to apply.

This novel patch incorporates polymer technology developed by the global adhesive company Bostik and exclusively licensed for transdermal use to Medherant.

The key features of Medherant’s new patch technology are:

  • The patch remains highly tacky and thus adheres well to skin even when the drug load reaches levels as high as 30% of the weight/volume of the patch. The drug load made possible by this new technology can be 5 -10 times than that found in some currently used medical patches and gels.
  • High drug load and a consistent drug release profile means the Medherant patches out-perform other patches and gels in their ability to deliver a consistent and significant dose of drug over a prolonged time from a small patch.
  • It is a cosmetically pleasing transparent design with stronger adhesion than other commercial products – remaining stuck over its time of action but easy and comfortable to remove.

University of Warwick research chemist Professor David Haddleton said, “Many commercial patches surprisingly don’t contain any pain relief agents at all, they simply soothe the body by a warming effect. Our technology now means that we can for the first time produce patches that contain effective doses of active ingredients such as ibuprofen for which no patches currently exist. Also, we can improve the drug loading and stickiness of patches containing other active ingredients to improve patient comfort and outcome.”

“There are only a limited number of existing polymers that have the right characteristics to be used for this type of transdermal patches – that will stick to the skin and not leave residues when being easily removed. Furthermore, there are also only a limited number of drugs that will dissolve into these existing polymers. Medherant’s technology now opens up the field of transdermal drug delivery to previously non-compatible drugs,” Haddleton said.

“Our success in developing this breakthrough patch design isn’t limited to ibuprofen; we have also had great results testing the patch with methyl salicylate (used in liniments, gels and some leading commercial patches). We believe that many other over the counter and prescription drugs can exploit our technology and we are seeking opportunities to test a much wider range of drugs and treatments within our patch.”

According to Nigel Davis CEO of Medherant, “Our transdermal patch technology expands the range of drugs that can be delivered via skin patches and can significantly increase drug loading capabilities, whilst retaining adhesion and being thin and flexible. Thus our patches provide a better experience for patients, enhance safety and deliver increased efficacy, which will lead to economic benefits to the healthcare system.”

“Our first products will be over-the-counter pain relief patches and through partnering we would expect to have the first of those products on the market in around 2 years. In addition to our pain relief products, our technology also works with drugs in many other therapeutic areas. We can see considerable opportunities in working with pharmaceutical companies to develop innovative products using our next generation transdermal drug-delivery platform,” Davis said.


‘Vatileaks’: Holy See Spokesman Explains Vatican Justice System

0
0

By Andrea Gagliarducci

As a Vatican City trial over the leaking of private documents continues, the director of the Holy See Press Office has defended the trial and the judicial systems of the Vatican City State after the defendants criticized the process.

Father Federico Lombardi’s message, published Dec. 7, follows a hearing in the trial. The tribunal heard motions by the lawyers and discussed the approval of witnesses for the defense.

All of the witnesses were accepted. Included among them will be Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State. Another witness will be Cardinal Santos Avril y Castello, Archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica and president of the commission of cardinals of the Institute for Religious Works, informally known as the Vatican Bank.

Fr. Lombardi’s note addressed some of the criticisms of the Vatican trial and tribunal. He emphasized that Vatican judicial system has “all the procedural guarantees characteristic of the most advanced contemporary legal systems.”

In his note, Fr. Lombardi said that the Vatican City State has “its own legal order, entirely autonomous and separate from the Italian legal system, and has its own judicial bodies for the various levels of judgments and the necessary legislation in terms of criminal matters and procedures.”

Five people have been indicted for the alleged dissemination of private financial documents that concern fundamental interests of the Holy See and the Vatican City State. The accused include two former members of a Holy See commission and two journalists.

Gianluigi Nuzzi, one of the journalists on trial, has made many interviews describing the trial as “Kafkaesque.” He lamented that he could not hire his customary lawyer for his defense at trial. He has also charged that the Vatican City State follows “an old law, belonging to times when Italy was a kingdom.”

Francesca Chaouqui, a public relations expert, also faces charges, as does Spanish Msgr. Lucio Angel Vallejo, a former secretary of the Vatican Prefecture for the Economic Affairs. Both Chaouqui and Msgr. Vallejo are former members of the now-dissolved Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic Administrative Structure of the Holy See, which was part of the reform of Vatican finances.

Chaouqui was released soon after her arrest in exchange for her cooperation in the investigation. She has also complained that she was not given the opportunity to have assistance from her personal lawyer.

Emiliano Fittipaldi, the other journalist on trial, made spontaneous remarks Nov. 25 at the end of the first hearing. He voiced his “incredulity to be charged by judges who are not the judges of my countries.” He said in Italy the charges “would have no penal relevance.”

The Vatican City State was established in 1929, as a consequence of the Lateran Pacts. After its establishment, the Vatican City State needed a juridical framework. It adopted the Italian penal code and the Italian code of penal procedure.

In 1933, Italy adopted a new penal code, called the “Rocco code” after the name of the Minister of Justice who signed it. However, the Holy See kept the previous code as the fundamental law of the Vatican City State.

The Vatican penal code was then updated by Pope Francis with a reform issued July 13, 2013, which also criminalized the unauthorized disclosure of information and confidential documents.

Father Lombardi listed the various justice guarantees of the Vatican City trial and tribunal. He underscored that “all the fundamental principles are established and fully implemented.”

These principles include “an independent and impartial tribunal constituted by law; the presumption of innocence; the right to a technical defense and the freedom of the judicial college to form an opinion on the basis of evidence in public hearing and in debate between the prosecution and the defense.”

This tribunal is intended to lead to “the issuance of a sentence able to be substantiated and with the possibility of being contested by appeal and ultimately annulled,” the director of the Holy See Press Office explained.

Father Lombardi that all those engaged in judicial roles are not recruited “by way of a public selection procedure open to the citizens of the State, as normally occurs in other States.” However, he emphasized that they are “selected from among professionals of the highest level, with sound experience and recognized reputation.”

The director of the Holy See Press Office also addressed the complaints that the accused were not able to be assisted by their personal lawyers.

“The current Vatican legislation is perfectly in line with procedural law in the majority of jurisdictions throughout the world, where a specific qualification is required for admission to practice in the courts,” Fr. Lombardi stressed.

He then maintained that “it is therefore unsurprising that a lawyer able to practice in Italy may not be able to do so in Vatican City State, just as he or she would not be able to practice in Germany or France.”

These conditions are not limitations of the Vatican’s legal order. Rather, they are “a further confirmation of its autonomy and completeness.”

Fr. Lombardi explained that all lawyers are enrolled in “an easily consulted professional register of lawyers with right of audience before the Vatican City State tribunal.” He said ex officio or private lawyers may be selected from the professionals on this register.

This is the reason why the Vatican could not admit the lawyers presented by Gianluigi Nuzzi, Emiliano Fittipaldi and Francesca Chaouqui.

God’s Sway On Our Self-Awareness: Is It Universal?

0
0

God and religion is a powerful influence in millions of lives – even on non-believers, according to a new study in Self & Identity. For many believers, a relationship with God motivates civilised behaviour both morally and socially, heightening public awareness.

