WAR 05/24 to 05/30 ***The***Winds***of***WAR***

Now if the IDF could supply the South Sudanese with a dozen upgraded Kfirs to handle air defense (and maybe some strike roles as well)....along with perhaps "volunteers" to fly and maintain while they mentor the South Sudanese until they can take over....




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For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://azjewishpost.com/2012/south-...ion-develops-unlikely-friendship-with-israel/

South Sudan, world’s youngest nation, develops unlikely friendship with Israel
May 23, 2012
By Armin Rosen, JTA

JUBA, South Sudan (JTA) – This city in the world’s newest country is not your typical Arabic-speaking capital.

For one thing, most of the city’s inhabitants are Christian. For another, the Israeli flag is ubiquitous here.

Miniature Israeli flags hang from car windshields and flutter at roadside stalls, and at the Juba souk in the city’s downtown, you can buy lapel pins with the Israeli flag alongside its black, red and green South Sudanese counterpart.

“I love Israel,” said Joseph Lago, who sells pens, chewing gum and phone cards at a small wooden stall decorated with Israeli and South Sudanese flags. “They are people of God.”

Many South Sudanese are not just pro-Israel but proudly and openly so. There’s a Juba neighborhood called Jerusalem. A hotel near the airport is called the Shalom.

Perhaps most notable, South Sudan’s fondness for Israel extends to the diplomatic arena, where the two countries have been building strategic ties in a relationship that long preceded the founding of South Sudan last July.

“They see in us kind of a role model in how a small nation surrounded by enemies can survive and prosper, and they would like to imitate that,” Haim Koren, the incoming Israeli ambassador to South Sudan, told JTA.

South Sudan was created last year when its residents voted to secede from Sudan, a country with a Muslim majority and without diplomatic ties to Israel. The government in Khartoum accepted the secession, but in recent weeks a long-simmering dispute over oil revenues and borders has brought the two Sudans to the brink of all-out war.

With Sudan having often served as a safe haven for enemies of Israel and the West, the South Sudanese and Israel have had a common adversary.

In the mid-1990s, Osama bin Laden found shelter in Sudan. In 1995, Sudanese intelligence agents participated in an attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an ally of Israel and the West. Khartoum signed a military cooperation agreement with Iran in 2008, and in 2009, Israeli warplanes reportedly bombed a 23-truck weapons convoy in Sudan bound for the Gaza Strip.

The first contact between militants from southern Sudan and the Israeli government was in 1967, when a commander with the Anyana Sudanese rebel movement wrote to then-Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The officer explained that his militants were fighting on Sudan’s southern flank, and that with some help, the Anyana could keep Israel’s enemies bogged down and distracted.

According to James Mulla, the director of Voices of Sudan, a coalition of U.S.-based Sudanese-interest organizations, Israel’s support proved pivotal to the Anyana’s success during the first Sudanese civil war, which ended in 1972.

“Israel was the only country that helped the rebels in South Sudan,” Mulla told JTA. “They provided advisers to the Anyana, which is one reason why the government of Sudan wanted to sign a peace agreement. They wanted to finish the Anyana movement just shortly before they got training and advice.”

Over the years, there have been reports of the Israelis continuing to aid South Sudanese rebels during Sudan’s second civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2005 and resulted in an estimated 1.5 million to 2.5 million deaths.

Angelos Agok, a U.S.-based activist and a 13-year veteran in the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement, recalls that the SPLM’s ties to Israel were kept discrete.

“It was an intricate case, where South Sudan was still part of Sudan, which is an Arab country,” Agok said. “We didn’t want to offend them, and we had to be very careful diplomatically.”

Agok said SPLA leaders traveled to Israel for training. The Israeli government declined to comment on the subject.

Koren says the relationship with South Sudan is consistent with Israel’s strategic interests in East Africa, where state failure and political extremism have provided terrorist groups with potential bases of operation.

“In the long run, we’re expecting that friendly countries like South Sudan could be an ally like other states that are built in a non-extreme way,” he said.

Agriculture is another reason for the alliance. South Sudan’s economic future likely depends on large-scale farming. There was little commercial development in the region during the war years, and the country still imports much of its food from Uganda, despite sitting on some of Africa’s richest potential farmland.

It’s an area in which Israel has deep expertise, and it shares that expertise in ongoing cooperative projects with numerous developing countries.

“We have the initiative and we have the abilities to contribute and to help,” Koren said of South Sudan’s agricultural potential.

Israel already has a small presence in the country in the form of IsraAid, an Israeli NGO coalition. In March, an IsraAid delegation helped South Sudan set up its Ministry of Social Development, which will provide social work-related services for a population traumatized by decades of war.

“Whenever you say you’re from Israel, they’ll open you the door,” said Ophelie Namiech, the head of the Israeli delegation. “When we say we’re Israeli, the trust has already been built.”

Eliseo Neuman, who is director of the American Jewish Committee’s Africa Institute and traveled to Juba with the SPLM when South Sudan was still under Khartoum’s control, says the close ties between Israel and South Sudan could complicate both countries’ relationships with the Arab world.

“The north was blamed by the Arab League generally for fumbling the secession, and some allege that now they have the Zionists on their southern frontier — meaning the South Sudanese,” Neuman said. “Any very overt strengthening of the relationship might be an irritant.”

The relationship faces another potential pitfall: the future of the estimated 3,000 South Sudanese living in Israel who fled to Israel via Egypt during the long civil war.

Israel has struggled with how to handle the migrants and differentiating between those who came seeking refuge from violence and those who came in search of economic opportunity.

Israel “takes its obligations as a signatory to the Refugee Convention very seriously, given the history of the Jewish people and the history of many people who ended up coming to Israel,” said Mark Hetfield, an official at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society who in two weeks will become its interim president and CEO. “But at the same time, they need to send a signal to people coming for economic reasons that they can’t sneak into the country under the guise of being asylum seekers.”

In February, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced plans to begin deporting South Sudanese who would not accept government financial incentives to leave the country voluntarily.

Hetfield, who is now senior vice president at HIAS for policy and programs, helped oversee a program in Israel that taught job skills to South Sudanese who planned on returning home, but the program was suspended when the threat of deportation loomed.

Hetfield says the group would like the Israeli government to grant South Sudanese a “temporary protected status” that would prevent them from being deported to their unstable homeland.

Mulla does not think that the Israeli refugee issue will have an impact on the broader strategic alliance between South Sudan and Israel. However, he said he has raised the issue of the possible deportations with the South Sudanese ambassador in Washington, and hopes that something can be done to halt the process.

“If Israel decides to deport them, of course it’s going to be devastating,” Mulla said.

Advocates for the Africans are appealing to Israel’s Supreme Court in an attempt to stall or halt the deportations.

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UULVQG0.htm

The Associated Press May 23, 2012, 6:08PM ET text size: TT
Pressure on EU leaders to solve Greek crisis

By SARAH DiLORENZO and DON MELVIN
More from BusinessWeek

Stocks Reverse Loss as Euro Pares Drop on Summit Optimism
Hollande-Merkel Gulf Opens as 18th Euro Summit Tackles Crisis
European Banks Unprepared for Greek Exit From Euro
War-Gaming Greek Euro Exit Shows Hazards in 46-Hour Weekend
Euro Leaders Seek Crisis Resolution After G-8 Rifts

BRUSSELS

Europe's leaders gather in Brussels under mounting pressure to soften their tough-love approach to the weaker economies among them. With Greece locked in political chaos, much bigger Spain warns it can't keep afloat without help, as stock markets around the world tank over fears the leaders won't have the political will to act.

The summit will have to fight multiple fires: political uncertainty in Greece that could see it renege on commitments made to secure rescue loans; rising borrowing costs in Spain and Italy that could force them to seek bailouts; and sluggish growth across the region exacerbated by budget cuts meant to reassure markets about high debt levels.

"What we need is a decisive plan for Greece, and we need decisive plans to help get the European economies moving," British Prime Minister David Cameron said as he headed into the summit of leaders of the 27 countries that make up the EU, which includes the 17-member eurozone.

"But if we're not going to keep coming back and back to meetings like this we also need to deal with some of the longer-term issues at the heart of running successful single currency, having a bank that gets behind that single currency, having coherent long-term plans to make sure that single currency is coherent," he said.

Leaders have said that everything will be on the table, including a discussion about whether the countries that use the euro should spread the risk and borrow money jointly -- issuing so-called "eurobonds." This would mean every country could borrow funds at the same rate, substantially lowering the costs for the more indebted countries.

But expectations were low for agreement on concrete measures to boost growth and stability in the eurozone. Europe's main stock indexes plunged more than 2 percent. The euro fell 0.8 percent to $1.2561, its lowest in nearly two years.

On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development became the latest body to warn that the eurozone is at risk of falling into a "severe recession" and suggest that it slow the pace of austerity, or cost-cutting measures, in some countries.

That's exactly what many in Greece are asking for. The country has undertaken massive spending cuts and tax hikes to slash its deficit and rein in its debt -- and in exchange for the bailout loans that help keep it paying the bills. But Greece is now in its fifth year of recession, and many argue the country cannot hope for a recovery if it sticks to the deal.

In a recent election, neither of Greece's two main parties, both of which support the bailout deal, fared well. Instead, minor parties that are threatening to renege on those commitments saw their popularity surge. A new round of elections is set for June 17.

It is now a question of who will blink first. If the Greeks pick an anti-bailout government and renege on the terms of the bailout, the country could be forced into a messy exit of the euro. That could irreparably fracture the common currency and rattle global financial markets.

Some European countries are already hinting that Greece should be given better terms. Both the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, which monitors economic trends in developed economies, also are pushing for the demands on some countries to be eased.

European Union leaders are nonetheless presenting a united front and leaving it up to the Greek people to decide their future in Europe.

"Greece has to make an important choice on June 17, and their choice has to be European," French President Francois Hollande said as he headed into Wednesday's meeting. "France wants that the Greeks stay in the eurozone, and the Greeks must respect their commitments. At the same time, the eurozone must show it supports Greece."

That question will no doubt be central to Wednesday's discussions, although leaders have said no decisions would be made at the meeting -- which is technically only meant to set up a summit in late June.

Slow growth and uncertainty over Greece is making things worse for other struggling eurozone countries, like Spain, whose borrowing rates are high -- and rising -- because of fears that its government finances might be overwhelmed by the costs of rescuing its ailing banking sector.

In a meeting early Wednesday in Paris with Hollande, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned that his country couldn't continue much longer with its current high borrowing rates. High borrowing rates are at the heart of Europe's crisis and are what caused Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts.

"Europe has to come up with an answer," Rajoy said. "It is a must, because we cannot go on like this for a long time, with large differences when it comes to financing ourselves."

Rajoy suggested the European Central Bank resume some of its emergency measures, such as buying the bonds of weak countries, which has the impact of lowering countries' borrowing rates. The ECB has suspended the purchases because, as an independent body, it does not want to be seen supporting governments directly. Instead, it has given European banks massive amounts of cheap loans to bolster confidence in the financial system and allow banks to buy up their country's debt.

Leaders will also be addressing ways to buoy growth, like unleashing unused EU funds, increasing the financing of the European Investment Bank, which could then give loans to companies, and issuing "project bonds," debt that would be invested in large infrastructure projects.

Hollande said at his meeting with Rajoy that he will formally propose so-called eurobonds -- debt issued jointly by eurozone countries -- at Wednesday's summit.

Such bonds would distribute the risk of debt across the whole eurozone. That would mean every country would borrow at the same rate -- giving financially weak countries a huge discount over their current rates. Eurobonds could eventually replace at least some of a country's nationally issued debt, though countries would likely continue to meet the rest of their funding needs by going individually to the bond markets, as they do now.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is staunchly opposed to such a move because it would reduce the pressure on heavily indebted governments to heal their finances and force Germany to borrow at higher rates.

"I believe that they are not a contribution to foster growth in the eurozone because the very similar interest rates which we had over many years, have basically led to grave wrong developments," she said as she headed into Wednesday's meeting.

------

Raf Casert in Brussels, Thomas Adamson and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Geir Moulson and Juergen Baetz in Berlin and Daniel Woolls in Madrid contributed to this report.

Hummm.....

For links see article source...
Posted for fair use.....
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/agnivi-with-10000-km-range-to-be-ready-by-2014/260699-3.html

India | Updated May 24, 2012 at 01:29am IST
Agni-VI with 10000 km range to be ready by 2014
indianexpress

Balasore: Before the din that was kicked off after test firing of the much-touted Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Agni-V was settled down, India is gearing up to go for the maiden development trial of Agni-VI missile within next two years notwithstanding international reactions and pressures.

Being developed by the DRDO, the new generation ICBM Agni-VI will have a strike range of 8,000 km to 10,000 km. A reliable source said that the drawing and designing work of the most advanced missile had been started.

"It will be a three-stage missile and taller than the Agni-V. The design is just taking shape and other sub systems are under development. If everything goes as per the programme, the missile will be ready by mid 2014," said the source.
Agni-VI with 10000 km range to be ready by 2014

A scientist associated with the project said unlike the bulky Agni-III, the new generation Agni-VI missile will be more trendy and sleek, so that it can be easily carried to any place and deployed as and when required.

While the length of the missile would be reportedly around 40 meters as against Agni-V’s 17.5 meter, its diameter will be 1.1 meter, which is almost half of Agni-V. The missile’s launch weight would be around 55 tonne.

The Agni-VI is said to be the latest and most advanced version among the Agni series of missiles. It will have the capability to be launched from submarine and from land-based launchers. The DRDO is also working on integrating Agni-V with submarine.

The new missile will also carry more number of warheads than any other versions. While Agni-V can carry up to three nuclear warheads, sources said the next missile in the series can carry even up to 10 nuclear warheads, capable of hitting multiple targets simultaneously.

After the first test launching of 5,000 km range Agni-V missile while many had raised question about its ICBM capabilities, though it can hit the target anywhere in Asia, Africa and Europe except America, the development of Agni-VI would definitely be a befitting reply to them.

Apart from the Agni-VI's ground version, the DRDO is also simultaneously working out for its underground variant. The submarine launched version of the missile will arm the Arihant class submarines of the Indian Navy. This missile with a strike range of 6,000 kilometers can carry a payload of one tonne.

"We are seriously contemplating to enhance the reach of our strategic missiles. The development of Agni-VI will be a step forward to accomplish the goal. With the present strength we are capable of developing the inter-continental ballistic missiles which can hit targets beyond the range of 10,000 km," added the scientist.

(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest)

Hummm....

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-...revolutionary-guard-die-mysteriously-1.432239

Report: Ten members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard die mysteriously
According to report by Intelligence Online, the lack of reporting on the deaths has led observers to question whether the deaths were result of internal struggle over Iran’s underground economy,
By Haaretz | May.23, 2012 | 10:31 PM

Ten officers in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have died mysteriously over the past two months, although only two of the deaths have been publicly reported, according to a report by Intelligence Online, a monthly French online journal.

According to the report, the two reported deaths were of Gholan Reza Qasemi, a former commander of the 92nd armored division, and General Mohamed Ali Moussavi, head of a commando regiment in the town of Ahvaz.

Moreover, the report describes the recent death of General Ahmed Mansouri, allegedly due to a heart attack. Mansouri was one of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representatives in the Revolutionary Guard command structure. Two colonels, Nadjaf Ali Khirahalli and Nassif Pour, were recently killed in car accidents. Unlike previous instances, Khamenei did not issue any public report on the deaths of the officers.

According to the journal, the lack of reporting on the deaths has led observers to speculate over whether the deaths were a result of an internal struggle over Iran’s underground economy, which has traditionally been run by the Revolutionary Guard.

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Banking giant predicts 'Greece
will leave eurozone on New
Year's Day' as EU politicians
feud over euro crisis

By James Salmon and This Is Money Reporter
PUBLISHED: 08:47 EST, 24 May 2012
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...icts-Greece-leave-eurozone-New-Years-Day.html​

Greece will drop out of the eurozone on 1 January 2013 and reinstate the drachma: that was the prediction today from banking giant Citigroup.