Author Michael B. Kitchens’ new research goes beyond this. It examines how reflection upon God can increase private self awareness and reflection. His results reveal an interesting phenomenon.

The key finding was that those primed to think about God were more attuned to their private inner self than those primed for thoughts of their best friend, random topics, themselves or un-primed. Some may find it surprising that this finding was shown within believers and non-believers.

To reach this conclusion, Kitchens carried out four experiments to test the theories and establish whether the effect is limited to those who believe in God or whether it affects us all. The experiments primed respondents to think about God and themselves and used control ‘no prime’ groups and groups primed for random irrelevant subjects.

Measures of private and public self awareness, both in the presence and absence of thoughts about God, were taken. Participants did exercises ranging from describing their best friend and God, reading the 10 Commandments, explaining their understanding of God and describing differences between themselves and friends and family. All participants indicated if they believed in God.

Previous research has shown that priming God invokes more principled standards. A past experiment revealed respondents to be more honest after reading the 10 Commandments. Thoughts of God seem to increase cognizance of oneself in the eyes of others and of the inner self.

Subconsciously, it appears most of us seek to create good impressions and be respectable, but does the presence of God in our thoughts expedite this? Is the effect on non-believers down to inner spiritualism driving us to relate the divine to aspects of our lives such as nature, family and relationships even if we are not religious? Also unforeseen was the finding that thoughts of God had a more profound effect on private self awareness than public self awareness, contrary to historical research.

The author concluded, “this study underscores the importance of understanding the effect that priming God has on self awareness more clearly. It has implications for moral behavior, self-regulation, and the self-concept.”

Russian Submarine Targets Islamic State In Syria From Mediterranean

0
0

Russia targeted Islamic State targets in Syria for the first time using Kalibr cruise missiles that were launched by the Rostov-on-Don submarine from an underwater position in the Mediterranean Sea, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.

Shoigu added that in the course of four days, Russian aircraft including Tu-22M3 strategic bombers had performed over 300 sorties engaging over 600 targets of different type.

“All the flights are carried out under the coverage of fighter aviation – Su-30SM aircraft,” Shoigu said.

Shoigu said that the Russian Defense Ministry had informed the foreign states concerning its actions beforehand.

Relatedly, Shoigu also showed a flight data recorder from the Su-24M bomber downed by the Turkish fighter on November 24.

Shoigu said that active work had been conducted on the territory of militants who had killed the Russian pilot. As a result, those territories were liberated by the joint efforts of the Russian air group and the Special Task Force of the Syrian Army. The Syrian servicemen found the place where the Russian aircraft had hit the ground.

According to the Defense Minister, militants were rapidly leaving those territories and did not manage to take anything from the downed aircraft.

For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian Defense Ministry to open the flight data recorder only in the presence of international experts. “I want you to open it only together with foreign specialists and to document everything very thoroughly,” Putin said.

According to Putin, the transcription of the downed Su-24M records will allow observers to define its flight trajectory and location at the moment of being eliminated. “That means that we will understand its location and the reason why the Turkish Air Force had hit it in the back,” Putin said.

China Paying ‘Close Attention To US Spy Plane Deployment In Singapore’

0
0

China’s military is paying “close attention” to an agreement between the United States and Singapore to deploy the U.S. P8 Poseidon spy plane to the city state and hopes the move does not harm regional stability, the defense ministry said, according to Reuters.

“We are paying close attention to how the relevant situation develops, and hope bilateral defense cooperation between the relevant countries is beneficial to regional peace and stability and not the opposite,” the ministry said in a brief statement late on Tuesday.

The foreign ministry of China, which is at odds with Washington over the South China Sea, said on Tuesday the move was aimed at militarizing the region.

In a joint statement after a meeting in Washington on Monday, December 7, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen welcomed the inaugural deployment of the aircraft in Singapore from December 7 to 14.

A U.S. defense official said further deployments in Singapore could be expected. The move comes at a time of heightened tensions in the South China Sea.

The United States already operates P8s from Japan and the Philippines, and has conducted surveillance flights from Singapore’s neighbor, Malaysia.

Crowdfunding: Islamic State’s Secret Financial Weapon – Analysis

0
0

By Balasubramaniyan Viswanathan

Islamic State is touted as being the richest terrorist group in the world, with an estimated annual earnings of over a billion dollars. Like other terrorist groups, these earnings are derived from criminal activities – extortion, looting, and kidnap for ransom – as well as commercial activities like trading in oil, antiquities, and agricultural products. And if recent trends in their financial activity are any indication, Islamic State has revolutionized terrorism financing by merging technology and marketing to effectively draw donations from a large groups of people – a practice known as crowdfunding.

According to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Islamic State has started to rely on grassroots funding and has utilized efficient delivery mechanisms to obtain funds through the latest technologies. Islamic State has long been known to harness the power of technology, which has increased the reach and impact of its propaganda exponentially. This is the key element which has driven Islamic State’s crowdfunding model, which facilitates even a large group of ordinary citizens to contribute to the Islamic State’s coffers.

This crowdfunding activity is subsumed within the overall financial activity of the Islamic State, consisting of sourcing, distribution, and consumption mechanisms. Financial activity consists of two distinct sources of delivery and consumption channels. While a good majority of the funds are sourced, distributed, and expended inside territories controlled by Islamic State through extortion, taxation, oil trade etc., the rest is raised outside Islamic State-controlled territories. Almost all of these funds raised outside Islamic State-controlled territories are raised through a prolific variety of crowdfunding mechanisms. Within this crowdfunding channel, some portions of the revenue end up inside Islamic State-controlled territories, while others are used outside its domain to facilitate the travel of wannabe jihadis trying to join the Islamic State.

At the forefront of the Islamic State’s crowdfunding mechanism is its online and social media juggernaut. According to J.M.Berger and Jonathan Morgan from Brookings, who have carried out a census on the Twitter accounts of the Islamic State, the group including its overt supporters, were handling somewhere between 46,000 to 90,000 Twitter accounts since September 2014. Islamic State has been using this social media apparatus and online technology platforms, including online money transfers and prepaid cards, to solicit and transfer money into Syria. For instance, in January 2015, the Saudi government started investigations into individuals and entities seeking donations for the Islamic State using Twitter and Facebook. During the course of these investigations, it was ascertained that there were fundraisers from nine different nationalities who were operating a cluster of 29 foreign bank accounts, receiving donations from the Islamic State sympathizers around the world. These foreign bank accounts represent 20 beneficiaries who received individual donations from sympathizers around the world, which were then pooled together for further transfer. Saudi authorities blocked the fund transfers to all these accounts from Saudi Arabia.

Incidentally, Islamic State improvised a way to evade these counter measures by directing prospective donors to buy international prepaid cards or any other card which stores credit. The designated numbers of these prepaid cards were sent to the Islamic State fundraisers through Skype by the donors. These numbers were then sent to the Islamic State operatives near the Syrian border, who sold these numbers at a discount and used the proceeds to fund terrorist activity. In this manner, it is possible to transfer value from one financial jurisdiction to another without raising any suspicion.