The world's second-largest currency trading bank said Greece's new currency would fall immediately by 60 per cent and unleash a massive, yet manageable, wave of contagion across Europe.

In a note to clients, it said the likelihood of Greece leaving the euro in the next 12 to 24 months was now between 50 and 75 per cent - and assumed there would be a 'Grexit' at the start of next year.

Rebuff: Angela Merkel urged the eurozone to stick with austerity measures as markets plunged

Citigroup based its case on the belief that Greece would fail to form a government capable of implementing austerity measures after its next set of elections on June 17.

This would 'accentuate' the stalemate between the nation and its creditors.
Chief economist Michael Saunders said: 'We assume Grexit occurs on January 1, 2013, with Greece staying in the EU and receiving external loan support [to mitigate risks of social unrest and collapse of civil society].


More...Markets plunge as impasse on euro bonds sees hope for EU summit fade
'We cannot go on like this' warns Spanish PM as soaring cost of borrowing cripples Europe's flailing economies

'We expect that Grexit will be followed by a series of policy responses aiming to prevent a domino-style collapse of the banking system and escalating economic disruption.'

Bitter divisions have emerged among European leaders battling the eurozone crisis as Greece teeters on the brink of crashing out of the single currency altogether.
Amid the outbreak of hostilities, Prime Minister David Cameron had to ward off a fresh French bid to force through a controversial financial transactions tax.

Markets plunged across Europe yesterday as the leaders of 27 EU countries met in Brussels to discuss how to stimulate growth in Europe and the Greek crisis.
And as politicans aired sharp differences, one market analyst warned there now appeared to be 'paralysis at the heart of Europe’s policy making machinery'.

A push by France’s new socialist president Francois Hollande for the creation of pan-European bonds to enable struggling nations such as Spain and Italy to borrow more cheaply has been dismissed out of hand by German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel said the idea, which would effectively see Germany underwrite the eurozone’s vast debts, was illegal under EU law and was ‘not a contribution to stimulating growth’.

France also insisted on pushing ahead with proposals for a tax on financial transactions, which experts warn will hit the City of London. But Cameron described the proposal as a ‘bad idea’ and pledged to ‘fight it all the way’.

New Year's Grexit: Citigroup has made a very specific for Greece's exit from the eurozone.

Behind closed doors in Brussels, Cameron warned fellow EU leaders that ‘contagion’ from a Greek exit could destabilise the European economy for years.
‘We need a plan to deal with contagion,’ he said.

Meanwhile, Spain's Mariano Rajoy warned his country cannot continue much longer with its current high borrowing rates, which have soared well above the dangerously high 6 per cent level in recent weeks.

Germany’s central bank yesterday issued a stark warning that it is bracing itself for Greece’s exit, sparking a massive sell-off on global financial markets.

The Bundesbank suggested the fallout from Greece leaving the single currency would be ‘considerable but manageable’.

Some £35.45bn was wiped off the FTSE 100 index of leading shares in the worst day of trading since November 21 last year.

Markets have steadied today, although the mood among investors remains tense due to the political turmoil.

The FTSE 100 was up 9.8 points at 5,276.2 in early trading, while the French CAC 40 and the German DAX saw mild declines. The euro has slid further against the pound this morning to 80p (€1.2495).

Michael Hewson of CMC Markets said: 'While Greece remains a running sore investors will be unwilling to place their faith in EU politicians unless they can come up with a credible plan to deal with the unfolding crisis within Europe.

'While all the uncertainty over a Greece exit remains, the country is likely to remain uninvestable as Greek citizens slowly empty their bank accounts and withhold their taxes over uncertainty surrounding the country’s future.

'Last night’s decision by EU leaders to put off any proposed action until next month’s June summit with respect to dealing with the problems afflicting Europe’s banking sector, illustrates the paralysis at the heart of Europe’s policy making machinery, and also the divisions as to what any next steps would be to restore investors fragile confidence.'

Gary Jenkins of Swordfish Research said: 'For once a European summit did not disappoint; they promised nothing and that is exactly what we got.

'There was some confusion regarding whether or not the EU was really working in secret to prepare for a Greek exit and one can only hope they are.'


Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...ave-eurozone-New-Years-Day.html#ixzz1vnNaToR6





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'GREECE WILL LEAVE THE EURO BY 2013',
PREDICTS CURRENCY TRADING BANK

The drachma could soon replace the euro in Greece

Thursday May 24,2012
By Emily Fox for express.co.uk
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/322229​

GREECE will leave the euro by early 2013, the world's second largest currency trading bank said today.

Citigroup said it assumes Greece will leave in early 2013, leading to a sharp currency devaluation and a large drop in economic activity in 2013, with a modest rebound further ahead.

In a note written by one of the bank's economists, it said: "We believe that sizeable adverse economic and financial contagion to other euro area countries will be unavoidable and this is already happening to an extent."

The Greeks are to due to hold elections on June 17 after an earlier elections in May failed to produce a clear result.

If the country does not stick to clear austerity then Germany have warned that funds will be pulled.

We believe that sizeable adverse economic and financial contagion to other euro area countries will be unavoidable

Citigroup​

• Markets plummet as eurozone attempts rescue by pumping £14.5bn into Greek banks
• £14bn bailout for Greek banks

"We are close to a crescendo of fear in relation to the euro zone financial crisis and close to a nadir for confidence in economic growth," said Andrew Bell, chief executive of Witan, a 1.1-billion pound ($1.7 billion) investment trust.

David Cameron has said the European Central Bank must be used more effeciively to deal with the crisis in Greece.

Last night Greece’s caretaker government was forced to deny that the country was preparing to leave the euro.







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The United States of Europe or Bust

9:43 AM Thursday May 24, 2012
by Bill Lee
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/the_united_states_of_europe_or.html​

With Greece on the verge of collapse and the EU project in serious trouble — trouble that threatens not only Europeans but the rest of the world — it's time for seriously new thinking from our friends in Europe. Not damage control and band-aids, which have been the preferred responses by EU officials so far.

Evidence is now clear that the EU policy rests on seriously flawed assumptions, resulting in some monumental unintended consequences. The way forward has to start with facing up to those:

Profligate government spending got us into the current fix.That's simply not true. The so-called GIPSI countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Ireland) — whose economies are most at risk and whose governments are considered most profligate — had, in fact, steadily reduced not only deficit spending, but also their total debt levels right up to the financial crisis in 2008. Spain ran a surplus in 2007, and its total debt to GDP ratio was lower than Germany's.

What got Europe into its current mess was pretty much the same thing that slammed the US economy: a real estate bubble financed by profligate private banks. And the resulting economic slowdown and rise in unemployment — along with bank bailouts — were the causes of exploding government debt.

The way to growth is through austerity and balanced government budgets.Reputable economists, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, have warned from the get-go that austerity measures — in which EU governments are more or less ordered to cut spending and balance their books— would only exacerbate the crisis.

As a matter of simple logic, when unemployment is rising, and businesses aren't hiring, what do policy makers expect to happen when governments cut back too? Obvious answer: more unemployment, fewer customers with money in their pockets, increased likelihood businesses won't expand.

But economists' projections aside, the facts are pretty much in. Austerity hasn't worked, and is in fact, turning the crisis into a disaster.

Political union is out of the question.That leaves us with unelected, unaccountable EU officials in charge, who are focused on the past and on avoiding its catastrophes, and thus can't adequately address the current needs of the people their policies impact. And when a growing number of those people are out of work and living in collapsing economies — that is a dangerous brew indeed.

The continent's different languages, vastly different cultures, its long history of wars, resentments and distrust preclude political union. Or so the thinking goes. The core problem is that this assumption creates glaring internal contradictions and anomalies in the EU project. For example:

Economic contagion. Under the EU's system, a tiny country's economic woes (Greece) can threaten the economy of the entire EU. When states in federal systems such as the US — even large ones — run into financial problems, it's a blip on the economic radar.

The collapse of the safety net. When national economies contract in the EU, funds for unemployment, welfare and bank bailouts dry up. That's because the currency is controlled by the EU, while responsibility for the safety net remains in the hands of the individual countries. Thus, you have true Great Depression-like conditions when economies contract in the EU — a potent environment for extremism to flourish. That wouldn't happen in a truly federal system.

Backdoor autocracy. We now have Germany attempting to force Greece to do the impossible: balance its budget while its economy is tanking and unemployment is high and rising. That will likely force Greece out of the Euro, meaning Spain and Italy could well be next. Germany forcing impossible policies on non-Germans who have no say in such decisions? That's an outcome no one wants — and yet that is precisely what is happening.

Finally, could it be that the idea that "political union is impossible," far from being "true" in some theoretical sense, is simply a case of self-fulfilling prophecy? EU leaders are deeply afraid of concentrating power, for fear of creating conditions that would allow for another Hitler. They're afraid of repeating history. But democratic systems aren't built on culture or peoples' histories — and in fact, democracies often repudiate those elements when they threaten the system.

Democracies are built around shared ideas and ideals, along with common interests. And Europeans have those: preventing wars, increasing trade and cooperation, fomenting economic expansion, and above all, strengthening democracy itself. But the EU, sans political union, is creating decidedly undemocratic and unintended results. Along with deteriorating economies, you have the ingredients for fueling extremist nut cases. And no one wants to see that element on the rise in Europe.

The EU project isn't officially dead yet. But the evidence is in that the assumptions on which it is built are deeply wrongheaded. What they add up to is that either the EU must make the transition to the United States of Europe, or discard the Euro.






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EU Leaders Warn Greece:
Stick To Austerity Or Leave Euro

By Oliver Tree
May 24, 2012 2:38 PM GMT
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/344958/20120524/greece-exit-euro-eu-brussels-merkel-germany.htm​

European leaders reaffirmed their desire to keep Greece in the euro zone on Wednesday, but warned the ailing country to stick to strict debt reduction conditions or face expulsion from the currency community.

Speaking at a summit in Brussels, the heads of Germany and several EU institutions all urged the debt-stricken country to stick to the deeply unpopular tax hikes, labor reforms and welfare cuts that have divided Greece and pushed it to the brink of exiting the currency union.

"We discussed the political and economic situation in Greece. We want Greece to remain in the euro area while respecting its commitments," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said



"Continuing the vital reforms to restore debt sustainability, foster private investment and reinforce its institutions is the best guarantee for a more prosperous future in the euro area."

"We expect that after the elections, the new Greek Government will make that choice."

The European Central Bank President Mario Draghi added: "We want Greece to stay in the euro, but we insist that Greece sticks to commitments that it has agreed to."

Despite the agreement over Greece, the Brussels summit also exposed the deep divisions between euro zone members on how to tackle the mounting debt crisis.

The election of French President Francois Hollande earlier this month has fractured the traditional Franco-German alliance, with the French premier's desire to tackle the sovereign debt crisis through growth clashing with Chancellor Angela Merkel's predominantly austerity-led agenda.

Wednesday's summit focused on the issue of euro bonds, a financial instrument championed by Hollande as a way to stimulate growth in the continent's ailing economies.

The Socialist President believes capital raised by issuing the bonds could be used to fund continent-wide job-creation programs.




Merkel has repeatedly rubbished the idea, saying the bonds would violate EU treaties and would "not contribute to kick-starting growth."

Indecision and divisions within the euro zone camp led to European stock markets falling around 2 percent on Wednesday.

Leaders are now bracing themselves for another5 crucial summit on June 28.

Meanwhile, not everyone is convinced that a Greek exit from the euro zone would necessarily lead to catastrophic results in the country.

Ben May, European economist at Capital Economics in London, commented that, in the event of a sudden departure from the currency bloc, the Greek government (whatever form it eventually takes) could reduce its financing needs by defaulting on its debts and refusing to make all outstanding interest payments.

"[The] government's primary budget deficit (which excludes interest payment) this year might be as low as 1 percent of GDP," he wrote.

"Second, if a default substantially reduced the public debt burden, the Government might not be shut out of the [financial] markets for too long. Indeed, historical experience suggests that it might only be a few months (rather than years as is often assumed) before it could borrow from the markets again."

May further adds that even outside the euro zone, Greece could still receive financial assistance from the EU, or even the IMF for a period of time.
"As long as credible fiscal and monetary frameworks were established, temporarily getting the central bank to buy limited amounts of government debt would be unlikely to prompt a sustained bout of high inflation," May added.

"After all, the major economic slump of recent years has left Greece with huge amounts of spare capacity."


Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/3...-eu-brussels-merkel-germany.htm#ixzz1vnQs27yB





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U.S. Recession Could Follow Greek Exit from Euro

By Peter Morici, Senior Contributor
05/24/12 - 09:05 AM EDT
http://www.thestreet.com/story/1155...llow-greek-exit-from-euro.html?cm_ven=RSSFeed​

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- If Greece leaves the euro, the U.S. economy could easily slip into recession, but given the long-term consequences of Europe struggling with a currency regime that makes little sense, that cost is worth bearing.

Essentially, Athens would exchange drachma for euro in circulation among its inhabitants, remark private debts and bank accounts to dracham, and until conditions stabilized, limit withdrawals at Greek banks and capital outflows.

As the drachma fell in value, Greek exports would increase, reducing unemployment. consumers and businesses, with their debt redenominated into a cheaper currency, would enjoy a windfall and spend more. All would help lift the Greek economy out of crisis, but this can only happen if Germany and other European governments cooperate.

The money Greece owes other governments, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund -- under international law -- can only be remarked to drachma with their consent, but that debt is too substantial for Greece to repay in euro.

The disastrous consequences of German repartitions after World War I should compel European leaders to accept payments in drachma. The accompanying losses are manageable, but concerns about contagion will require that capital controls and additional ECB support be immediately deployed to banks in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and perhaps Ireland.

Uncertainty breeds panic, and even with these thoughtful measures, the euro will continue depressed, and the overall European economy is not likely to grow for a year or two or may even contract by one or two percentage points.

Europe is an important market for U.S. exports and those will stagnate. As importantly, U.S. banks and investors will take a hit from a further declining euro and reduced European bank lending activity in the United States and in countries that buy American products. Overall, expect U.S. growth to slow by 0.5% to 1% from the fallout of Greece leaving the euro.

By itself, that is not enough to sink the U.S. economy. Forecasters are predicting growth of about 2.5 percent for 2012 and 2013, but most have assumed the President and Congress reach some kind of compromise on the large federal spending cuts and tax increases that will trigger Jan. 1.






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Eurozone tunnel darkens,
despite ideas session at EU summit

(AFP) / 25 May 2012
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/display...feature_May31.xml&section=specialfeature&col=​

BRUSSELS - Eurozone tensions rose again on Thursday with grim signals from business, and a rush for German bonds on the risk of chaos over Greece despite efforts by France and Germany to calm the crisis.

An informal summit of European Union leaders overnight resulted in little apart from attempts to paper over deep cracks between France and Germany over diluting economic reforms with growth stimulus.

Hanging over the summit and business and finance is the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone.

The latest surveys of eurozone business confidence showed the worst monthly fall in May for nearly three years, to 45.9 points on the Markit PMI index from 46.7 in April, with anything less than 50 signalling slowdown.

In Germany, business confidence fell to a six-month low point and in France the leading index for manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level for 37 months.

At Capital Economics in London, senior European economist Jennifer McKeown said that data suggested that “the downturn has now really hit Germany” and commented: “Spreading economic downturn will further reduce the currency union’s chances of survival.”

The euro slumped to a 22-month dollar low point of $1.2516, last reached in July 2010. It later stood at $1.2544.

Stocks fluctuated and then rallied slightly. London’s benchmark FTSE 100 stock index climbed 0.59 percent. Frankfurt’s DAX 30 added 0.13 percent and the Paris CAC 40 won 0.38 percent.

“Nothing in the data released this morning suggests that economic conditions in the UK and Europe are easing against a backdrop of policy paralysis across Europe,” CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson told AFP.

“Unless policymakers come up with radical new solutions with respect to the crisis they will soon be faced with the prospect of delivering closer fiscal integration or overseeing the breakup of the euro.”

If Greeks vote in new elections on June 17 against the budget cuts and reforms tied to a second debt rescue, the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, are expected to curtail drastically the funding which is keeping Greece solvent.

This would push Greece from the eurozone and could cause incalculable risks for other weaker members, notably Spain.

Under all these clouds, funds flowed into safe-haven German 10-year debt bonds, pushing the fixed rate of return down to a record low level of 1.358 percent from 1.383 percent on Wednesday.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy told journalists after the summit: “We want Greece to remain in the euro area while respecting its commitments.”

But one diplomat told AFP that officials from the other 16 eurozone countries had been told this week to “reflect” on what the departure of Greece would mean.

The main point of contention at the summit, the creation of eurobonds for joint borrowing by strong and weak countries together, was discussed under a new focus on generating growth.

This push was headed by new French President Francois Hollande, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel held firm to her line that structural reforms to improve competitiveness in countries with debt problems must come before eurobonds.

Various other issues and ideas were talked around the table: EU project bonds for infrastructure projects, more resources for the European Investment Bank, use of existing EU project funds and the use of new eurozone rescue funding to support banks, with help from the European Central Bank, and a bank deposit insurance scheme.

Britain insisted that it would fight resolutely against a proposed financial services tax, intended to fund future problems in the banking sector, which it sees as a largely France-inspired threat to the City of London.

Hollande, a Socialist who displaced Nicolas Sarkozy in a French presidential election earlier this month, said: “We have to act straightaway for growth ... otherwise there will still be doubt on the markets.”

Merkel, who insists on structural reforms first despite waves of protests against austerity across the EU, said that eurobonds were “not a contribution to stimulating growth” and were not permitted under EU treaties.

Merkel, backed by the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden, said there had been “balanced” discussion on eurobonds and that several participants had expressed reservations.

A complicating factor for progress, is that Hollande’s Socialists are now campaigning in elections for a new majority in the French national assembly (parliament) and Merkel, weakened by the effects of the debt crisis, faces elections next year.

At Berenberg bank, analyst Christian Schulz said that Germany and its allies had rejected eurobonds as an “immediate fix”, and commented that such bonds would remove incentives for reforms in weaker countries.

The EU summit on June 28-29 was likely to result in a “very modest” growth initiative, and there had been no progress on controlling contagion from the crisis, the analyst observed.






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Greece’s Fallacious Four –
The Main Culprits Of The Greek Tragedy:
Mohamed El-Erian

By: Mohamed A. El-Erian Date: 24 May 2012
http://www.economywatch.com/economy...main-culprits-of-the-greek-tragedy.24-05.html​

With a traumatic implosion – economic, financial, political, and social – now taking place in Greece, we should expect heated debate about who is to blame for the country's deepening misery. There are four suspects – all of them involved in the spectacular boom that preceded what will prove to be an even more remarkable bust.

Who Are The Four Horsemen Of The Greek Apocalypse?
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

SEATTLE – Greece is following the road taken by several other crisis-ridden emerging economies over the past 30 years. Indeed, as I argued earlier this year, there are stunning similarities between this once-proud eurozone member and Argentina prior to its default in 2001. With an equally traumatic implosion – economic, financial, political, and social – now taking place, we should expect heated debate about who is to blame for the deepening misery that millions of Greeks now face.

There are four suspects – all of them involved in the spectacular boom that preceded what will unfortunately prove to be an even more remarkable bust.

Many will be quick to blame successive Greek governments led by what used to be the two dominant political parties, New Democracy on the right and PASOK on the left. Eager to borrow their country to prosperity, they racked up enormous debts while presiding over a dramatic loss of competitiveness and, thus, growth potential. Some even sought to be highly economical with the truth, failing to disclose the true extent of their budgetary slippages and indebtedness.

Having borrowed far too much after joining the eurozone in 2001, New Democracy and PASOK let their citizens down when adjustments and reforms were needed after the 2008 global financial crisis. An initial phase of denial was followed by commitments that could not be met (indeed, that some argued should not be met, owing to faulty program design). The resulting erosion in Greece’s international standing amplified the hardship that citizens were starting to feel.

Hold on, I hear you say. For every debt incurred there is a credit extended. You are right.

Greece’s private lenders were more than happy to pour money into the country, only to shirk their burden-sharing responsibilities when the artificial boom could no longer be sustained. The over-lending was so widespread that at one point it drove down the yield differential between Greek and German bonds to just six basis points – a ridiculously low level for two countries that differ so fundamentally in terms of economic management and financial conditions.

Overeager creditors willingly underwrote this absurd risk premium. Yet, when it became abundantly clear that Greece’s debt burden had been taken to insolvency levels, creditors delayed the moment of truth. They dragged their feet when it came to the critical agreement on orderly burden-sharing (that is, acceptance of a “haircut” on private-sector claims on Greece). And the longer they did that, the more money left Greece without any intention of returning.

But neither the Greek government nor its private creditors acted in a vacuum. Both took comfort from the political cover provided by the European unification effort – an historic initiative aimed at securing the continent’s well-being through closer economic and political integration on the basis of credible rules and effective institutions.

On both counts – rules and institutions – the eurozone fell short of what was required. Remember, the large core economies (France and Germany) were among the first members to breach the budgetary rules that were established when the euro was launched. And European institutions proved toothless when it came to enforcing compliance. All of this served to sustain the fantasy world that both Greece and its creditors happily inhabited for far too long.




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Euro Break-Up 'Would Make Britain Worse Off'

Nick Clegg said his meeting with the German foreign minister
in Berlin came at a 'critical moment' in the eurozone crisis

3:01pm UK, Thursday May 24, 2012
http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16234687​

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has issued a fresh warning about the drastic consequences of Greece leaving the euro for Britain and slammed the "piecemeal" response of EU leaders to the crisis.

On a visit to Berlin with business secretary Vince Cable, Mr Clegg said a Greek exit from the 17-country currency union could cause "unpredictable, irrevocable damage" across Europe.

"No rational person interested in the wealth and wellbeing of Europe's citizens could advocate taking such a risk," he said.

The Liberal Democrat leader added that some 3.5m British jobs depend on the EU economy, and 40% of exports go to the eurozone - making it vital that everything was done to secure the bloc's future.

A euro break-up would not be good news for UK Plc, Mr Clegg and Mr Cable say

His comments came as it was revealed that Britain's economy, which depends on doing business with continental Europe, is in a deeper recession that originally feared.

Revised data showed UK gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year - in stark contrast to figures coming out of Germany on the same day showing its economy grew by 0.5% over the same period.

Mr Cable told Sky News that Britain, unlike Germany, was still suffering from the fall-out of the 2008/9 financial crisis.

The Lib Dem duo's visit to Germany followed an 18th emergency EU summit to discuss the ongoing eurozone debt crisis.

But leaders failed again to produce a concrete solution or agree on how best to keep Greece in the single currency.

If Greeks vote in new elections on June 17 against the budget cuts and reforms tied to a second debt rescue, the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, are expected to curtail drastically the funding which is keeping Greece solvent.


This would push Greece out of the eurozone and could cause incalculable risks for other weaker members, notably Spain.

The deputy prime minister said the policy response to the eurozone crisis has been "woefully fragmented" and that the decision-making process, lurching from one crisis summit to the next, is undermining public confidence.

"The tree is falling, and we are pruning one leaf at a time. It is piecemeal politics - endless tactics with no strategy," he said.

While in Berlin both Mr Clegg and Mr Cable also spoke in favour of eurobonds - an idea recently put forward by the new French president Francois Hollande - in which every eurozone country could borrow funds at the same rate, lowering the costs for more indebted countries.

But Germany is firmly against eurobonds as a short-term fix to the debt crisis.

Meanwhile, more grim data has come out of the eurozone, with the latest survey of business confidence in the 17 country bloc showed the worst monthly fall for nearly three years.

The Markit PMI index dropped to 45.9 points in May from 46.7 in April, with anything less than 50 signalling a slowdown.

In Germany, business confidence fell to a six-month low point and in France the leading index for manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level for 37 months.

Jennifer McKeown, a senior European economist at Capital Economics, said that the data suggested that "the downturn has now really hit Germany".

"Spreading economic downturn will further reduce the currency union's chances of survival," she added.







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(Michele Tantussi - Bloomberg) The euro-zone crisis is often framed as a bailout that rich, responsible countries like Germany have extended to poor, irresponsible countries like Greece. But as the editors at Bloomberg View explain, it can also be seen, at least in part, as a bailout that the German taxpayer extended to the German financial system:

Let’s begin with the observation that irresponsible borrowers can’t exist without irresponsible lenders. Germany’s banks were Greece’s enablers. Thanks partly to lax regulation, German banks built up precarious exposures to Europe’s peripheral countries in the years before the crisis. By December 2009, according to the Bank for International Settlements, German banks had amassed claims of $704 billion on Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, much more than the German banks’ aggregate capital. In other words, they lent more than they could afford.

When the European Union and the European Central Bank stepped in to bail out the struggling countries, they made it possible for German banks to bring their money home. As a result, they bailed out Germany’s banks as well as the taxpayers who might otherwise have had to support those banks if the loans weren’t repaid. Unlike much of the aid provided to Greece, the support to Germany’s banks happened automatically, as a function of the currency union’s structure.

Here’s how it worked:​

When German banks pulled money out of Greece, the other national central banks of the euro area collectively offset the outflow with loans to the Greek central bank. These loans appeared on the balance sheet of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, as claims on the rest of the euro area. This mechanism, designed to keep the currency area’s accounts in balance, made it easier for the German banks to exit their positions.

Now for the tricky part: As opposed to the claims of the private banks, the Bundesbank’s claims were only partly the responsibility of Germany. If Greece reneged on its debt, the losses would be shared among all euro-area countries, according to their shareholding in the ECB. Germany’s stake would be about 28 percent. In short, over the last couple of years, much of the risk sitting on German banks’ balance sheets shifted to the taxpayers of the entire currency union.

And here’s a scary thought on the political economy of permitting the euro zone to break up:



Before Germany’s banks pulled back their funds, they stood to lose a ton of money if Greece left the euro. Now any losses will be shared with the taxpayers of the entire euro area -- particularly France, whose banks still have a lot of outstanding loans to Greece. Perhaps this is what some German officials mean when they say that the euro area is better prepared for a Greek exit.


That’s not to say Germany wouldn’t suffer. Everyone in Europe — and everyone here — would suffer.







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Thursday May 24, 2012 Search

Cypriot fears over Greece’s
possible return to drachma

By George Georgakopoulos
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_1_23/05/2012_443605​

NICOSIA - Eurozone banknotes might soon have the Greek word for “euro” exclusively thanks to Cyprus’s membership in the Economic and Monetary Union if fears of a Greek exit from the common currency bloc materialize. And while Greek political parties are considering such an option from different viewpoints, this constitutes a universal worry for Cypriots, who stand to lose much from a Greek exit.

“That would be most terrible. We do not even want to contemplate such a possibility, it would be disastrous for both Greece and Cyprus,” Marios Tsiakkis, deputy general secretary at the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, admitted to Kathimerini. “As long as the situation in Greece does not clear up, the Cypriot economy will be cringing.”

Earlier this month Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly said that “the consequences of a Greek exit would be unpredictable,” and that “as far as we in Cyprus are concerned, this is particularly worrying due to the special relationship in the Greek area.”

Besides the obvious impact on the political front -- as Greece’s say in the European Union will be dramatically reduced if it becomes the first country to drop out of the eurozone after forfeiting its agreement with its international creditors -- a Greek exit would have multiple consequences on the Cypriot economy. The current steady flow of Greeks going to Cyprus in search of a job with a high salary will surge if this country reverts to the drachma. Greek exports will suddenly become far more competitive due to the likely devaluation of the new currency, while Greek holiday destinations will become far more attractive to foreigners than Cyprus, unless of course unrest grows in Greece after a eurozone exit. “The Greek tourism flow to Cyprus will also drop significantly,” explained Tsiakkis.

Cypriots are particularly worried about the competitiveness of their products in the Greek market should Athens revert to the drachma, as they will likely lose a considerable portion of the brisk trade between the two Greek-speaking countries.

“In 2011 Greece actually saw its imports from Cyprus grow compared to 2010, thereby becoming the first market for Cypriot products, ahead of Germany and the United Kingdom,” Costas Shekkeris, head of the Commerce Ministry’s Industrial Products Export Department, told Kathimerini. Indeed, official figures from the ministry in Nicosia show that exports to Greece soared by 33 percent last year, climbing to 84.3 million euros from 63.2 million in 2010, in the midst of a major drop in consumption in Greece.

One might guess that Greeks have turned to Cypriot imports instead of those from other European countries out of patriotism, as people also associate Cypriot products with the unofficial “Buy Greek” campaign which has been winning over consumers for a couple of years now. However, the commercial counselor of the Cypriot Embassy in Athens, Loucas Symeonides, attributes the growth to “the undoubted quality of Cypriot products that is increasingly recognized,” as he told Kathimerini.

The impact of the Greek crisis has actually become a bone of contention in domestic Cypriot politics, with the government suggesting that the ills of the island’s economy are due to the excessive exposure of Cypriot banks to Greek state bonds and loans to Greek clients, which were not sufficiently monitored by the Central Bank of Cyprus, while the opposition as well as a significant number of market figures place a major part of the blame for that exposure on former Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis and his policies.

Either way, it is clear that the Cypriot credit system is hugely reliant on Greek prosperity -- and Cypriot lenders constitute the backbone of the island’s economy. “Bear in mind that the Cypriot banks’ turnover amounts to seven times the Cypriot gross domestic product,” said Costas Christofides, assistant director general of the Cyprus Employers and Industrialists Federation (OEB).

The three main lenders on Cyprus suffered losses of more than 3.4 billion euros between them due to the Greek debt restructuring, as Bank of Cyprus saw 1.32 billion disappear, Cyprus Popular Bank (Laiki) 1.97 billion and Hellenic Bank 110 million, and those figures don’t include the exposure to consumer and corporate loans in Greece or the drop in stock value that Athens-listed Bank of Cyprus and Popular Bank have suffered -- hence the law passed last week in Nicosia ensuring the state’s guarantee for the local banks’ recapitalization.

When the European Union agreed to accept Cyprus as a new member in 2004, then Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis clumsily used a historically charged term to hail the event, saying in Nicosia, “We have finally achieved Enosis,” the latter being the 20th-century movement against British colonial rule and for a Cypriot union with Greece. Just eight years on, Greece risks leaving Cyprus alone in the eurozone. Could it be the “Enosis” jinx again?






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Armed Forces chief:
'Silly to assume Israel won't attack Iran'

Last updated Thu 24 May 2012World
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2012...nder-silly-to-assume-israel-wont-attack-iran/​

The Times (£) reports that Britain's top military commander, General Sir David Richards, has warned that the UK and the U.S. should be ready to deal with the implications of an Israeli attack on Iran.

Speaking in Washington he said that 'it would be silly to assume it won't happen':

“
There is a lot of speculation over whether Israel will attack Iran.

All I would say is that it’s our responsibility that, should that happen, we are able to play our part in whatever follows from it.

No one wants to be at war with anybody.

The President [Barack Obama] and our Prime Minister have made it clear that’s not the route they want to go for. But options remain.

– General Sir David Richards, Chief of the Defence Staff





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Troubled Iran nuclear talks
spill over into second day

AFP
Baghdad, May 24, 2012
First Published: 07:55 IST(24/5/2012)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/world...ill-over-into-second-day/Article1-860409.aspx​

Tough talks aimed at helping resolve the decade-old crisis over Iran's nuclear programme enter an unscheduled second day on Thursday with world powers and Tehran seemingly wildly at odds.