On the other hand, a more crucial and dangerous crowdfunding variant is emerging outside the Islamic State-controlled territories, which should be a serious concern for the security planners. Recent trends indicate that crowdfunding revenue has also been deployed outside its territories to facilitate movement of recruits to Syria and Iraq. However, it is imperative to state that not all these funds are provided by the Islamic State to potential recruits. Some are provided by its sympathizers directly to fundraisers as well as to prospective recruits. For instance, interrogations of Indian nationals who were intercepted attempting to travel to Turkey have shed light on this latest phenomenon of crowdfunding in India. One 19-year-old radicalized youngster in India, who wanted to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, received around Rs.3 lakhs (approx. USD 5,000) from different people who were strangers to him after he solicited donations online for his travel expenses. The response he received was so overwhelming that within a short span of time, he was in possession of more funds than he had ever had his entire life. He used these funds to fund his passport application and his travel expenses. These strangers who donated money were online acquaintances from a web page called Dawlat al-Islamiabil Iraq-ul-Sham (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), who he met after joining the site sometime around the beginning of August, 2014. His appeal for funds paid dividends and by the third week of August, 2014, he had received money from the sympathizers.

In another instance, a businessman in India who was stopped from going to Syria claimed that he was motivated by an Australian of Syrian origin, Mohammad Ibn Al Barra, who was shuttling between Syria and Turkey supplying medicine to refugees. Al Barra incidentally had 5,000 followers in his Facebook page, the maximum permissible, and went on to start another Facebook page to further his activities. Barra used his Facebook to post real time updates from the war zone which even gave day-to-day operational details carried out by the Islamic State. The apprehended Indian further stated that money literally “flooded” the account of Barra’s bank account, when he had solicited donations for the Syrian cause. Again, the response to the call for donations was so overwhelming that Al Barra claimed he had enough money to buy out all of the pharmacies across the Turkish border.

Islamic State has used its large social media presence with huge followers to convert sympathy into funds in a practice that has not been adopted by any other terrorist group. Though, there is some conflation on the financial networks of the Islamic State when compared to other groups such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban etc., the most striking feature about the finances of the Islamic State is that it is seen harnessing the concept of crowdfunding, which has a distant precedence elsewhere. This is in a way similar to the diasporic funding concept mastered by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) but the only difference is that donors in the case of Islamic State are comprised of different nationalities as compared to the LTTE’s donors who are all Sri Lankan Tamils. This combination of highly motivated sympathizers, consisting of different nationalities with an above-average financial profile, has become the key financial strength of the Islamic State.

These high-volume, low-value transactions raised through crowdfunding are a real challenge to the counter terrorism finance regimes. To date, countermeasures to halt the financing of Islamic State have primarily focused on funds which are raised within Islamic State-controlled territories and against those funds which are raised outside and moved into Islamic State-controlled territories. On the other hand, crowdfunding of the Islamic State using technology platforms deployed outside these territories have not been object of focus. These funds which are pooled and deployed outside of Syria are highly difficult to identify and intercept. Some of the donors, who may not even be remotely connected to Islamic State, contribute under the impression that they are giving for a social and humanitarian cause. This is the glaring gap in the system. The fact that these funds are pooled at such short notice and the ease with which an individual can raise large amounts from multiple strangers magnifies the significance of crowdfunding when viewed from a security planner’s perspective. Given the ease and speed of raising funds outside the purview of existing countermeasures, crowdfunding could have disastrous consequences if some of these funds fall into the hands of self-radicalized individuals or lone wolfs who might only have a platonic relationship with Islamic State.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

How Does Someone Become An Alien In The Country Of Their Birth? – OpEd

0
0

America is a country with few deep-rooted natives. Nearly everyone’s ancestral tree leads somewhere else. In spite of this, the mark of foreignness is skin color. If you’re white and have an American accent, no one’s going to ask you when your family emigrated here — even though, without exception, every single white American’s roots lead overseas.

The truism that this is a nation of immigrants, repeatedly gets denied by a white America endowed with a sense of belonging which often doubts the capacity of non-whites to be full equals in sharing an American identity.

How then, can someone who knows no other country than this one and yet who is perceived and treated as though in some subtle or crude sense they are foreign, fully share in the experience of belonging that every human being deserves?

If at this moment of heightened xenophobia, we look at alienation through the narrow prism of counter-terrorism and only ask how just a handful of individuals become radicalized, we are likely to ignore the implications of much wider issues, such as inequality, cultural identity, and citizenship.

America succeeds or fails by one measure alone: its ability to sustain an inclusive society.

Donald Trump could not currently threaten this inclusivity were it not for the fact that that he speaks for so many other white Americans who have conferred on themselves the right to determine who does or does not belong here.

America doesn’t need to wall itself in; what it needs is fewer self-appointed gatekeepers.

The Real Test Begins For Venezuelan President Maduro – OpEd

0
0

Sunday’s momentous legislative electoral events may have marked a turning point in the history of modern Venezuelan politics. The overwhelming victory of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) over President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has arrived at the point of challenging the very essence of the Bolivarian Revolution’s political project at a critical juncture in its history. The country faces alarming murder rates, soaring inflation, and falling oil prices; the combination of the last two factors threatens an economic contraction for the upcoming year.

In the past few years, Venezuela has suffered from increased political polarization as the opposition has become more cohesive. This has led to the formation of two distinct political camps which has facilitated a rise in the size and number of protests and demonstrations against Maduro’s government.

Maduro and the PSUV have accepted electoral defeat despite concerns that Chavistas would attempt to stymie the country’s electoral process. Currently, the country’s institutions seem to be holding fast and not self-destructing under charges and countercharges, a promising signal of what may come.

In the days ahead, both the PSUV and MUD will be severely tested due to the polemic nature of Venezuelan politics. They will have to start from the ground up in order to reconstruct the country and develop a productive working relationship between the two sides, something that has proven all but impossible to achieve in the past. The country as a whole would display a greater sense of responsibility as a civil society that has proven to resist chaos and corruption on more than one occasion. For now, the international community should welcome Venezuela’s commitment to democratic stability while closely following future political developments in the country.


Turkey, Russia, And NATO Enter The Danger Zone – Analysis

0
0

By Michael A. Reynolds*

On November 24, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet downed a Russian SU-24M ground bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border after it violated Turkish airspace over the southern tip of Turkey’s most southern province of Hatay. The clash resulted in the death of one of the Russian aircraft’s two pilots. According to Turkish reports, Turkish air patrols had warned a pair of Russian jets flying in the area multiple times over the course of five minutes not to violate Turkish airspace. When, however, the SU-24M entered Turkish airspace, an F-16 brought it down with an air-to-air missile.