On Wednesday at the meeting in Baghdad the P5+1 powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany -- put a new package of proposals on the table that appeared to horrify the Iranians.

An official with the Iranian delegation who wished to remain anonymous called for the P5+1 to "revise" the offer, even saying that common ground was "not yet sufficient for another round" of talks after Baghdad.

Reflecting official thinking, Iranian state media, including the Islamic Republic News Agency, all called the proposals "outdated, not comprehensive and unbalanced".

The new approach, presented on behalf of the P5+1 by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, was thought to include the demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment to 20 percent.

In return they were prepared to offer various sweeteners but not Iran's key demand of relaxing some of the UN Security Council and unilateral sanctions piled on the Islamic republic in recent years.

Instead they reportedly proposed a pledge not to impose any new sanctions, as well easing Iranian access to aircraft parts and a possible suspension of an EU insurance ban on ships carrying Iranian oil.

It also reportedly included a revival of previous attempts to get Iran to ship abroad its stockpiles of enriched uranium in return for fuel for a reactor producing medical isotopes.

But Iran announced on Tuesday that it was loading domestically produced, 20-percent enriched uranium fuel into the reactor, and the Iranian official in Baghdad was dismissive of reviving the idea of a swap.

"A possible swap of uranium enriched by Iran for fuel isn't very interesting for us because we are already producing our own fuel," the Iranian official said.

Iran made a five-step counter-proposal that an official said was "based on the principles of step-by-step and reciprocity", which the ISNA news agency called "comprehensive... transparent and practical".

Iran and the major powers returned to talks in Istanbul in mid-April after a 15-month hiatus, finding enough common ground to agree to meet again in Baghdad, hailing what they said was a fresh attitude.

But the Baghdad talks were always going to be tough, as to make progress the two sides would have to tackle some of the thorny issues that have divided them -- and the P5+1 themselves -- for years.

"There have been some areas of common ground and there has been a fair amount of disagreement," said a senior US official involved in the Baghdad talks. "But we all knew that we were going to have a lot of gaps and areas of disagreement."

Diplomats and analysts said that a satisfactory outcome would be an agreement to hold more regular talks at working level to thrash out a series of confidence-building measures in what would be a lengthy process.

One key way for Iran to win the confidence of the P5+1 would be to implement the additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows for more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA also wants Iran to address allegations made in its November report that until 2003, and possibly since, Tehran had a "structured programme" of "activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device".

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said on Tuesday after talks in Tehran that a deal on ways to go over these accusations with the Iranians would be signed "quite soon". Western reaction though was cool.





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The bullet has been fired

24 May 2012 / ÝBRAHÝM KARAGÜL , YENÝ ÞAFAK
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-281370-the-bullet-has-been-fired.html​

Now that we have seen clashes in Lebanon recently, it seems that debates over whether the conflict in Syria would spill over into Lebanon have come to an end. It is as if all of Lebanon was waiting for the first bullet to be fired, and it has finally been fired.


Lebanon is like a test area, a laboratory. Every development in the region is somehow reflected in Lebanon. A blow that is dealt against someone in Iraq makes the nose of a person in Lebanon bleed; every fight in Syria turns into a conflict in Lebanon. This is why Lebanon is the best place to see and analyze the developments in the region.

By looking at Lebanon, you can foresee what will happen in Syria, what Iran is planning to do, what the reflection will be in Saudi Arabia and the point to which the conflict between the Gulf and Iran has. And what is more important is that if a foreign intervention takes place in Syria, then it is most likely war will break out in Lebanon. This is why statements by the international community that “we can intervene in Syria but won’t allow the conflict to spread to Lebanon” cannot be true.






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Gun battle leaves 2 dead, 7 wounded in Beirut

May 24, 2012 - 17:12 AMT
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/news/108988/​

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lebanese security forces stormed a building in Beirut early Thursday, May 24 after a nighttime shootout with gunmen holed up inside a flat, in an incident which left two dead and seven wounded, security sources said.

One gunman was killed in the shootout and the body of another man was found inside the flat in west Beirut's Karakass district, a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Another gunman was wounded, the army said in a statement, adding that the man had previously been "detained for several years in Lebanon for security reasons," without elaborating.

The security official said the spark for the shootout was a personal dispute between at least one of the men and a woman in her early 20s. The dead man and the woman, detained in the incident, were Syrian nationals, he said.

The army said it also arrested a guard described as "suspicious" and the wounded gunman, having rushed to the site late Wednesday after reports of gunfire.

According to the army, the man who was found dead in the flat had been killed during a clash between gunmen that took place prior to the arrival of security forces.

Gunmen subsequently lobbed grenades and began shooting at the security forces from the flat, wounding at least six policemen and soldiers. The military said it found a large amount of weapons in the flat.

The shootout came amid heightened tensions in Lebanon, where deadly sectarian violence has broken out in the past two weeks linked to the unrest sweeping neighboring Syria.

The U.S. embassy in Beirut on Thursday warned American citizens to be aware of prevailing "tensions" and "violent incidents" in Lebanon, AFP reported.







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Saudi king warns of Lebanon civil war threat

Abdullah's letter to Sulaiman
follows killing of anti-Al Assad cleric

Gulf News Report
Published: 00:00 May 24, 2012
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-king-warns-of-lebanon-civil-war-threat-1.1027164​

Dubai: Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz is "deeply concerned" about the sectarian violence in Lebanon, state news agency SPA said, in an apparent reference to the killing of a Lebanese Sunni cleric opposed to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

"Saudi Arabia is deeply concerned and is following up on the recent developments of Tripoli events, especially the targeting of a main sect in the country's social fabric," Saudi state news agency SPA cited King Abdullah as saying in a letter to Lebanese President Michel Sulaiman.

"Due to the gravity of the crisis and the possibility of it causing sectarian strife in Lebanon and putting it back in the shadow of the civil war, we are looking at your ... attempts to interfere to end the crisis... and keeping Lebanon away from foreign struggles especially with the Syrian crisis nearby," the letter said.

Violence linked to the Syria conflict has spilled over into Lebanon, where soldiers last Sunday shot dead a prominent Sunni cleric and a member of a Lebanese political alliance against Al Assad in the northern city of Tripoli.

Saudi Arabia has long viewed Al Assad's government with distrust, pointing to its alliance with Shiite Iran, which Riyadh suspects of stirring up unrest in neighbouring Bahrain and among its own Shiite minority.

Riyadh has led Arab efforts to isolate Al Assad's government in an attempt to end its suppression of a year-long revolt and has called for Syrian rebels to be armed.

The UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait have urged their citizens to stay away from Lebanon, citing security concerns.

Kidnapping​

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said yesterday that Lebanese Shiites allegedly kidnapped in northern Syria by insurgents hoping to trade the captives for detainees in Syrian government custody would be freed soon.

The rebel Free Syrian Army denied it was behind the kidnapping.

Meanwhile, the Syrian rebel bastion Rastan was heavily shelled yesterday and at least 12 people were killed across the country, according to monitors.

Syrian forces tried to storm Rastan under cover of heavy gunfire, shelling and rocket bombardment, reports said.

Soldiers are trying to overrun Rastan for the second time in 10 days, with shells crashing into the town at the rate of "one a minute" at one stage, according to a Britain-based watchdog.

An activist told AFP that Free Syrian Army fighters were defending Rastan's entrances, but that "regime forces are being strengthened with new deployments", including from the elite Republican Guard.

"Electricity has been cut off in Rastan, and water tanks have been shelled," said activist Abu Rawan. "There is also a severe lack of food because the market is closed and we can't bring food in from nearby villages."

Syria oil sector lost $4b​

Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Allawi yesterday admitted that punitive measures imposed by the West have cost the country almost $4 billion and caused shortages in fuel products.

"The oil sector has lost almost $4 billion because of the unjust European and US sanctions, blocking exports and imports of oil and oil derivatives," he said. The minister acknowledged "new difficulties" in meeting Syria's energy needs, especially for domestic gas. "The measures taken by the EU and United States are behind this crisis. They want to put pressure on the Syrian people by widening the embargo," he said, adding: "We will also overcome the new difficulties."

Allawi said negotiations were under way with Russia for a long-term energy deal, while a Venezuelan vessel loaded with 35,000 tonnes of fuel oil docked in Syria this week and another was expected shortly.






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Posted for fair use and discussion.
http://www.debka.com/article/22024/...ter-Obama-rejects-its-nuclear-demands-of-Iran

Israel revives military option after Obama rejects its nuclear demands of Iran
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 24, 2012, 9:23 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran nuclear Israel military option Barack Obama Ehud Barak


Israel has withdrawn its pledge to US President Barack Obama not to strike Iran’s nuclear sites before the November presidential election after he rejected its minimal demands for nuclear negotiations with Iran. This is reported exclusively by debkafile’s Washington sources.

In public, Israeli ministers still talk as though they believe in results from the Six-Power talks with Iran, which Thursday May 24 limped into their second day in Baghdad with the parties still miles apart. But the presidential veto has essentially cast Israel outside the loop of influence on the outcome of diplomacy.

When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon on May 17 he was told that Obama had rejected Israel’s toned-down demands for Iran to at least to halt high-grade uranium enrichment, export its stocks of material enriched higher than 3.5 percent grade and shut down production at the Fordo nuclear plant near Qom. For six months, the Obama administration tried to sweeten the bitter pill of this rejection by bumping up security aid. The latest appropriation covered another $70 million for manufacturing more Iron Dome short-range missile interceptors.

After talking to Panetta, Barak turned to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon in the hope of winning their support for softening Obama’s ruling. Clinton replied she was not involved in the negotiations with Iran and Donilon, that a personal decision by the president was not open to change.

A week of consultations followed the defense minister’s return home, during which it was decided to tear up Israel’s pledge to refrain from attacking Iran during the US presidential campaign. Wednesday, May 23, the day the Baghdad talks began, Barak signaled Washington to this effect.

It was conveyed in a little-noticed early morning radio interview with the defense minister. To make sure his words reached the proper address without misunderstandings, the defense minister’s office issued a verbatim English translation from the Hebrew:

"There is no need to tell us what to do, and we have no reason to panic. Israel is very, very strong, but we do know that the Iranians are accomplished chess players and will try to achieve nuclear capabilities. Our position has not changed. The world must stop Iran from becoming nuclear. All options remain on the table."

As the Baghdad talks went around in circles, Israel’s military option was put back firmly on the table and on the US-Iranian chessboard.

You guys are quick - I was just going to post that Debka article. It really deserves its own thread.

"a personal decision by the president was not open to change"

make me laugh

And you all said "O" wasn't good at anything! HA! He is probably the best we have had as far as a "fluckum up" president goes!




Jim_bo

Current US Naval deployment

For discussion and interpretation:

Here is the current naval deployment map, courtesy of Stratfor and Zerohedge:



Stratfor sent me this explanatory note when I received the item from them:


[ no link; this was e-mail ]
---------------------------

The Naval Update Map shows an approximation of the current locations of U.S. Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARGs), based on available open-source information. No classified or operationally sensitive information is included in this weekly update. CSGs and ARGs are the keys to U.S. dominance of the world’s oceans. A CSG is centered on an aircraft carrier, which projects U.S. naval and air power and supports a carrier air wing (CVW). The CSG includes significant offensive strike capability. An ARG is centered on three amphibious warfare ships, with a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) embarked. An MEU is built around a heavily reinforced and mobile battalion of Marines.

Carrier Strike Groups

The USS Abraham Lincoln CSG with CVW 2 embarked is under way in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR) conducting missions supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.

The USS Enterprise CSG with CVW 1 embarked is on a scheduled port visit to Khalifa Bin Salman Port at Hidd, Bahrain, while conducting missions supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet AOR.

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower is under way in the Atlantic Ocean after having completed a 23-day Composite Training Unit Exercise (COMPTUEX).

Amphibious Ready Groups/Marine Expeditionary Units

The USS Makin Island ARG with the 11th MEU embarked is under way in the U.S. 7th Fleet AOR following a four-day port visit to Sepangar, Malaysia, on May 18-21.
The USS Iwo Jima ARG with the 24th MEU embarked is under way in the U.S. 5th Fleet AOR supporting maritime security operations and conducting theater security cooperation efforts.

The USS Wasp is in a scheduled port visit to New York, N.Y., to participate in Fleet Week New York on May 23-30

---------------------------

The Stratfor web site is http://www.stratfor.com/

Can anyone assess the significance of this?

Lee

Current Zerohedge assessment of Iran and the risk of war

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/and-meanwhile-arabian-sea

========================================

And Meanwhile, In The Arabian Sea...

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/24/2012 11:04 -0400

There was a time, late in the winter, that not a day passed without some headline announcing Israel's preparedness to attack Iran, culminating with the grotesque - a show on Israel TV detailing the actual invasion plans. All these daily updates did was guarantee one thing - that absolutely no war could possibly break out for two simple reasons:

i) you never declare war when the opponent is expecting you, instead you habituate them to news about imminent invasions which never happens, and,

ii) Brent was over $120, which would guarantee no re-election for Obama as outright war would send the energy complex soaring, gas prices surging, and the world economy, but most importantly the Russell 2000, tumbling.

Over the past 2 months two things have happened: chatter of "imminent" war with Iran has died down to barely a whisper, and WTI is now trading 20% lower than 2012 highs. Which means there is far more capacity for a run higher. So putting all that together, does it mean that the prospect of war with Iran is now gone? Below we present the latest naval update map courtesy of Stratfor, and leave readers to make their own conclusions...

[ note: that map is in the immediately preceding post ]

========================================

Lee

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.......
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/25/brotherhood-advances-to-second-round-in-egypt-election/

Brotherhood advances to second round in Egypt election

Published May 25, 2012
Associated Press

CAIRO – The candidate of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood won a spot in a runoff election, according to partial results Friday from Egypt's first genuinely competitive presidential election. A former prime minister and a leftist were in a tight race for second place and a chance to run against him to become the country's next leader.

The runoff will be held on June 16-17, pitting the two top contenders from the first round of voting held Wednesday and Thursday. The victor is to be announced June 21.

The landmark vote -- the fruit of last year's uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak -- turned into a heated battle between Islamist candidates and secular figures rooted in Mubarak's old regime. The most polarizing figures in the race were the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi and former air force commander and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a veteran of Mubarak's rule.

By midday Friday, the counting had been completed in at least 20 of the country's 27 provinces, representing around half the votes cast -- though workers were still plowing through the paper ballots from Egypt's biggest metropolis, the capital Cairo and its sister city Giza. The election commission said turnout in the election's first round was about 50 percent of more than 50 million eligible voters.

Morsi was in the lead with 28 percent of the ballots so far, according to the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, which was compiling reports from counting stations. That is likely enough to secure him a spot in the runoff.

But the race for second place was neck-and-neck between Shafiq and leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, who was a darkhorse during months of campaigning but had a surprising surge in the days before voting began as Egyptians looked for an alternative to both Islamists and the former regime figures known as "feloul" or "remnants."

Sabahi is a leftist who claims the mantle of the nationalist, socialist ideology of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt's president from 1956 to 1970.

"The results reflect that people are searching for a third alternative, those who fear a religious state and those who don't want Mubarak's regime to come back," said Sabahi campaign spokesman Hossam Mounis.

Earlier in the day, Al-Masry Al-Youm's tally had Shafiq with 21 percent of the vote so far, and Sabahi at 20 percent. But then Sabahi scored a surprise win in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, where he came in first and Morsi and Shafiq lagged far behind. That vaulted Sabahi into a narrow second place lead for the moment, though several Shafiq strongholds in the Nile Delta had still to report.

The count from Cairo and Giza was not expected to be finished until late Friday or early Saturday, Mounis said.

Alexandria is the traditional stronghold of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis. But the powerful Salafi vote there was split between Islamist candidates. The result is "a great loss to the Brotherhood who lost their credibility in the street," Mounis said.