By all accounts, the Russian violation of Turkish airspace lasted for just seventeen seconds, and there was never any suspicion that the Russian air force either now or in the future had any intent of striking Turkey. Was this just an unfortunate miscalculation of the sort that multiple observers have warned would be all too likely to occur as the number of warring parties in Syria has increased, the product of Russian pilot error or recklessness, or a nervous, trigger-happy Turkish Air Force?  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested nearly as much when he said the Turkish military would have acted differently had it known that the target was a Russian (as opposed to a Syrian) aircraft, a point repeated by other Turkish officials.[1]

In the wake of the incident, Moscow has explicitly dismissed the possibility of war or open hostilities with Turkey. This is not, however, because Moscow believed the Turkish action was mistaken or accidental. To the contrary, a collected yet visibly incensed Vladimir Putin denounced the act as “a stab in the back.”[2] The Chief of the Air and Space Forces of the Russian Federation in a press conference suggested that the Turkish attack was preplanned and claimed that, in the course of carrying out its attack, it had spent forty seconds in Syrian airspace, penetrating to a depth of two kilometers inside.[3]

Among world leaders, Putin ranks among the more intelligent and he is generally deliberate in his speech. His choice of words is therefore noteworthy. A “stab in the back” is by definition an act of perfidy that deserves severe punishment. Notably, Putin did not employ the phrase to justify severe retaliation against Turkey (although Russia’s disavowal of overt retribution beyond suspension of certain economic agreements does not exclude the possibility of other, more direct forms of reprisals later). In other words, Putin did not use the accusation of treachery to cover some form of escalation against Turkey. Instead, his charge of betrayal is rooted in the assumption that the coalition of powers arrayed against ISIS – including Turkey, Russia, the US, the UK, and France among others – does in fact represent a genuine alliance against ISIS.

The downing of the Russian jet revealed, however, that no such alliance exists. Even as the circle of ISIS’s opponents has widened, so have the rivalries and contradictions among them increased. ISIS has benefited from the contradictions among its opponents and will continue to do so. The fact is that none of the actors fighting ISIS, including the US, has the destruction of ISIS as an overriding priority. As each of the coalition members engages in efforts to destroy ISIS, it seeks to accomplish other goals simultaneously. This fiction of a common front against ISIS creates layers of confusion and sets up all the actors for dangerous misperception and miscommunication. Turkey’s clash with Russia highlighted the most explosive fault line in the anti-ISIS coalition: that between NATO and Russia. Although Turkey and Russia have since been sending signals that neither intends to provoke open hostilities, the incident made clear that a war between NATO and Russia is longer inconceivable and is already that much closer. Russia and NATO have bumped up against each other in armed conflicts in Kosovo, Georgia, and Ukraine, but this is the first time they have exchanged fire since the Cold War.

The View from the Kremlin

Vladimir Putin rose to power in 1999 amidst the invasion of the Russian Republic of Dagestan by Islamist radicals based in Chechnya. He subsequently succeeded in defeating jihadism in Chechnya. Although violence remains endemic in the North Caucasus, most of this violence is intra-Muslim. It does not represent popular anti-Russian sentiment. Putin as Russia’s head of state has deftly managed good relations with both Russia’s significant Muslim population[4] and with international Islamic organizations.[5] Putin has never had any illusion that Sunni radicalism can be anything but Russia’s foe, however, and he committed Russia to fight ISIS even before it blew up a Russian passenger jet on October 31.

Putin’s analysis of how to defeat ISIS contrasts starkly with that of Obama, whose administration continues to insist against all empirical evidence on the existence of a “moderate” armed opposition to the Baathist regime of Bashar al-Assad. Despite the fact that the US has spent at least several hundred million dollars to recruit and train such moderate rebels, by the summer of 2015 it had trained no more than perhaps three score, most of whom were swiftly compromised and captured upon deployment. This is in addition to the failure of the US to build a viable Iraqi army to stop ISIS despite spending vast sums on training and equipment. This American track record notwithstanding, both Secretary of State John Kerry and the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs felt competent to warn that Russia’s deployment of forces to Syria would rouse the opposition of Sunnis throughout the region and even “the entire Sunni world.”[6] Such claims say more about persisting American misconceptions of Islam than they do about threats to Russia. Sunni Muslims have lacked political unity ever since the seventh century, and the notion that today’s 1.3 billion Sunnis might constitute a bloc in opposition to Russia hardly credible.

Moreover, Putin might be forgiven for declining advice from Americans on how to interact with Muslims, not simply because of the ambiguity of America’s own record but because Russia’s own experience with Islam and Muslims is both far older and deeper than America’s. Muslims have since the middle of the sixteenth century been a substantial part of the Russian population and Russia has maintained diplomatic relations with Muslim khanates and states even longer. Indeed, Muscovy was a tributary to the Muslim Golden Horde before it came into existence as an independent state. Both the Romanov and Soviet states had large (and predominantly Sunni) Muslim populations, and today’s Russian Federation’s population is roughly fifteen percent Muslim. Ignorant of Russia’s centuries-old experience with Islam, commentators responded to Russia’s deployment of forces to Syria with predictions of ultimate defeat by pointing to the examples of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and Moscow’s in Chechnya. The American intervention in Afghanistan has significantly exceeded the Soviet in scale and duration.

Critics of the Russian intervention in Syria have correctly pointed out that the Russian armed forces have delivered the bulk of their air and cruise missile attacks not against ISIS but rather the various rebel groups fighting Assad’s regime. Indeed, Russia’s targeting of Syrian Turkmen rebels, clients of Ankara, may well have been a prime motive behind the downing of the SU-24. Accusing Moscow of deceit, the critics contend that Russia’s real objective is not the defeat of ISIS but rather the defense of Assad. In Putin’s view, the defense of Assad and defeat of ISIS are not contradictory goals but in fact logically complementary. The analysis goes beyond the fact that Assad’s army remains the main obstacle to ISIS’s victory in Syria. Assad’s regime control’s roughly half of Syria’s territory and three-quarters of its population. The problem in Syria, according to the Kremlin, is not limited to ISIS in particular, but includes Sunni radicalism more generally. Assad’s overthrow, in this view, will lead not to a moment of national reconciliation but instead to the victory of hardline radicals who will persecute and perhaps even slaughter Syria’s remaining Christians and Alawites whom Assad’s regime has protected, as well as Assad’s numerous Sunni supporters.[7] Just as the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt precipitated Sunni radical bids for dominance, so, too, the will the fall of Assad.

Back in 2011 when the Syrian uprising began – part of the so-called “Arab Spring” – Moscow’s apprehensions about Assad’s fall had less to do with stemming the advance of Sunni radicalism and more to do with checking what it perceived as an aggressive American global campaign of “regime change,” whereby Washington was funding and manipulating social unrest to topple hostile or inconvenient governments and replace them with American clients. The Arab Spring appeared to be the Middle East variant of the so-called “color revolutions” in Georgia, Kyrgystan, and Ukraine.  John McCain’s taunt of Putin on Twitter, “Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you” [sic] undoubtedly reinforced Kremlin paranoia about a concerted American program to shakeup and bring down governments through the use of subversive NGOs and social media.[8] Given the outcome of the Arab Spring and the inconsistency of American policy in Iraq and Syria, the Kremlin has recognized what is perhaps a more frightening reality: America, much like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is not at all in control of the forces it has unleashed.