The Brotherhood is hoping for a presidential victory to seal its political domination of Egypt, which would be a dramatic turnaround from the decades it was repressed under Mubarak. It already holds nearly half of parliament after victories in elections late last year.

The group has promised a "renaissance" of Egypt, not only reforming Mubarak-era corruption and reviving decrepit infrastructure, but also bringing a greater degree of rule by Islamic law. That prospect has alarmed more moderate Muslims, secular Egyptians and the Christian minority, who all fear restrictions on civil rights and worry that the Brotherhood shows similar domineering tendencies as Mubarak.

"I think we are on the verge of a new era. We trusted God, we trusted in the people, we trusted in our party," prominent Brotherhood figure Essam el-Erian said at a news conference late Thursday night, just hours after polls closed, when the group first claimed a Morsi victory.

A Morsi verus Shafiq runoff would likely be a particularly heated race.

Each has repeatedly spoken of the dangers, real or imaginary, if the other becomes president. Morsi has said there would be massive street protests if a "feloul" wins, arguing it could only be the result of rigging.

Shafiq, on his part, has said it would be "unacceptable" if an Islamist takes the presidential office, echoing the rhetoric of Mubarak, his longtime mentor who devoted much of his 29-year rule to fighting Islamists. Still, Shafiq's campaign has said it would accept the election's result.

And each fires up strong emotions among the public.

Shafiq drew support among Egyptians who fear Islamists or want a perceived "strongman" to bring stability after 16 months of economic and political turmoil and bloodshed since Mubarak's fall. But he also raises the venom of many who see him as another Mubarak-style autocrat, rooted in a regime that was notorious for corruption and police brutality.

Secular Egyptians fear the prospect of greater religion in government if Morsi wins. Moreover, the Brotherhood faced a backlash from many of the voters who supported it in the parliament election but later grew disillusioned. Some accused it of trying to overly monopolize power like Mubarak's ruling party once did.

Morsi's showing in the partial results was a considerable drop from the around 50 percent support the Brotherhood received in the parliament vote.

"Egyptians are punishing the Muslim Brotherhood, even if their candidate won," said Tharwat el-Kherbawi, an ex-Brotherhood member and an analyst in Islamic movements.

Still, Morsi benefited from the might of the Brotherhood's well-organized electoral machine, the nation's strongest.

"We need a president who gets rid of the former corrupt and oppressive system and brings Egypt back to the position it deserves economically and internationally," said Rizk Mohammed, a contractor voting with his family in Cairo on Thursday -- all for Morsi.

At another station Thursday in the Cairo district of el-Zawiya el-Hamra, several women in line to vote debated.

"I like the personality of Shafiq. He is strong enough to lift the country," said Suheir Abdel-Mumin.

Somaiya Imam, still undecided on whom to choose, replied with a reference to Islamist candidates, saying: "Don't you think we should vote for the candidate who holds the Koran?"

"We voted for them before and they let us down," Abdel-Mumin responded, referring to the Brotherhood's victories in last year's parliamentary elections. "They want everything -- the presidency, parliament and government. They are never satisfied."

No one should really be surprised by this finding...

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/w...uranium-in-iran-enriched-to-higher-level.html

U.N. Finds Uranium in Iran Enriched to Higher Level
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: May 25, 2012

United Nations nuclear inspectors in Iran have found trace amounts of uranium enriched beyond the highest previously reported levels, according to a diplomat in Vienna who said on Friday that the elevated reading would be addressed in a quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program.

The report, to be delivered to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency later Friday, will include the figure of 27 percent enrichment, the diplomat said, a potentially alarming development since it moves the purity of Iran’s uranium enrichment closer toward bomb-grade material even as world powers are negotiating with Tehran to shift its nuclear program in the opposite direction.

Whether the 27 percent figure represents a trace amount or a substantial quantity appears for the moment to be unknown publicly.

The diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, cautioned that I.A.E.A. is investigating the reading and that the spike in purity could turn out to be accidental.

“There’s a decent chance that it’s an operator error,” the diplomat said.

Until now, the highest reported level of uranium enrichment for the Iranian program was 20 percent. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty makes no restrictions on how pure a nation can make its enriched uranium, only that it cannot mix the civilian work with military applications.

In Iran’s case, the I.A.E.A. and Western powers have amassed evidence suggesting that Iran has investigated the making of nuclear arms, even as Tehran insists that all its atomic efforts are peaceful.

Most uranium fuel for reactors is enriched to around 4 percent purity. Iran began more than two years ago producing fuel enriched to 20 percent, saying it was for a research reactor in Tehran.

Bomb-grade fuel requires purity of 90 percent, which, in terms of production efforts, is a comparatively short leap from 20 percent enrichment.

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/iran-nuclear-idUSL5E8GOI4520120525

WRAPUP 2-Iran, big powers agree to hold more nuclear talks in June

Fri May 25, 2012 7:31am EDT

* Iran and P5+1 agree to reconvene in Moscow on June 18-19

* Major sticking points remain, but two sides still talking

* Iran wants easing of sanctions before nuclear concessions

* Powers want Iran to curb activity before sanctions eased (Adds comments from Iranian oil minister, senior cleric)

By Andrew Quinn and Justyna Pawlak

BAGHDAD, May 25 (Reuters) - Iran and world powers agreed to meet again next month to try to ease the long standoff over its nuclear work despite achieving scant progress at talks in Baghdad towards resolving the main sticking points of their dispute.

At its heart is Iran's insistence on right to enrich uranium and that economic sanctions should be lifted before it shelves activities that could lead to its achieving the capability to develop nuclear weapons.

Western powers insist Tehran must first shut down higher-grade enrichment before sanctions could be eased.

But both sides have powerful reasons not to abandon diplomacy. The powers want to avert the danger of a new Middle East war raised by Israeli threats to bomb Iran, while Tehran also wants to avoid a looming Western ban on its oil exports.

After discussions in Baghdad extended late into an unscheduled second day on Thursday between envoys from Iran and the six powers, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said it was clear both sides wanted progress and had some common ground, but significant differences remained.

"We will maintain intensive contacts with our Iranian counterparts to prepare a further meeting in Moscow," she told a news conference in Baghdad.

The next meeting, the third in the latest round of talks that began in Istanbul last month after a diplomatic vacuum of 15 months, will be held in Moscow on June 18-19.

Ashton leads the negotiations for the six-country group made up of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - which together with Germany is known as the P5+1.

"Talks were intensive and long," Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief negotiator and direct representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said. "They were detailed, but left unfinished.

"The atmosphere of these talks was positive for the two sides to talk about their issues in a clear way," Jalili added. "We believe the result of these talks was that we were able to get to know each other's views better and more."

While there was little if any concrete progress, the fact that the two sides agreed to continue talks was a sign of progress in itself, after more than a year of not meeting at all before the latest round of negotiations began in April.

"The two sides' commitment to diplomacy in the absence of any clear agreement is a positive sign," said Ali Vaez, Iran expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank.

"All parties should be commended for returning to the negotiating table. (U.S. President Barack) Obama should be commended for having turned diplomacy into a process rather than the one-off meetings that existed in the past," wrote Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.

"Both sides entered negotiations with their maximalist positions, and neither budged. Looking ahead, now the hard work begins."

Iran, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, says it is enriching uranium only in order to generate electricity to serve the needs of a burgeoning population, and for a medical research reactor.

The sceptical powers want practical steps from the Islamic Republic to address their concerns over its nuclear programme.

Chief among such concerns is Iran's ability to enrich uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent. That is the nuclear advance most worrying to the West since it opens the way to reaching 90 percent, or bomb-grade, enrichment.

"Iran declared its readiness to address the issue of 20 percent enrichment and came with its own five-point plan, including their assertion that we recognise their right to enrichment," Ashton said.

IRAN INSISTS ON ITS RIGHTS

Iran says it will not exceed 20 percent and the material will be made into fuel for a research reactor.

Iran has hinted at flexibility on higher-grade enrichment but Iranian media said it would not give away its most potent bargaining chip without significant concessions on sanctions.

"We never expected to get that agreement (on 20 percent) here in Baghdad," said a senior U.S. administration official who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the subject.

But, he said "there is agreement to address all aspects of 20 percent as we put it on the table".

A significant difference between the two sides is Iran's insistence on what Jalili called "an undeniable right of the Iranian nation" to enrich uranium.

"Obviously (that) was not something we were prepared to do," the official said, echoing the U.S. view that Iran does not automatically have this right under international law because, it argues, Iran has violated obligations under counter-proliferation safeguards by having hidden sensitive nuclear activity from U.N. inspectors in the past.

The United States and its allies have imposed tough sanctions on Iran's energy and financial sectors to try to force it to compromise and open up its nuclear activities to scrutiny.

EU states are set to introduce a total embargo of Iranian crude oil purchases in July. Diplomats say the measure will not be cancelled unless Tehran acts to rein in enrichment first.

Iranian Oil Minister Qasem Rostani dismissed the threat of an oil embargo, saying Tehran's adversaries would suffer more in the form of soaring crude prices.

"With the absence of Iran's oil in global markets, something will happen to the global economy that will greatly reduce economic growth of developing and developed countries. The world is concerned about this issue today," Rostami said on Friday.

"I hope they (the West) understand what would happen if Iran's oil is no longer in the market. If they are wise, they would learn from this period of time when oil prices jumped with only talks of sanctions..."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there would be no let-up in sanctions against Iran, even as talks continue.

The senior U.S. official said the six powers were going to try to advance the talks "as fast as we can". But it was too early to talk about technical level or expert meetings because the broader political issues still needed to be clarified.

The official said sanctions coming into effect in coming weeks would increase leverage on Iran in the negotiations.

"Maximum pressure is not yet being felt by Iran," the official said, adding there were many other potential sanctions that remained to be employed.

WORRIES ABOUT WAR

The powers want Iran to send its more highly refined uranium abroad, close an underground plant devoted to 20 percent enrichment which is largely invulnerable to air strikes and submit to more intrusive U.N. nuclear inspections.

In return, they have offered fuel to keep Iran's medical isotope reactor running, assistance in nuclear safety and an end to a ban on spare parts for Iran's ageing civilian aircraft.

A senior hardline Iranian cleric was dismissive. "They keep saying Iran should take confidence-building steps. How many times should Iran do this? You have inspected our nuclear sites a number of times and have not found anything," Ahmad Khatami said in a sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran.

"The P5+1 should know that the Iranian nation is not the kind to submit to blackmail and ... that (our) people are here and are standing firm on their rights."

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly ruled out suspending all enrichment as called for by several U.N. Security Council resolutions, saying nuclear energy is a matter of national sovereignty and pride in technological progress. (Additional reporting by Patrick Markey and William Maclean in Baghdad, Marcus George and Isabel Coles in Dubai, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna and Paul Eckert in Washington; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Basic Materials »
Energy »

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.......
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-china-politics-idUSBRE84O09E20120525

Exclusive: China leadership rules Bo case isolated, limits purge: sources

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Chris Buckley
Comments 2
BEIJING | Fri May 25, 2012 2:07am EDT

(Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao has demanded senior Communist Party officials stifle tensions over the ousting of ambitious politician Bo Xilai and show unity as they prepare for a change of leadership, sources briefed on recent meetings said.

Hu urged the party to close ranks at a meeting of about 200 officials early this month at a Beijing hotel, declaring the downfall of Bo - China's biggest political scandal in two decades - to be an "isolated case", the three sources said.

The sources' comments represent the first confirmation of speculation that Hu recently intervened to prevent a wider rift in the party and to resist pressure from some elements for a wider purge of the populist Bo's policies and supporters.

Bo, former party chief of Chongqing city, was suspended from the party's top ranks in April after his wife became a suspect in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood. Before the scandal broke, Bo had been seen as a candidate to join China's new top leadership team to be unveiled this year.

"It's been settled that this will be dealt with as a criminal case, not a political case," said one of the sources, a retired official. "The central leadership wants to focus on ensuring a stable environment for the 18th Party Congress, so the guiding policy is to end all the rumors and contention."

The party congress, scheduled to be held late this year, will appoint a new generation of leaders. Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao will then step down from their government posts at the National People's Congress in early 2013, when Vice President Xi Jinping is likely to succeed Hu as president.

The sources, all with ties to senior party officials, spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid possible recriminations for speaking about internal party discussions.

Two of them said Hu had convened this month's meeting at the Jingxi Hotel, the party's heavily guarded conference hotel in western Beijing where leaders often hold secretive conclaves.

The meeting was part of a series of steps taken to shore up unity and advance preparations for the 18th Party Congress. Those steps included retired leaders, especially former president Jiang Zemin, giving their backing to Hu's position.

"Jiang said that if you have solid evidence that Gu Kailai committed murder and that Bo Xilai also committed major errors, then deal with it as an isolated criminal incident," said the retired official, paraphrasing a summary of Jiang's comments.

"There's already been too much instability. The overriding goal now must be a successful 18th Party Congress," the former official said, paraphrasing Jiang, 85, who a decade after he retired still exercises some influence over major decisions. One of the sources said Jiang was not at the Jingxi meeting and it was unclear where he made the remarks or how he conveyed them.

Hu's expected successor, Xi, also has stayed closely in line with the leadership's position on Bo, said the retired official.

IDEOLOGICAL RIFTS, RUMOURS

Describing Bo's downfall as a serious but isolated case of wrongdoing, Hu urged officials at the meeting to end ideological rifts and rumors ignited by the scandal, the sources added.

The domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang, has faced accusations that he sought to protect Bo, but his career appears to have survived the controversy, despite rumors that Zhou could be sidelined.

"Zhou has been encouraged by the party leadership to make regular appearances and show he's trusted," said the retired official. He noted that Zhou and President Hu made a high-profile joint appearance before police on May 18.

Premier Wen had suggested he favored a wider reckoning in March when, a day before Bo was sacked as Chongqing party chief, the premier linked Bo's failings to the discredited radicalism of the Cultural Revolution.

But at the recent party meetings, Wen's comments were chided by some other officials, two of the sources said.

However, China's leaders could find enforcing demands for conformity from the public harder than from within the party.

Bo nurtured an ardent following among leftists who embraced what they viewed as his model of egalitarian growth, and they have continued to defend him as the victim of a plot. He had used Chongqing, a province-level municipality in southwest China, as a showcase for left-leaning populist policies.

Liberal reformers, however, want the government to look beyond Heywood's death and examine complaints about Bo's leadership, including accusations that his populist crackdown on organized crime in Chongqing involved abuses such as torture.

He was brought down after a furor erupted when his police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a U.S. consulate for more than 24 hours in February and told American diplomats that he believed Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, was implicated in Heywood's death in November, according to later descriptions of Wang's allegations.

"The leadership won't turn this into a line struggle," independent politics researcher Chen Ziming said, using the party's jargon for an ideological purge.

Beijing-based Chen, who has sources close to the party, said there appeared to have been heated internal debate over how to handle the Bo case before deciding to contain it.

"The drama is focused on the three actors, and that's already complicated enough," Chen said, referring to Bo, his wife Gu, and the ex-police chief Wang.

"If there are more actors brought into the drama, then it will become just too complicated and troublesome."

Bo, 62, and Gu, 52, have disappeared from public view and have had no chance to respond publicly to the allegations.

OUT OF SIGHT

The make-up of the next central leadership elite will be settled over coming months through an opaque process of inspections, jockeying and balancing rival camps in the party.

In recent weeks, the party has launched informal ballots and inspections to size up potential candidates for promotion into the Central Committee, which has about 200 full members, and the Politburo, a more powerful body with about two dozen members, the three sources said.

The Politburo Standing Committee, the core decision-making body, is chosen from the Politburo. The standing committee currently has nine members.

"Now they're going from province to province to examine officials and settle on possible candidates for the next leadership," said Chen, the researcher.

In China's top-down politics, final decisions rest with a handful of leaders, but the results of these assessments can sway deliberations, he said.

The informal polls would serve as a basis for discussions when the leaders head to summer villas in coastal Beidaihe in July or August, when the new succession lineup would be firmed up, said one of the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

(Editing by Brian Rhoads, Don Durfee and Mark Bendeich)

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You say princelings, I say elite corps of investment bankers

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-somalia-conflict-idUSBRE84O0M720120525

African Union troops say seize key Somali town
By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU | Fri May 25, 2012 8:54am EDT

(Reuters) - African Union troops on Friday seized a rebel stronghold near Mogadishu from al Qaeda-linked insurgents, a spokesman said, marking a big blow against the al Shabaab rebels who have used the town to stage sporadic attacks on the capital.

The capture of Afgoye by the AU force AMISOM and Somali government troops, who already control most of Mogadishu, also paves the way to securing a corridor to the capital that would allow easy access to humanitarian aid to residents.

"We are now fully controlling Afgoye town," Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, the AMISOM spokesman, told Reuters.

Al Shabaab confirmed the capture of the town by the AU forces on its website www.somalimemo.net, and said the Islamists withdrew as a tactic.

"Thousands of our enemies, AMISOM, with tanks, entered Afgoye town on Friday after three days of fighting," the website said. "They took the town without resistance. The mujahideen withdrew as part of our tactics."

Afgoye is a strategic junction town on the road leading from Mogadishu to the south of the Horn of Africa nation, about 30 km (20 miles) outside the capital.

The AU force began its advance on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of families to flee their makeshift homes in the Afgoye corridor, once a rural area northwest of Mogadishu but now home to hundreds of thousands of Somalis uprooted from their homes during years of chaotic fighting.

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday about 6,200 people had been displaced following the fighting in Afgoye.

The African Union has said securing the Afgoye corridor, believed to be an area with the largest concentration of internally displaced people in the world, would give some 400,000 people access to aid.

Al Shabab has waged a bloody five-year insurgency to remove Somalia's Western-backed government and impose its harsh interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, on a country that has had no central government for the past two decades.

The Islamist militants, who control swathes of Somalia, are also fighting against Somali government and Kenyan troops in the rebel-controlled southern and central parts of the country. Ethiopian forces have also crossed into Somalia.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Analysis & Opinion

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Osama bin Laden’s ideology thriving a year after his death

For links see article source....
Posted for fair use....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-china-sea-boundary-idUSBRE84O07520120525

Analysis: China's nine-dashed line in South China Sea
By David Lague

HONG KONG | Fri May 25, 2012 1:18am EDT

(Reuters) - Alongside an armada of paramilitary patrol vessels and fishing boats, China has fired off a barrage of historical records to reinforce its claim over a disputed shoal near the Philippines in the South China Sea.

While this propaganda broadside makes it clear Beijing will take a tough line with Manila as a standoff over Scarborough Shoal continues into a seventh week, the exact legal justification for China's claim and the full extent of the territory affected remain uncertain, according to experts in maritime law.

Like most of its claims to vast expanses of the resource-rich and strategically important South China Sea, Beijing prefers to remain ambiguous about the details, they say.

This allows the ruling Communist Party to demonstrate to an increasingly nationalistic domestic audience that it can defend China's right to control a swathe of ocean territory.

And, it avoids further inflaming tensions with neighbors who are already apprehensive about China's growing military power and territorial ambition.

"This ambiguity serves China's domestic purpose which is to safeguard the government's legitimacy and satisfy domestic public opinion," said Sun Yun, a Washington D.C.-based China foreign policy expert and a former analyst for the International Crisis Group in Beijing.

POTENTIAL FLASHPOINT

Rival claims to territory in the South China Sea are one of the biggest potential flashpoints in the Asia-Pacific region.

China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei all have territorial claims across a waterway that provides 10 per cent of the global fisheries catch and carries $5 trillion in ship-borne trade. Half the world's shipping tonnage traverses its sea lanes.

The United States, which claims national interests in the South China Sea, recently completed naval exercises with the Philippines near Scarborough Shoal. It is stepping up its military presence in the region as part of a strategic "pivot" towards Asia after more than a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The acrimonious confrontation over Scarborough Shoal, known as Huangyan Island in Chinese, began last month when Beijing ordered its civilian patrol vessels to stop the Philippines arresting Chinese fisherman working in the disputed area.

Beijing and Manila both claim sovereignty over the group of rocks, reefs and small islands about 220 km (132 miles) from the Philippines.

The Philippines says the shoal falls within its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ), giving it the right to exploit the natural resources in this area.

SONG DYNASTY RECORDS

In a concerted response from Beijing, official government spokesmen, senior diplomats and reports carried by influential state-controlled media outlets have drawn on the histories of earlier dynasties to rebut Manila's claim.

They say the records show China's sailors discovered Huangyan Island 2,000 years ago and cite extensive records of visits, mapping expeditions and habitation of the shoal from the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) right through to the modern period.

To back up these arguments, China has also deployed some of its most advanced paramilitary patrol vessels to the shoal in a calibrated show of strength, for now keeping its increasingly powerful navy at a distance.

A Philippines government spokesman said on Wednesday China had almost 100 Chinese vessels at the shoal, including four government patrol ships. Earlier, Manila demanded that all Chinese vessels leave the area.

China's Foreign Ministry responded on Wednesday that only 20 Chinese fishing boats were in the area, a normal number for this time of the year, and they were operating in accordance with Chinese law.

NINE-DASH LINE

Maritime lawyers note Beijing routinely outlines the scope of its claims with reference to the so-called nine-dashed line that takes in about 90 percent of the 3.5 million square kilometer South China Sea on Chinese maps.

This vague boundary was first officially published on a map by China's Nationalist government in 1947 and has been included in subsequent maps issued under Communist rule.

While Beijing has no difficulty in producing historical evidence to support its territorial links to many islands and reefs, less material is available to show how it arrived at the nine-dashed line.

In a September, 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported that a senior Chinese government maritime law expert, Yin Wenqiang, had "admitted" he was unaware of the historical basis for the nine dashes.

In a March, 2008 cable, the embassy reported that a senior Chinese diplomat, Zheng Zhenhua, had handed over a written statement when asked about the scope of this boundary.

"The dotted line of the South China Sea indicates the sovereignty of China over the islands in the South China Sea since ancient times and demonstrates the long-standing claims and jurisdiction practice over the waters of the South China Sea," the statement said, the embassy reported.

Scarborough Shoal falls within the nine-dashed line, as do the Paracel and Spratly Islands, the two most important disputed island groups in the South China Sea.

LAW OF THE SEA TREATY

China insists it has sovereignty over both these groups but it has yet to specify how much of the rest of the territory within the nine-dashed line it intends to claim.

One reason suggested for this lack of clarity is that China, like all of the other claimants except Taiwan, is a signatory to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

If Beijing defined its claim to conform with the provisions of this treaty, it would almost certainly reduce the scope of Chinese territory and expose the government to criticism from vocal nationalists.

Alternatively, if Beijing was to maximize the extent of its claim to include all or most of the territory within the nine-dashed line, it would be difficult to justify under international law and antagonize its neighbors.

"Neither choice leads to a promising prospect," said Sun. "Therefore sticking to the existing path is the most rational."

This means that China is likely to remain vague, experts say, particularly during the current period of heightened political sensitivity ahead of a leadership transition scheduled for later this year.

TRADITIONAL FISHING GROUNDS

However, this lack of clarity doesn't mean China's claims over South China Sea territory have less merit than other claimants, experts say.

In the case of Scarborough shoal, Beijing says the land is Chinese territory and the waters surrounding the shoal have been China's traditional fishing grounds for generations.

"This geographic proximity argument the Philippines is using is not necessarily good in international law," says Sam Bateman, a maritime security researcher at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

"If China can demonstrate sovereignty, its claim is as good as the Philippines'."

Under the provisions of UNCLOS, a nation with sovereignty over an island can claim a surrounding 12-nautical mile territorial sea.

UNCLOS defines an island as a natural land feature that remains above water at high tide. If the island is inhabitable, it is also entitled to an EEZ and possibly a continental shelf.

JOINT EXPLOITATION

However, Beijing has not claimed a territorial sea or an EEZ from any of the features of Scarborough Shoal.

Most maritime experts doubt China will agree to have any claims over the South China Sea heard by the United Nation's International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the body set up to rule on disputes.

Beijing's policy is to negotiate on the joint exploitation of natural resources in contested areas but rival claimants are reluctant to accept this formula because it could be seen as recognition of China's sovereignty.

Beijing is also increasingly wary about the Obama administration's military "pivot" to Asia designed to counter China's growing power," security experts say.

They suggest Vietnam and the Philippines have already shown greater willingness to challenge China since the U.S. signaled a renewed interest in the region.

"They think they have the U.S. on side," said Bateman.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

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Fri, May 11 2012
Philippines on alert over anti-China protest, Beijing frets
Thu, May 10 2012

Analysis & Opinion

China doesn’t need a policy U-turn
Asia’s bonds look shinier as Europe and China slump

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use......
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-s-expanding-core

Yuriko Koike

Yuriko Koike, Japan's former Minister of Defense and National Security Adviser, is a former chairwoman of Japan's Liberal Democrat Party, and currently an opposition leader in the Diet.
Full profile

May. 24, 2012 Email | Print

China’s Expanding Core

Comments

TOKYO – China is now engaged in bitter disputes with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, both located far beyond China’s 200-mile-wide territorial waters in the South China Sea. Indeed, so expansive are China’s claims nowadays that many Asians are wondering what will satisfy China’s desire to secure its “core interests.” Are there no limits, or does today’s China conceive of itself as a restored Middle Kingdom, to whom the entire world must kowtow?

So far, China has formally referred to Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang province as “core interests,” a phrase that connotes an assertion of national sovereignty and territorial integrity that will brook no compromise. Now China is attempting to apply the same term to the Senkaku Islands in its dispute with Japan, and is perilously close to making the same claim for the entire South China Sea; indeed, some Chinese military officers already have.

The Senkaku Islands, located to the west of Okinawa in the East China Sea and currently uninhabited, were incorporated into Japan by the Meiji government in 1895. At one time, there were regular residents working at a bonito-drying facility. In 1969, the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) completed a seabed survey of the East China Sea, and reported the possible presence of vast underground mineral resources, including abundant oil and natural gas reserves near the Senkakus. Two years passed before Taiwan and China claimed sovereignty over the islands, in 1971, but the Japanese government’s stance has always been that Japan’s sovereignty is not in question.

In April, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, a famous and articulate patriot, announced that the metropolitan government that he leads plans to acquire four of the Senkaku Islands, which are currently privately owned by Japanese citizens. Donations for the purchase from the people of Japan now exceed ¥700 million ($8.4 million).

China reacted to Ishihara’s proposal with its usual sensitivity: it refused to receive the scheduled visit of Ishihara’s son, who is Secretary-General of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the country’s main opposition party.

Moreover, at a meeting in Beijing earlier this month between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during a trilateral summit with South Korea, Wen mentioned the independence movement in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Senkaku Islands in the same breath. “It is important to respect China's core interests and issues of major concern,” he emphasized.

Until that moment, the Chinese government had never applied the term “core interest” to the Senkaku Islands. Following Wen’s statement, the trilateral summit deteriorated. While South Korean President Lee Myung-bak held bilateral talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao, talks between Noda and Hu, and a scheduled meeting between Keidanren Chairman Hiromasa Yonekura and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, were also canceled. The joint declaration issued at the summit was delayed a day, and omitted all references to North Korea – a prime concern of both Japan and South Korea.

China’s brusque treatment of Japan’s leaders probably was intended as a rebuke not only over the Senkaku Islands issue, but also for hosting the Fourth General Meeting of the World Uyghur Congress in Tokyo in May. Previously, such meetings had been held in Germany and the United States, and this one, which stressed the importance of protecting human rights and preserving the traditions, culture, and language of the Uyghur people, received no official sanction or endorsement from the Japanese government.

If gruff diplomacy was the only manifestation of China’s expansive territorial claims, Asian leaders could sleep more peacefully. But the fact is that China’s navy is becoming increasingly active in the South China Sea, at the Senkaku Islands and Scarborough Shoal in particular, but also around the Spratly Islands claimed by Vietnam. Given China’s mushrooming military budget and secretiveness, that assertiveness has set off alarm bells among the other countries bordering the South China Sea.

Moreover, China’s bullying of the Philippines included not only the dispatch of warships to Scarborough Shoals, but also the sudden imposition of import restrictions on Filipino produce. And China’s reactions toward Japan are far more paranoid since a non-LDP government took power.

The struggles for power within China’s ruling Communist Party over the purge of Bo Xilai, and the blind activist Chen Guangcheng’s escape from detention during economic talks with the US, have made Chinese leaders’ nationalist assertions even more strident than usual. No official wants to appear soft where China’s supposed “core interests” are concerned.

So far, China has not unleashed the sort of mass demonstrations against Japan and others that it has used in the past to convey its displeasure. But that probably reflects the jittery state of China’s leaders in the wake of the Bo purge: they cannot guarantee that an anti-Japan demonstration would not turn into an anti-government protest.

China’s real core interests are not in territorial expansion and hegemony over its neighbors, but in upholding the human rights and improving the welfare of its own citizens, which is the world’s core interest in China. But until China accepts that its territorial claims in the South China Sea must be discussed multilaterally, so that smaller countries like the Philippines and Vietnam do not feel threatened, China’s ever expanding “core interests” will be the root of instability in East Asia.

For links see article source......
Posted for fair use......
http://the-diplomat.com/2012/05/25/china’s-thuggish-para-police/


China’s Thuggish Para-Police
May 25, 2012
By Phelim Kine
Comments

The chengguan urban management officers are meant to enforce non-criminal administrative regulations. Numerous cases of beatings and illegal detention suggest it’s time to rein them in.

The arrival in the United States this past Saturday of the Chinese human rights defender Chen Guangcheng gives him at least temporary respite from the years of unlawful abuse he suffered at the hands of government officials and security forces. But his case is a reminder of the wider impunity enjoyed by thuggish elements of China’s security forces and their many anonymous victims.

Take the experience of “Wang Ren,” for example.

One October morning in 2010, four Beijing “Urban Management” officers, or chengguan (城管), stopped their car next to where Wang, a 32-year-old migrant from Henan Province, was selling grapes. Three officers climbed on her cart and without explanation began confiscating her stock. When Wang protested, they began kicking and cursing her. They then threw her from her cart into the road. Only then did the fourth chengguan officer, who had stood by silently during the attack, intervene. Wang lost her grapes and was left with deep bruises.

Welcome to street policing, chengguan-style.

Street vending in many Chinese cities has become a risky business due to the chengguan Urban Management Law Enforcement, (城管执法) a para-police organization to enforce non-criminal administrative regulations.

Human Right Watch interviewed victims and witnesses to attacks by the chengguan and found that in some circumstances, chengguan enforcement of those regulations, which range from traffic rules to environmental and city beautification ordinances, has made the agency a threat to, rather than a guarantor of, public safety. The absence of effective official supervision, training, and discipline has contributed to assaults on suspected administrative law violators leading to serious injury or death, illegal detention, and unlawful confiscation of property.

Our findings are consistent with widely held public sentiment in China about the chengguan. A Google search for Chinese-language references to chengguan produces literally millions of entries for “chengguan beat people” (城管打人). In October 2010, a video game in which a player taking the role of a street vendor had to defeat waves of attacks by chengguan became popular across China. Chinese state media reported 162 violent incidents involving chengguan from July 2010 to March 2012.

The chengguan have grown from humble roots to become a symbol of abuse of power and impunity. The agency began in 1997 as a neighborhood experiment in street level administrative enforcement with 100 chengguan personnel in Beijing’s Xuanwu district. That trial reflected government fears about the potential impact on social stability of the huge numbers of rural migrants entering China’s cities in search of work at a time when ailing state-owned firms were shedding large numbers of workers. By the end of 2005, 308 cities had formed chengguan units, and by July 2010, Beijing alone had 6,200 chengguan personnel.