Putin, of course, has other motives to intervene on Assad’s behalf beyond the battle against Sunni radicals. Knowing that Washington is eager for Assad’s ouster, Putin saw an opportunity to outflank the US in the Mideast and thereby gain leverage that can be applied to resolving the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The opportunity comes at relatively low cost and risk. The Russian expeditionary force in Syria is not large, and in order to frustrate US policy it needs only to preserve the Syrian government in place. It is not obliged to defeat ISIS decisively. Not least important, Putin knows Russia is not alone in Syria. Iran is even more invested in keeping Assad’s government in existence.

Turkey and Its Motives

Turkey, like Russia, is a member of the coalition against ISIS. But whereas Putin seeks to keep Assad in power as a bulwark against Sunni radicalism, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are committed to Assad’s ouster. In part they do so because they believe that the path to overcoming ISIS lies through the removal of Assad. According to this view, it was the Baathist regime’s widespread use of often-indiscriminate violence that radicalized its opponents and drove many toward ISIS. Assad’s ouster and that of his regime is therefore a prerequisite for the defeat of ISIS. Reinforcing Erdogan’s and Davutoglu’s determination to see Assad’s downfall are three more factors. They, like many Turks, identify at a visceral level as Sunnis with Assad’s predominantly Sunni victims. The suffering of Assad’s victims moves them. They believe to the point of naiveté in the transformative power of Sunni political activism. Davutoglu and Erdogan have consistently and vigorously cultivated ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas at the cost of severe damage to Turkey’s bilateral relations with Egypt and Israel. They turned an indulgent eye on ISIS early on. Lastly, the two Turkish leaders bear a personal animus toward Assad. In 2009, they had begun cooperating closely with Assad, but his willful employment of violence against protestors in 2011 against Erdogan’s appeals left Ankara seething.

Many interpreted Ankara’s decision this past July to open its airbases to American aircraft for strikes against ISIS as a big success for the Obama administration in the fight against ISIS. Not only does the proximity of Turkish airbases to ISIS simplify the logistics of airstrikes significantly, but they believed that Turkey’s active entry into the war against ISIS would substantially change the dynamics of the war.  ISIS had been exploiting the porousness of Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq,. moving personnel and supplies in from Turkey and exporting oil and various forms of contraband into Turkey. Indeed, many sources, including Turkish ones, had been accusing Ankara of actively supporting ISIS.

Turkey’s move in July did sunder whatever comfortable relationship with ISIS that had existed before. In preparation for the announcement, Turkish security forces had been rounding up ISIS suspects for several weeks, and pounced on several hundred more suspects immediately after, severely constraining ISIS’ ability to operate inside Turkey. It did not eliminate that ability, as suicide bombings at Suruç, Diyarbakır, and Ankara have demonstrated. Notably, those bombings targeted not Turkish military or police targets, but crowds of pro-Kurdish activists.

ISIS is a savage organization but not an entirely stupid one. It grasps the utility of exploiting the vulnerabilities of its opponents, and in the case of Turkey there is no greater vulnerability than the Kurdish Question. When it was founded in 1923 as a self-consciously modern nation-state, the Turkish Republic recognized only a single identity – Turkish – for its majority Muslim citizens. The idea was that a state married to a homogenous society would be more powerful and resistant to process of ethnic fissure and partition that helped bring down the Ottoman empire. Accordingly, the Turkish Republic for some seven decades vigorously insisted on the specifically Turkish character of its population. Its Kurds, however, composing some fifteen percent of the overall population and compactly settled in Turkey’s southeast, resisted assimilation and took up arms to do so.  Over the course of the past decade, Erdogan and Davutoglu have taken fitful but bold steps to accommodate Kurdish identity and demands for greater cultural freedom.

The Turkish Republic faces a dedicated, disciplined, and highly lethal foe in the form of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which in the name of Kurdish nationalism has been waging war against the Turkish Republic for over three decades. Long isolated from the West due to its extensive employment of terror tactics including suicide bombing, the PKK in the past year has found new and unaccustomed favor in the West due to the success of its armed units in combat with ISIS. The US armed forces have been coordinating operations against ISIS with the PKK’s subsidiary in Syria, the PYD. Moreover, the American and European media, conveniently albeit ignorantly lumping together all Kurdish organizations from the quasi-tribal political parties of Iraqi Kurdistan to the revolutionary PKK, now sing the praises of the Kurds. Western commentators and opinion-makers imagine the Kurds as not just opponents of ISIS but indeed an innately secular, liberal, and democratic people. This image represents a remarkable turn around for the Kurds. The Western press in the nineteenth century routinely demonized the Kurds as semi-barbarous tribesmen and fanatic anti-Christians.

Accordingly, the PKK is striving today to exploit this unaccustomed favor and is again pressing ahead with its war against the Turkish Republic. In July it pre-empted the Turkish airstrikes against its headquarters in the Qandil Mountains of Iraq with a comprehensive campaign of attacks on targets throughout Turkey. It continues to mount attacks. Perhaps the most worrisome thing for Ankara has been the PKK’s success in mobilizing the frustrated youth in the cities of Turkey’s heavily Kurdish southeast. Whereas just a few years ago it seemed possible that Erdogan, whose distance from Kemalist nationalism and emphasis upon Muslim identity and socially conservative values attracted the sympathy of many Kurdish voters, might manage to resolve Turkey’s Kurdish Question, today it appears that a new generation of embittered Kurdish youth is being formed.

The Syrian civil war has greatly complicated Kurdish politics inside Turkey. Erdogan and Davutoglu’s refusal a year ago to intervene in support of the beleaguered Kurdish defenders of the Syrian border town of Kobani fighting against ISIS alienated a great many of Turkey’s Kurds. They interpreted Ankara’s passivity as at best gross indifference to Kurdish lives; at worst, they perceived a concerted conspiracy against the Kurds. But the defenders of Kobani were not mere Kurds, but the PKK’s surrogate, the PYD. It would have been just short of miraculous for Ankara to have had intervened to save its most bitter and dangerous foe, particularly as it was striving to carve out an enclave extending along the length of the Turkish-Syrian border. Nonetheless, Ankara’s decision for inaction has had immense negative consequences.

Turkey’s prioritization of its war against the PKK over the fight against ISIS should surprise no one, yet it does many Americans. Worse, they compound their surprise with indignation and accuse the Turks’ of treachery. Yet there is simply no comparison between the magnitude of the threat that ISIS poses to Turkey and the one that the PKK does. The latter alone poses a bona fide existential threat. As to treachery, from the Turkish point of view that word appropriately describes the readiness of the Americans to collaborate with the subsidiary of an organization the West itself officially labels terrorist and that has been the cause of a conflict that has taken the lives of an estimated 40,000 Turkish citizens. Should the PKK employ inside Turkey weapons supplied by Americans to the PYD in Syria, a major blowout in Turkish-American relations would not be unthinkable (although the altercation with Russia does reduce the likelihood that Turkey would risk its ties to the US).