That expansion reflects how the chengguan have benefitted from the wider explosive growth in China’s domestic security apparatus over the past decade. In 2012, the Chinese government allocated $111 billion for “social stability maintenance,” its Orwellian term for the domestic security apparatus, a 12 percent increase over 2011. The Chinese writer Yu Hua, in his 2011 book “China in Ten Words” describes how the August 2006 stabbing death of a Beijing chengguan prompted a spending spree by chengguan authorities rather than official investigation about the source of popular anger against the agency: “After the stabbing, protective equipment became more sophisticated. [Chengguan] were fitted out with smart phones, knife-proof vests, helmets, slash-resistant gloves, high intensity flashlights and so forth.”

But while the Chinese government’s largesse in expanding the size and strength of the chengguan is unquestionable, the legal basis is contested. There’s no overarching national regulatory framework of the permissible scope of chengguan duties, no uniform training requirements or code of conduct and no systematic monitoring and investigation of alleged chengguan abuses. The urgent need for such mechanisms was highlighted in April 2009 when a Beijing chengguan training manual circulated online included instructions that in the course of enforcement operations, chengguan should, “In dealing with the subject, take care to leave no blood on the face, no wounds on the body, and [ensure that] no people[are] in the vicinity.”

Such abuses have prompted calls by Chinese legal experts and scholars for reform, if not outright abolition, of the chengguan. Some municipalities have responded to public antipathy toward the chengguan by imposing limitations on their powers, including prohibitions on “excessive force.” But in the absence of central government intervention, chengguan excesses provoke violent responses from targeted vendors and other members of the public grown weary of their abuses.

Part of the legacy of President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who are quickly nearing the end of their decade in power, is a litany of security agency malfeasance ranging from enforced disappearances and abuses in detention to intimidation of lawyers. A meaningful government initiative in the last months of 2012 to rein in the chengguan, to prevent their abuses and punish the abusers would be a small but meaningful step toward the Chinese government actually honoring its 2004 constitutional amendment that says, “The state respects and preserves human rights.”

Phelim Kine is a senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of a new report, “Beat Him, Take Everything Away” released May 23 in Hong Kong.

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Will China Dragon Bite in 2012?
China: Get Ready for Turbulence

Comments 1

Richard
May 25, 2012 at 10:46 am

China Boss for Judiciary and Public Security,Zhou Yongkang (周永康) has supported Bo Xilai previously,he also married ex-Chairman Jiang Zemin’s niece(second marriage),Zhou is powerful as he has a budget bigger than the entire Ministry of Defence of China.
It is clear that both President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are unable to do anything about this situation.

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"Silence is not GOLDEN!"


Does Israel have the military might
to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

Benjamin Netanyahu could yet attack Iran,
but his threat of war may be a bluff

By David Blair
8:30PM BST 24 May 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ary-might-to-end-Irans-nuclear-ambitions.html​

Silence might be the only warning. If Israel were to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities from the air, its F-15 Eagles would not take off amid bellicose sabre-rattling; rather they would swoop on their targets as bolts from the blue.


A rule of thumb suggests that when Israeli leaders talk of war, they are unlikely to give the order. But the opposite also holds true – silence can be ominous – and it will remain true despite the negotiations between Iran and the world’s six leading powers that took place in Baghdad yesterday.


For Israel was the ghost at the feast during these talks. An exclusive club of countries deals with Iran on the nuclear issue. Together, the five permanent members of the Security Council – America, Britain, France, Russia and China – along with Germany are responsible for defusing the most incendiary of the world’s confrontations.


Israel must watch from the outside, only too aware that it has far more at stake than some members of the privileged circle. After all, if Iran were to build the ultimate weapon, it would enter a nuclear-tipped stand-off with Israel, not China.


Ignore the ravings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a lame duck president who will leave office next year and appears to have lost a brutal power struggle. Consider instead the words of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who said in February that Israel was a “cancerous tumour that should be cut and will be cut”.

Iran-watchers are inclined to dismiss outbursts of this kind as mere rhetorical flourishes. Inflammatory phrases provide no guide to the regime’s real intentions, they say. Judge the Ayatollah by his cautious actions and modest capabilities, not his speeches.

They could be right, but Israelis do not see it that way. When a national leader threatens them with annihilation, they are inclined to take him seriously – and given the history of the 20th century, who can blame them?

Outsiders find it hard to grasp how Iran’s nuclear ambitions stir something deep within the soul of Israel. This country’s founding purpose was to provide a haven for the Jewish people. When another state threatens Israelis with destruction, while pursuing a nuclear programme that might just provide the tools for the job, they are more fearful than citizens of placid lands can easily understand.

And that leads to the next instinctive reaction. Israelis believe they can trust no one – not even the United States – with their own security. In the end, they will insist on taking their own decisions on how to counter any threat. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, pointedly reminded President Barack Obama in the White House in March that Israel must remain the “master of its fate”.

But trusting others is exactly what Israel is now being called upon to do. If the talks with Iran succeed in resolving the nuclear question, Israel will have to decide whether it can live with a deal negotiated by the six favoured countries.

Perhaps unwisely, Mr Netanyahu has spelt out the terms of an agreement he would find acceptable: Iran must stop enriching uranium, surrender the entirety of its existing stockpile and dismantle the facility at Fordow where this process has been taking place in a bunker dug into a mountainside.

But he is setting himself up for a fall: any realistic settlement would almost certainly fall short of those demands. Privately, Western officials say that a viable deal would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium, albeit with the strictest safeguards. The goal is to “restore international confidence” in Iran’s nuclear programme, not raze this effort to the ground.

Quietly, the negotiations are moving towards a formula that would allow Tehran to enrich uranium, while giving the rest of the world enough assurance that this process would only be used to make fuel for nuclear power stations, not the fissile core of a weapon. Some retired officials, notably Peter Jenkins, Britain’s former ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, have said in public that “enrichment plus safeguards” is the only way out of the labyrinth.

But could Israel accept such an outcome? In the end, Mr Netanyahu may have little choice. Some good judges, including Michael Hayden, a former CIA director, believe that his threat of war is a bluff. Israel may lack the military ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Doing the job would require most – if not all – of the air force’s 125 F-15 and F-16 strike aircraft to attack a range of targets between 900 and 1,200 miles from their home base. Airborne refuelling would be the key requirement – yet, on paper, Israel has only seven tanker planes. Could they get the bombers and their fighter escorts all the way to Iran and back again?

Few countries can match Israel for military ingenuity; perhaps Mr Netanyahu has cards up his sleeve that no one knows of. But there is a real possibility that wrecking Iran’s nuclear plants is beyond his reach.

Even if the goal was achievable, he would still have to weigh the central objection to war: Iran could rebuild its key installations, meaning that any air strikes would delay but not derail its nuclear ambitions. The most that Israel could achieve would be to buy time – and perhaps not very much time at that. Mr Netanyahu might end up precipitating a global crisis for the sake of setting back Iran’s programme by only a handful of years.

As he wrestles with this dilemma, he remains a key actor in this drama. Whenever the six countries negotiate with Iran, an absent Israel has the power to upset every calculation.






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Israel Worried by US's Made-in-China Jet Parts

Senate report on fake parts in U.S. jets gives Israel
cause for concern regarding components in its own jets.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/156192​

Israel is concerned by a U.S. Senate report regarding fake parts used on USAF aircraft, and is checking whether some of the parts found their way to systems on IAF aircraft as well, writes IsraelDefense.

The Senate report, as cited by CNN, says a million counterfeit parts have been discovered in systems used on American jets and helicopters, i about 1,800 separate cases. The parts were counterfeited in China and then bought and installed by U.S. defense contractors.

The investigators focused on three types of parts: one that could compromise the SH-60B Navy helicopter's night-vision system; another that could affect systems on the C-130 and C-27 cargo planes that inform pilots of their performance; and a part on the P8-A, a Navy version of the Boeing 737 used for anti-submarine warfare, that should never have been on the airplane.

Israel is worried because IAF aircraft also contain electronic systems made by the same American manufacturers involved in the fake part debacle. Israeli experts told IsraelDefense that stopping the flood of fake Chinese parts will be hard. "They are experts at reverse technology and the copy almost everything," they said.






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Op-Ed:
Obama's Church to Divest from Israel

Published: Thursday, May 24, 2012 3:10 PM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11692​

The United Church is to boycott Israel and the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago is the congregation where Barack Obama has worshipped for two decades and he and his children were baptized.

In the Irish city of Limerick, in 1904, a powerful priest, John Creagh, promoted a boycott of the Jewish population.

“It is madness”, the Christian leader declared, “for a people to allow an evil to grow in their midst that will eventually cause them ruin”.

Economic sanctions were imposed; orders were given to the Jews’ customers and creditors not to buy their goods and to repay their loans.

The economic campaign was accompanied by violent demonstrations against the Jews. If they walked in the streets they were beaten, confronting crowds like “Death to the Jews!” and “We must hunt them out”.

More than a century later, another powerful Christian group is waging a war against the heirs of Limerick’s Jews: the State of Israel.

The United Church of Christ just called for a boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements, including eastern Jerusalem. In a new report released a few days ago in Canada, which will have severe consequences for the congregation in North America, the Church calls for an economic divestment against the Jewish State.

The “Report of the Working Group on Israel/Palestine Policy” will be considered by the Church’s General Council, which meets in August (another major Christian denomination, the Presbyterian Church, is considering approving a similar resolution at its General Assembly scheduled to take place in Pittsburgh in July).


Throughout the Middle East there are millions of Christians in grave danger from repressive regimes, but there are no calls for boycotts of those countries.
“Throughout the Middle East there are millions of Christians in grave danger from repressive regimes, but there are no calls for boycotts of those countries, this is idiocy”, said Shimon Fogel, head of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

In 2006, a regional element of the Church proposed cutting investments in Israeli companies, but it was never voted upon by the council. The boycott campaign is now finally entering into the final stage.

The boycott will have political consequences in the United States, since the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago is the congregation where Barack Obama has worshipped for two decades and he and his children were baptized.

According to Ed Klein, author of a new book titled “The Amateur”, “Jeremiah Wright was like a second father to Barack Obama and helped shape his political philosophy” (even “The Audacity of Hope” was derived from a sermon by Obama’s former pastor). Wright, who is a leader in the United Church, compared Israel to Nazi Germany and called the Jewish State a “deformed modern apartheid”.

The new United Church’s report also brands Christian Zionism as “a false doctrine” and depicts Zionism as a modern form of faithlessness and rejection of God.

In the report, Canada’s largest denomination says that “the deepest meaning of the Holocaust was the denial of human dignity to Jews”, which is one of the most horrible perversions of the Shoah.

Elsewhere, Geoffrey Black, President of the United Church, issued a statement endorsing the Palestinian U.N. bid for statehood.

Wright has endorsed the recent Islamist “March to Jerusalem” planned in Qatar.

The United Church also embraced the “Kairos Document”, the important Palestinian Christian document which rejects the Jewish State, says that its security policies are “a sin against God” and promotes the boycott.

The United Church is giving to Arab rejectionism a powerful theological patina and the boycott is placing these Christian bienpensants on the wrong side – that of Islamic terrorism.

The boycott automatically catapults the Church back to the dark time of Father Creagh, who said that “the Jews come to our land to fasten themselves like leeches and have proved themselves to be the enemies of every country in Europe, and every nation had to defend itself against them”.

The community of Limerick never recovered - and all its Jews fled. That is why the economic boycott is also known as “the pogrom”.

That is why the new Christians’ economic warfare is a return to the church of anti-Semitism.





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A lull in the drift toward war with Iran?

By Aaron David Miller, Special to CNN
May 25, 2012 -- Updated 0941 GMT (1741 HKT)
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/24/opinion/miller-iran-nukes/index.html​

Aaron Miller predicts no war with Iran in 2012

Miller says no firm deal will emerge; Iran wants to be nuclear power too much

Miller: The regime distrusts the U.S. and won't give up.

Israeli strike is still possible, he says.
Only big breakthrough will stop Iran's quest


(CNN) -- The Baghdad talks over Iran's nuclear program concluded inconclusively with a decision to continue negotiating in Moscow next month. How could they have ended otherwise? Too much suspicion, mistrust and too many complex issues to imagine an early breakthrough. At the same time, the uncertainties reflect something else too.

Let me make a prediction. There will be no war with Iran in 2012 and no comprehensive deal on the nuclear issue either. Sanctions have forced the Iranians to alter the pace of its nuclear program but not to abandon it.

Right now it's in everyone's interest to defuse tensions, and to paraphrase Winston Churchill, to jaw-jaw rather than wah-wah. Unless Iran is prepared to give up its quest for nukes (and it isn't), we've averted war but not eliminated the threat. Think 2013.

For the past six months, the relationship between Iran and the West has been defined by covert war and much talk of an overt one. For the next six, the trope will be "let's make a deal."

Sticking points for an Iranian nuke deal​

Israel to Iran: Time is running out The reasons aren't hard to divine. First, sanctions are taking their toll and are on the verge of getting tougher. In early July, the Europeans will impose additional oil sanctions. Second, the position of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been strengthened as a result of parliamentary elections and mullah maneuvering. If he were inclined to show flexibility, the decider-in-chief is in a better position to do it now. And third, let's face it, nobody -- not the Iranians, the Europeans, the Obama administration, not even the Israelis, particularly if they have to do it alone -- wants a war.

All of these factors have combined to create an opening for that almighty and much-revered diplomatic deus ex machina: the process. To be kind, that's just another word for describing how to manage a problem you can't resolve today. The desire to shift from talk of war to actual talk and negotiations is both logical and understandable. In fact, given the limited options right now, a process is much better than the alternative.

The hope is that negotiations can create an opening for a small deal on the nuclear issue in which Iran would agree to enrich uranium at much reduced levels, agree to inspections and perhaps even export its stockpile of weapons-grade material out of the country in return for an easing of some of the less onerous sanctions.

This incremental approach, tiny steps for tiny feet, would buy time and space to enhance confidence and create trust. It might even pave the way for broader discussions on other key issues that divide Iran and the West. Maybe even a grander bargain might follow.

The only problem with this approach is that its chances of success are dubious. In coming weeks and months, the negotiating process may well produce limited understandings. But it's hard to see how these will turn into a sustainable deal that can convince the West, let alone the Israelis, that Iran has given up its quest for nukes. Three major realities will make it all the harder:

Iran wants a nuclear capacity. Outside of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, four nations possess nukes: Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. All are fundamentally insecure and perceive nukes as a core advantage in their security and foreign policy theology.

Iran is insecure, but it believes it is profoundly entitled. This mix of vulnerability and grandiosity is a bad combination. The Iranian regime wants the bomb, not primarily to have the option of attacking Israel, a possible fringe benefit, but as a hedge against regime change and as a prestige weapon in its quest for regional power and influence. Had the Shah not been turned out by the 1979 revolution, Iran would already have nukes.

Iran fashions itself a great power, and great powers believe they need the ultimate weapon. Iran's nuclear program is too advanced, too entrenched, too redundant and too secretive to be stopped permanently, even by military attack. To do so, you'd need to change the regime.

The U.S.-Iranian Cold War.​

The nuclear issue needs to be seen in the context of the broader dysfunction in the relationship between Washington and Tehran.

Truth is, the regime is right. America wants an end to its repression and brutality, freedom for the Iranian people and Iran's regional ambitions curtailed.

There's almost no issue on which Washington and Tehran agree, from support for Hamas and Hezbollah, to backing the Assads, to Iranian terrorism, to support for Shia insurgents, to Iraq and to Israel and the Palestinians. Given the level of suspicion and mistrust, the odds of finding a sustainable modus vivendi soon, particularly against the backdrop of the regime change issue, are slim to none.