A peaceful resolution of Turkey’s Kurdish Question is still not out of the question, and Turkey’s Kurds are far from united behind the PKK. Whereas in the June parliamentary elections, Kurdish voters abandoned the AKP en masse, substantial numbers came back to the party in the recent snap elections of October 2015. The PKK’s strident revolutionary ideology and cult of personality repels many Kurds, and with Kurdish integration into Turkish society only accelerating – Istanbul is the city with the world’s largest Kurdish population – the appeal of radicalism for some is fading even as others, such as the urban youth mentioned above, find it attractive. But the AKP has burned up much of its credibility with the Kurds. Such things as its perpetuation of a crude Turkish nationalist double-standard by championing Turkmen rebels in Syria and Iraq, its tolerance for mob violence against the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, and its suppression of law-abiding Kurdish activists at home alienate Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent.

ISIS understands this fault-line, and thus has targeted pro-Kurdish demonstrators in Diyarbakir (June 5), Suruç (20 July), and Ankara (10 July) with progressively more lethal bombs. The latter attack took the lives of over one-hundred people, making it the bloodiest terrorist act in Turkey’s history. Given the leftish orientation of the Kurdish movement in Turkey and its ties to the PKK, pro-Kurdish political rallies make logical targets for ISIS. But what makes the bombings truly effective is that they inflame the distrust many of Turkey’s Kurds feel toward their state, which they fear may not only not care about protecting them but might even be using ISIS to targeting them. Turkey today teeters on the brink of a civil war. The country once thought to be the dynamo that would pull the rest of the Middle East to liberal democracy is being dragged into the sort of self-destruction that has been grinding up Syria and Iraq, not to mention Yemen, Libya, and other Middle Eastern states.

American Incoherence and Obama’s Path into the Dangerzone

Even as Turkey’s and Russia’s jousting over Syria has spiraled into armed conflict, the Obama administration persists in following an incoherent strategy. That strategy, to the extent it merits that description, seeks to destroy or neutralize ISIS while at the same time unseating Assad while minimizing direct American involvement through the use of “moderate” rebels who are anti-Assad and anti-ISIS in conjunction with a broad international coalition that includes patrons of the Assad regime (e.g. Russia) and committed enemies (e.g. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar). It is difficult to know where to begin in critiquing the approach. Structurally, the Obama policy resembles the earlier failed American policy of “Dual Containment” pursued against Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Iraq and the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran. Unable to decide which state posed the greater threat, Washington attempted to confront and contain both at the same time, forfeiting the opportunity to exploit their mutual antagonism. By the end of the 1990s, that policy was coming undone. The inability to sustain Dual Containment led to the sudden US decision i to target Saddam Hussein’s regime and invade Iraq.

Now again, this time in Syria, Washington is attempting to confront two mutually antagonistic parties simultaneously. Yet what the Obama administration seeks to accomplish in Syria is more difficult by orders of magnitude.  The patchwork of forces on the ground consisting of Kurdish militias, anti-Assad rebel groups, and Iranian-backed Shi’i militias in Iraq has proven strong enough to hem in ISIS when supported by American and other airstrikes. But there is little likelihood that any part of this patchwork will drive into ISIS’s heartland and destroy it. The lightly armed Kurds, for example, have neither the capability nor still less the motivation to drive deeply into predominantly Arab lands. Such strategic overreach would have potentially catastrophic consequences for any project of Kurdish autonomy or independence. The greatest regional beneficiary from the crushing of ISIS would be Iran, and this alone would probably suffice to ensure that ISIS would draw on enough support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two regional powers desperate to stem the spread of Iranian influence, to maintain itself.

If the destruction of ISIS is a desirable but improbable outcome, it is not clear that the toppling of Assad is necessarily desirable. Obama has two compelling reasons to seek Assad’s overthrow. The first is that Assad is a vile character responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and the radicalization of many more. As noted earlier, Assad’s savage crackdown on protesters in 2011 pushed many Syrians to join jihadi outfits including ISIS. The second and more important reason Washington seeks Assad’s ouster is that he serves as a key lynchpin in Iran’s ability to project power and influence throughout the region and in particular to Israel’s border with Lebanon via Hezbollah. Breaking that link has long been a US objective, and four years ago at the beginning of the Arab Spring it looked imminent as a popular uprising against Assad began to take shape.

Over four years later, however, Assad is still in power. Through the Machiavellian use of mass violence, he sharply polarized Syria’s population, forcing them to make a choice between his regime or a jihadi regime, and thereby secured the support albeit begrudgingly, of the larger part of Syria. Iran and Hezbollah lent critical backing. Now, Russia’s intervention all but ensures that his personal rule, or at least his regime, will endure. Although American officials greeted that intervention with a mixture of befuddlement, anger, and offense, the fact is that Putin may well have rescued Washington from a fiasco of its own making. The key Syrian element on which Washington predicates the success of its Syria policy is a “moderate” armed opposition to Assad. In order for Washington to realize its goals, these moderates need to be strong enough to topple Assad, beat out any rivals, take control of Syrian territory, and restore order upon it. Yet there no evidence that any such force exists or will ever come into being. This is not for a lack of effort or resources. On a single program alone Washington spent roughly $500 million dollars. The grand result, according to the testimony of the CENTCOM commander, was the training of four or five individuals.[9]

Given this monumental failure, what good reason is there to expect that the fall of Assad and his regime would not lead to more violent chaos or the triumph of radical Sunnis or, still more likely, ISIS itself? It is difficult to see how such outcomes serve the American interest. Additionally, either of the latter two scenarios would likely have culminated in the massacre and expulsion of Syria’s Christians and Alawites, whom many of Assad’s fundamentalist opponents regard not simply as political rivals of the moment but as metaphysical adversaries. Among many Sunni Arab fundamentalists there is a bizarrely ahistorical yet widespread belief that Christianity in Syria represents not an indigenous faith that took root in Syrian soil centuries before the arrival of Islam to that land but is instead an alien entity transplanted to Syria by the Crusaders. That the Alawites deserve contempt and even hatred is a tenet of the many strains of Sunni fundamentalism that take their guidance from the immensely influential theologian of the fourteenth century, Ibn Taymiyya. The Alawites, Ibn Taymiyyah, warned are “greater disbelievers than the Christians and Jews.”

Conclusion

The confusion, hesitance and half-measures that have been hallmarks of the Obama administration’s Syria policy are easy to understand. The situation in Syria is complex and does not point to any self-evident solutions, let alone easy ones. Yet because ISIS does constitute a real threat to regional order and even world order, the situation in Syria cannot be ignored. Hence the appeal of Obama’s policy of containing ISIS while keeping Syria at arm’s length is easy to grasp. The hope is that the admixture of the efforts of local proxies on the ground with the limited but cumulative efforts of a broad coalition of countries executing airstrikes, economic sanctions, and covert operations will suffice to neutralize ISIS. The project, however, has two fatal flaws. The first is that absent a major ground force armed and prepared to invade and occupy the heartland of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, ISIS will persist. The second and greater flaw is that virtually none of the key members of the anti-ISIS coalition hold the destruction of ISIS to be their number one priority. Thus even as they contribute to operations to destroy ISIS the coalition members inevitably work competitively to outmaneuver their nominal coalition partners. The weaker ISIS gets, the more intense the intra-coalition competition is likely to become. This is not unusual. This is the classic dilemma of coalition warfare.

As the clash between Turkey and Russia has shown, the inclusion of so many parties with contradictory and even antagonistic goals in a nominal alliance against a highly unusual opponent carries considerable risks. The crisis between Turkey and Russia has not passed and perhaps not even peaked. Although Putin disavowed any military retaliation against Turkey and thus far Russia’s response has been limited to such things as economic measures targeting Turkey’s energy, tourism, and agricultural sectors and the suspension of military ties, Putin explicitly warned on December 3 that anyone who thinks Turkey, “having perpetrated a despicable military crime, the murder of our people… will get off by paying with tomatoes” is “gravely mistaken.”  Predicting that Turkey “will rue” what it has done, he concluded ominously, “We know what we must do.”[10]

Russia has a wide range of options for retaliation. Russia is Turkey’s second largest trading partner. But as Putin explained, he will not confine his response to disrupting trade. This should worry Ankara. Turkey’s great vulnerability is the Kurdish Question, and the country is currently on the brink of a civil war. Russia has a long and rich history of interest –diplomatic, military, and academic – in the Kurds that dates back to the eighteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Russian Imperial Army employed Kurdish auxiliaries with success in it multiple wars with the Ottomans and Persians, and in the years leading up to World War I the Russian Foreign Ministry and army were running a comprehensive program of subversion and insurgency among the Kurds of eastern Anatolia against the Ottoman Empire. The Soviet Union similarly employed Kurds to subvert both Turkey and Iran throughout the Cold War, and it was in particular an important sponsor of the PKK. Indeed, even after the fall of the USSR, Moscow maintained its ties with the organization. Well before the downing of the SU-24, Putin had named the Kurds as allies against ISIS.[11] The head of the PYD Salih Muslim has publicly reiterated his willingness to cooperate with Moscow[12] and the PYD has applied to open a representative office or “consulate” in Moscow.[13] Russian airstrikes in Syria reportedly have been supporting the PYD’s advance across the Euphrates into the last stretch of territory along the Syrian-Turkish border that is not under Kurdish control.

Turkey, of course is not helpless before Russia in the realm of proxy warfare. Russia’s North Caucasus remains a troubled region vulnerable to destabilization. The North Caucasian diaspora inside Turkey is significant, and throughout the past two decades Chechen and other Caucasian insurgents have used Turkey as a base for recruitment and recuperation. Many believe that the Turkish National Intelligence Organization sponsored some of these insurgents in the 1990s. It would not be difficult for Turkey to revive such an approach. Erdogan and Davutoglu in the past were quite sympathetic to the Chechen rebels, as were many Turks, particularly Sunni activists. Such an undertaking, however, would be treacherous. Because jihadists thoroughly dominate the organized resistance in the North Caucasus today, such an undertaking would effectively place Turkey on the side of ISIS, in whose ranks a substantial number of mujahidin from the North Caucasus are actively fighting.

Some news reports indicate that US special operations forces and local proxies are currently enjoying ongoing tactical successes against ISIS, in particular in targeting and killing its field commanders.[14] While this is good news, its importance should not be exaggerated. Similar tactical victories in Afghanistan and Iraq failed to eliminate al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and the vanquishing of al-Qaeda in Iraq preceded the birth of ISIS. The real challenge will be restoring governance throughout Syria and Iraq, and it is difficult to imagine that the coalition against ISIS will hold together until that point. The rift between Turkey and Russia looks set to widen and could explode. Nor is it the only rift. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are more concerned with Iran than ISIS, and the recent visit of French President Hollande to Moscow where he and Putin agreed to collaborate against ISIS suggests that some members of NATO may see Turkey, not Russia, as the bigger problem. In its determination to win the war against ISIS with a minimal US military commitment, the Obama administration would be wise to pay even more attention to the diplomacy of alliance management.

About the author:
*Michael A. Reynolds
– a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East – is an Associate Professor in Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies, where he teaches courses on modern Middle Eastern and Eurasian history, comparative empire, military and ethnic conflict, and secularism. He is author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), co-winner of the 2011 American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize, a Choice outstanding title, and a Financial Times book of the summer. In addition to his historical research on the Ottoman and Russian empires and their successor states, Reynolds works on contemporary issues related to Turkey, the Kurds, Azerbaijan, and the North Caucasus.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] http://www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_turkey-reiterates-would-not-have-dow…

[2]http://censor.net.ua/video_news/362091/putin_nazval_turtsiyu_posobnikom_…

[7] On the regime’s significant number of Sunni backers, see https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/syrias-sunnis-and-the-regimes-resilience

Hidden Portrait Found Under Mona Lisa?

0
0

A French scientist claims to have discovered a different portrait hidden behind that of the Mona Lisa, following 10 years of analysis using reflective light technology.

Pascal Cotte claims that Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous work contains a figure that has neither the direct gaze nor subtle smile that the painting is known for.

The Mona Lisa currently hangs in the Louvre and is effectively the most valued painting in the world, its insurance – adjusted for inflation – being at $782 million.

The museum has declined to comment on the scientist’s claims.

Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon, who has made a new BBC documentary called The Secrets of the Mona Lisa, has suggested that the find could lead to the painting’s name having to be changed.

“I have no doubt that this is definitely one of the stories of the century,” he told the BBC.

“There will probably be some reluctance on the part of the authorities at the Louvre in changing the title of the painting because that’s what we’re talking about – it’s goodbye Mona Lisa, she is somebody else.”

Mr Cotte was granted access to the painting – thought to have been created between 1503 and 1506 – by the Louvre in 2004 and pioneered a technique called Layer Amplification Method to analyse it, “projecting a series of intense lights” onto it.

A camera charts these lights’ reflections, allowing him to reconstruct what is going on between the layers of paint.

“We can now analyse exactly what is happening inside the layers of the paint and we can peel like an onion all the layers of the painting,” he said. “We can reconstruct all the chronology of the creation of the painting.

“The results shatter many myths and alter our vision of Leonardo’s masterpiece forever.

“When I finished the reconstruction of Lisa Gherardini, I was in front of the portrait and she is totally different to Mona Lisa today. This is not the same woman.”

Mr Cotte’s claims are highly controversial however, and divisive among art experts.

“[The images] are ingenious in showing what Leonardo may have been thinking about,” said Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. “But the idea that there is that picture as it were hiding underneath the surface is untenable.

“I do not think there are these discreet stages which represent different portraits. I see it as more or less a continuous process of evolution. I am absolutely convinced that the Mona Lisa is Lisa. “

Greenland Glaciers Retreating At Record Pace

0
0

Greenland’s glaciers are retreating quickly, and a new study shows in historical terms just how quickly: over the past century, at least twice as fast as any other time in the past 9,500 years. The study also provides new evidence for just how sensitive glaciers are to temperature, showing that they responded to past abrupt cooling and warming periods, some of which might have lasted only decades.

To track how glaciers grew and shrank over time, the scientists extracted sediment cores from a glacier-fed lake that provided the first continuous observation of glacier change in southeastern Greenland. They then compared the results to similar rare cores from Iceland and Canada’s Baffin Island for a regional view.

“Two things are happening,” said study co-author William D’Andrea, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “One is you have a very gradual decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting high latitudes in the summer. If that were the only thing happening, we would expect these glaciers to very slowly be creeping forward, forward, forward. But then we come along and start burning fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and glaciers that would still be growing start to melt back because summer temperatures are warmer.”

Glaciers are dynamic and heavy. As a glacier moves, it grinds the bedrock beneath, creating silt that the glacier’s meltwater washes into the lake below. The larger the glacier, the more bedrock it grinds away. Scientists can take sediment cores from the bottom of glacier-fed lakes to see how much silt and organic material settled over time, along with other indicators of a changing climate. They can then use radiocarbon dating to determine when more or less silt was deposited.

Sediment cores from the glacier-fed Kulusuk Lake allowed the scientists to track changes in two nearby glaciers going back 9,500 years. Before the 20th century, the fastest rate of glacier retreat reflected in the core was about 8,500 years ago, at a time when the Earth’s position relative to the sun resulted in more summer sunlight in the Arctic.

“If we compare the rate that these glaciers have retreated in the last hundred years to the rate that they retreated when they disappeared between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago, we see the rate of retreat in the last 100 years was about twice what it was under this naturally forced disappearance,” D’Andrea said.

The history captured in the Kulusuk Lake cores shows that a warming period started about 8,500 years ago, when the glacier’s erosion rates fell rapidly, suggesting the glacier was getting smaller. Then, about 8,200 years ago, temperatures began to cool rapidly and erosion rates increased again. That cooling period has been well documented by other studies and has been connected with large changes in ocean circulation.

Shortly after that advance, around 8,000 years ago, the glaciers wasted away and may have disappeared entirely – little erosion appears in the sediment core between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago, according to the study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Climate of the Past. During the warm period, the core also shows a large increase in organic matter from plants growing in and around the lake.

When the glaciers began growing again, about 4,000 years ago, they experienced a series of growth pulses that reveal their sensitivity to change. The glaciers expanded in bursts, advancing quickly, retreating briefly, and then expanding farther – until about 100 years ago, according to the study. “This shows that there are internal responses within the climate system that can make glaciers grow and shrink on very short time scales. They’re really dynamic systems, which we have not had much evidence for prior to this,” D’Andrea said.

The pulses of growth match cooling periods documented in ocean sediment cores and in the continuous cores from Iceland and Baffin Island, suggesting that glaciers have responded in sync across the North Atlantic for at least the past 4,000 years, the authors write.

Understanding how glaciers melt and how ice melted in the past is a critical component to understanding past and future sea level rise and improving risk assessment in the future, said D’Andrea.

Most Americans Believe Money Influences Decisions Made By Elected Officials

0
0

A majority of Americans believe that money influences decisions made by elected officials and favor full disclosure of the source of campaign donations, according to a new national survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Despite their concerns, the survey reveals that Americans favor keeping the current system of campaign funding in which candidates raise money through donations.

The AP-NORC survey explores the views of voting-age Americans on an array of factors that shape current day political campaigns, ranging from the limits on campaign contributions to support for public financing of campaigns to the connection between money and freedom of speech.

“With over half a billion dollars spent on the 2016 presidential election so far, the public is concerned about the influence of money on the political system,” said Trevor Tompson, director of The AP-NORC Center. “However there is no consensus on how the system can be fixed.”

According to the survey, more than 4 in 5 Americans — Republicans and Democrats alike — say campaign donations impact the decisions made by elected officials, and half of them say the impact is large.

Additionally, regardless of party identification, more than three-quarters of the public approve of compelling the disclosure of the sources of campaign contributions to Super PACs, and 60 percent say that revealing contributors to all groups would be effective in reducing the influence of money in politics.

At least half of the public says several measures would be effective in reducing the role of money in politics, including limiting the spending of outside groups, political parties, and the candidates themselves, the survey found, and that only about one-quarter of the public, including about one-third of Democrats, favor public financing of presidential campaigns.

Republicans and Democrats are divided on the idea that political money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, with 61 percent of Republicans agreeing that campaign contributions are free speech while 53 percent of Democrats disagree.

The survey was done against a background of significant changes in recent years in campaign finance rules. In 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision eliminated any cap on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions. In 2014, the Supreme Court struck down the decades-old limit on the total amount any individual can donate to federal candidates in a two-year cycle.

Mapping Tools Chart Path Towards Sustainable Urban Food Supply

0
0

The results of the EU-funded FOODMETRES project were discussed at the EU’s Bioeconomy Investment Summit, held in Brussels in November 2015. Experts from across the agricultural industry collaborated to find innovative solutions that will ensure the economic and environmental sustainability of food supplies to urban areas. At the summit, project coordinator Dirk Wascher from Alterra Wageningen in the Netherlands outlined the project’s key successes, and how these will benefit local and national level policy makers, consumers and businesses attached to the agro-food sector.

A key legacy of the project will be the series of technical references and decision support tools that have been developed. These have been designed to allow agro-food businesses, policy makers and civil society organisations to gain a better understanding of urban food supply needs, and to achieve more innovative food chain planning and governance.

For example, stakeholders can now access the FOODMETRES Knowledge Portal, which is now available online. This portal provides insight into cutting edge research on achieving efficient food supplies and highlights successful local initiatives and business examples uncovered in the project.

A central element of the programme has been the mapping of agro-food systems at the local, metropolitan and global level. One of the project’s key contributions has been to enable the visualisation of metropolitan supply and demand scenarios through developing interactive mapping tools, which will help stakeholders to better understand the possibilities for increasing metropolitan food sufficiency.

One of these tools – the Metropolitan Footprint Tool (MFT) – will allow policy makers to run simulations in order to help them improve regional food supply capacity. In addition, this will enable stakeholders all along the agro-food supply chain to make efficiencies and thus reduce operational costs.

The project team used these various mapping tools to carry out assessments in six urban areas: Berlin (Germany), Ljubljana (Slovenia), London (UK), Milan (Italy), Nairobi (Kenya) and Rotterdam (Netherlands). For each case study, the project put forward a new strategic approach to food planning for sustainable metropolitan regions, focusing on involving all stakeholders – from policy makers to the agro-food sector – in evidence-based decision making.

Throughout the project, the FOODMETRES team focused on principles such as resource-efficiency, food cluster development and system innovation. Ultimately they were able to demonstrate that cities can be self-sufficient with regards to region-specific food consumption and food supply capacities, but that better food planning and innovation are needed in order to make food chains more sustainable.

Many cities across the world are already developing their own food policies and programmes, in order to combine sustainable development objectives with food security and social innovation. Ensuring the sustainability of food chains – particularly in increasingly concentrated urban areas – will have a long-lasting economic and environmental impact. By providing new tools and methods for reducing the length of food chains and improving production efficiency, the FOODMETRES project represents a positive step forward.

Viewing all 73339 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images