As long as the regime is convinced that America wants it replaced and Iran's regional ambitions muzzled, Iran will continue its quest for nukes. Indeed, the nuclear issue can't be separated from the issue of regime insecurity. It's emblematic of Iran's hopes and fears.

Israeli hopes and fears factor centrally into the equation too. We wouldn't have the tough sanctions we do if it weren't for President Obama's and the Europeans' fear of an Israeli strike. Paradoxically, Obama fears an Israeli strike more than the mullahs do. On one hand, you might argue that the Israeli threats have increased the chances of a diplomatic resolution. That would be true, but only if Iran actually feared an Israeli attack or if it weren't determined to continue its quest for nukes.

But the Iranian regime won't stop, and will inch closer to a breakout capacity to produce a weapon. And the Israelis will then have to decide whether to launch a military strike or bring enough pressure on the Obama administration to do so, even if it only means a setback of a year or two. Only one country can stop Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capacity -- that's Iran, should it judge the costs of acquisition too high.

Now process, diplomacy and negotiations are king. But without some fundamental breakthrough in the talks or some other unpredictable event that changes Iranian calculations, we'll be drifting again toward war and the prospective disasters and calamities it will bring.






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U.N. Finds Uranium in Iran Enriched to Higher Level

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: May 25, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/w...to-higher-level.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss​

[size='3"]United Nations nuclear inspectors in Iran have found trace amounts of uranium enriched beyond the highest previously reported levels, according to a diplomat in Vienna who said on Friday that the elevated reading would be addressed in a quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program.

The report, to be delivered to the board of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency later Friday, will include the figure of 27 percent enrichment, the diplomat said, a potentially alarming development since it moves the purity of Iran’s uranium enrichment closer toward bomb-grade material even as a group of six world powers are negotiating with Tehran to shift its nuclear program in the opposite direction.

Whether the 27 percent figure represents a trace amount or a substantial quantity appears for the moment to be unknown publicly.

The disclosure, first reported by The Associated Press, came less than a day after Iran and the group of six world powers ended a round of difficult negotiations held in Baghdad on Iran’s disputed nuclear program with no substantive progress, although both sides agreed to meet again in Moscow next month.

The diplomat in Vienna, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, cautioned that I.A.E.A. is investigating the reading and that the spike in purity could turn out to be accidental.

“There’s a decent chance that it’s an operator error,” the diplomat said.

Until now, the highest reported level of uranium enrichment for the Iranian program was 20 percent. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty makes no restrictions on how pure a nation can make its enriched uranium, only that it cannot mix the civilian work with military applications.

In Iran’s case, the I.A.E.A. and Western powers have amassed evidence suggesting that Iran has investigated the making of nuclear arms, even as Tehran insists that all its atomic efforts are peaceful.

Most uranium fuel for reactors is enriched to around 4 percent purity. Iran began more than two years ago producing fuel enriched to 20 percent, saying it was for a research reactor in Tehran.

Bomb-grade fuel requires purity of 90 percent, which, in terms of production efforts, is a comparatively short leap from 20 percent enrichment.
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Tehran to stand by Lebanon against
any Israeli attack: Iranian official

May 25, 2012 01:45 PM
By Mohammed Zaatari
The Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Po...li-attack-iranian-official.ashx#axzz1vtNlLvjF​

ADAISSEH, Lebanon: Iran’s military attaché said Friday that Tehran would stand in the face of any Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

“We stand in the face of any Zionist aggression on Lebanese territory. We will support the [Lebanese] Army, the people and the resistance,” Saeed Karimi told The Daily Star on the sidelines of a ceremony marking Resistance and Liberation Day at the southern border village of Adaisseh.

He was responding to a question on growing fears Israel might carry out an attack on south Lebanon.

“Not only that, but Iran will stand by all the defeated [people] in the world and shall waste no time in supporting them,” Karimi said.

The ceremony was attended by representatives of Lebanon’s three top leaders – President Michel Sleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati – as well as representatives of Hezbollah and Amal and a number of senior military officers and local deputies.

During the ceremony, participants unveiled a statue commemorating Lebanese soldiers who were killed in the village during cross-border clashes with Israeli troops in 2010.

The uprooting of a tree by the Israeli army sparked shooting that left two Lebanese soldiers dead. A reporter for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, Assaf Bou Rahhal, was also killed, and Al-Manar TV correspondent Ali Shuaib was wounded. One high-ranking Israeli officer was also killed in the exchange.

The statue - three hands holding an army helmet up high - was unveiled in the presence of Lebanese Army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Walid Salman, representing Lebanese Army head Gen. Jean Kahwagi.

As the ceremony proceeded, Israeli troops in armored vehicles patrolled the border.

Also Friday, work by Israel on a cement wall along a one-kilometer stretch of its border with Lebanon that commenced weeks ago neared completion. Israel claims it needs the wall to boost security in its border town of Metula.

In the southern coastal city of Tyre, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel held a meeting Friday with senior Lebanese security officials and local mayors.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn urged Lebanese to rally behind the Lebanese Army and support the resistance.

“On the 12th anniversary of the victory over the Israeli enemy which was forced out of our land, Lebanon is going through a delicate and sensitive period in its history – a period which requires all of us to ... rally behind the national army and support the resistance,” Ghosn said in statement.


Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Po...li-attack-iranian-official.ashx#ixzz1vtNqpJPF
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)




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Violence Erupts in Northern Lebanon As Feltman of State Department, Lieberman-Graham-McCain Amigos Clique Seek NATO Takeover of Tripoli-Kleyate Region to Advance Attack on Syria

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV
May 22, 2012
http://tarpley.net/2012/05/24/viole...tm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss​

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. Many people, including security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.

While the West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of the killings, Damascus blames ”outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.

Press TV has talked with author and historian Webster Griffin Tarpley to further discuss the issue.

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Tarpley, US Congressman Joseph Lieberman has visited the northern Lebanese region. He has met with al-Mustaqbal MPs and also Syrian refugees there. What basically are these visits about?

Tarpley: Well, Lieberman of course is a leading warmonger, he is one of the three amigos with John McCain and Lindsey Graham and this is the constant chorus for immediate war whatever the issue or whatever the part of the world may be.

Lieberman has said that the Obama regime is now inching closer to an attack on Syria; there are some indications, we have some changes in the National Security Council, some warmongers have moved up, some people who were not so sure have moved down and we have also got an article in the Washington Post a couple of days ago, trying to build the case that the Syrian alleged chemical weapons stocks of nerve gas and … have to be seized.

So, if Syria seems to be in danger of disintegrating, the US and NATO forces would rush in and seize areas perhaps as large as a province. But I think we should focus on this northern Lebanon story. I see here the hand of NATO not the Syrian government at all, this is NATO.

We have had Geoffrey Feltman, the US undersecretary or assistant secretary for the Middle East in negotiations with people in the Lebanese government. The United States would like to get a base in northern Lebanon, they liked to have Tripoli and they would like to have a military airfield.

There is an underused airport near Tripoli which would be perfect for this purpose; that would then allow them to pursue aggressive designs vis-à-vis Syria, it would also allow them to counteract the Russian naval base at [the Syrian port of] Tartus.

So it seems to me we have got a situation where because of the election in Syria with the 51 percent turnout, because of the fact that the opposition, the Syrian Free Army, is obviously terrorists, right? They are using terrorist tactics. Because of the Syrian Nation Council’s breaking up continued squabbling there, the rebellion that NATO would like to stoke inside Syria is going nowhere. So they try to expand it, they try to get Turkey to come in, it has not worked. Nobody else [is] coming in. So I think they would like to spread it to Lebanon and see if new options for destabilization open up that way.

Press TV: Dr. Tarpley, would you agree there that we should view the opposition – in our guest’s words there – and the Syrian government on equal terms when we say, well the opposition should be armed because the Syrian government is being supported, that that justifies giving arms to the opposition?

Tell us your view on that and also if you agree that the United States is actually not giving arms to al-Qaeda?

Tarpley: I would say first of all the principle that the Syrian ragtag, terrorist-ridden, divided opposition is somehow equal to the Syrian government, that is a principle that leads straight to anarchy and the collapse of civilization as we have known it.

There can be no such proposition in international law; that is I think absolutely antithetical to the interest of humanity.

Now, the US of course has been arming these rebels such as they are, from the very beginning. The US has been arming them from the very beginning and precisely to this area of Tripoli, right?

Baniays was mentioned, Homs, Hama. Why are those places rising in rebellion? Because that is where the ratline goes through for the NATO arms deliveries from Cyprus and other places and indeed MILAN missiles, very modern NATO, Metis missiles, have been delivered maybe not Kornet but similarly.

Now, let’s also look at the big picture. Last week at Saint Petersburg, [Russian] Prime Minister Medvedev made a remarkable statement saying that the Western desire to meddle in the affairs of sovereign states leads to regional wars and then he said quite possibly to nuclear war.

That is what we are looking at here. This is a very serious matter, it is not Libya; the great powers are immediately implicated in this.

We have just had an official of the Russian Foreign Ministry quoted in the Chinese news agency, stressing again that there are circles in the West who believe that this idea of intervening, invading countries, is a live option.

The NATO summit of course claims that they are not going to do it. Rasmussen and the US ambassador to NATO Daalder say, ‘No, who? Us? We are not going to invade anybody,’ but I think what the Russians are saying seems to reflect Russian intelligence that there is such a proposal or plan that is being readied.

Press TV: Dr. Tarpley, basically, let’s see, is Syria now in a situation that Assad should go? Is that the only solution?

Our guest there is saying that there is no democracy in Syria, but does that mean that countries like Qatar or Saudi Arabia which are also lacking of course in democratic norms should get involved in bringing democracy there?

Tarpley: Certainly there is more democracy in Syria now than there was before the recent election which now has a multiparty, the multiparty election which these oppositionists chose to boycott because they knew they would lose big.

We have the following situation, we have the new television channel, the Sky News, for Arabia and this is Rupert Murdoch who has been pronounced by the British parliament unworthy to hold a broadcasting license and we have got some Sheikh from Abu Dhabi in the Emirates who are of course all absolute monarchies, no democracy there, and they are putting out the line.

Rupert Murdoch and his friend in Dubai are pushing the line that Assad is worse than Hitler.

Well, as a historian, I will be pleased to debate anybody they put up that the NATO destabilization of Syria is practically identical to what Hitler did to Czechoslovakia.

So, I do not know about worse than Hitler but strikingly similar to Hitler, we can say, is NATO and not Assad.





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US prepares multi-front proxy war against Syria

By Chris Marsden
25 May 2012
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/syri-m25.shtml​

Since the Washington Post’s May 16 report on an influx of arms to Syrian opposition forces, the Obama administration’s plans for a proxy war against Syria have become clearer still.

The Post wrote of “significantly more and better weapons” reaching oppositionists, “paid for by Persian Gulf nations [Saudi Arabia and Qatar] and coordinated in part by the United States,” based upon a perspective that “an expanding military confrontation is inevitable.”

Saudi Arabia and Qatar were sending weapons with approval from Washington, which has “expanded contacts with opposition forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.”

An additional source of weaponry is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has “its own supply channel to the rebels, using resources from wealthy private individuals and money from Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said Mulham al-Drobi, a member of the Brotherhood’s executive committee.”

The Post concluded by noting, “The Pentagon has prepared options for Syria extending all the way to air assaults to destroy the nation’s air defenses.”

In the Daily Telegraph of May 22, Michael Weiss, Communications Director of the Henry Jackson Society, writes that “Rebel sources in Hatay told me last night that not only is Turkey supplying light arms to select battalion commanders, it is also training Syrians in Istanbul.”

He continues, “Men from the unit I was embedded with were vetted and called up by Turkish intelligence in the last few days and large consignments of AK-47s are being delivered by the Turkish military to the Syrian-Turkish border… Material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border.”

Weiss notes the response to the Washington Post’s article by White House spokesman Jay Carney, which hardly amounted to a denial. “We continue to provide non-lethal support to the opposition,” he said. “And while I can only speak for the United States, we know that others are pursuing different types of support, and I’d refer you to them to characterise the nature of their actions.”

Weiss concludes, “Turkey wouldn’t take such a course of action without express American consent or encouragement. Nor do I think that US Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has called for surgical airstrikes and the creation of buffer zones in Syria, would indicate that the administration was inching toward a military response to the humanitarian crisis that Kofi Annan’s farcical ‘cease-fire’ has done nothing to quell unless he was fairly sure it was indeed doing so.”

A May 22 DEBKAfile exclusive report states, “The Syrian rebels have received their first ‘third generation’ anti-tank weapons, 9K115-2 Metis-M and Kornet E. They are supplied by Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies following a secret message from President Barack Obama advising them to up the military stake in the effort to oust Assad.”

DEBKAfile, which is close to US neo-conservative sources, describes these shipments as “only one facet of the unfolding US plan for the Syrian crisis… Turkish intelligence has been given the green light to arm Syria rebels with IED roadside bombs tailored for the Syrian theater and intensively train the dissidents in their use at Turkish military facilities.” This is tantamount to Ankara’s first direct military intervention in Syria.

Turkey has for some time acted as an organising front for imperialist intervention into Syria, aimed at deposing the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad. It is host to the SNC and its military arm, the Free Syrian Army—which mounts its offensives by passing through Turkey’s 910 kilometre border with Syria.

Lebanon and Jordan are also serving as bases to organise the insurgency. There have also been more recent contacts with Kurdish groups that have been reluctant to join forces with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni sectarian elements, seen as beholden to their long-time enemy, Turkey.

As with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, Lebanon’s involvement as a proxy force is based on whipping up sectarian hostilities against Shia Iran and Assad’s Alawite-based regime—extending the domestic conflict with the Shia-based Hezbollah, which is funded by Tehran and Damascus.

Recent weeks have seen escalating sectarian clashes in Lebanon that have claimed several lives. Fighting reached into the capital, Beirut, following the killing arrest of an anti-Syrian cleric and his bodyguard at a checkpoint in the north of the country and the arrest of Sunni leader Shadi al-Mawlawi, who is now on bail, accused of membership in a terrorist group.

Tensions were heightened further by the kidnapping of 13 Lebanese Shia pilgrims by 40 Free Syrian Army (FSA) gunmen. This caused angry protests in Beirut that were only calmed by the intervention of Hezbollah head, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

In a move again aimed at isolating Iran and Syria and defeating a Shia insurgency in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia is working for the creation of a Gulf union of the six members of the present Gulf Cooperation Council—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.

Plans for an initial preparatory union of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain provoked thousands of Bahrain’s majority Shia population to protest in a demonstration that stretched for three miles. Iran called the proposal “the American plan to annex Bahrain to Saudi Arabia”.

Bahrain relies totally on Saudi forces, which entered the state in March last year to crush domestic protests.

Prospects for a broader union were shelved after initial discussions in Riyadh this week chaired by King Abdullah. Prince Saud al-Faisal said a delay was needed in order to “bring all the members and not only two.”

The Arab League has thrown its weight behind the plan, warning Iran to halt its media campaign “and provocative statements from Iranian officials” against political and military union of the Gulf States.

“Any union steps between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are a sovereign issue of the two states and other Gulf countries and no other country has the right to interfere in it,” said Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby.

Syria is also being hit hard by international sanctions, which have cost its oil sector $4 billion, according to oil minister Sufian Allaw, and led to steep price rises and shortages for its citizens. Syria’s gas production covers only half of the country’s needs, and prices for a tank of cooking gas have more than quadrupled.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday again warned of an all-out civil war in Syria, should the present supposed peace plan fail.

That same day, Saudi King Abdullah wrote of his being “deeply concerned” about the sectarian violence in Lebanon. In a letter to President Michel Sulaiman, he warned, “Due to the gravity of the crisis and the possibility of it causing sectarian strife in Lebanon and putting it back in the shadow of the civil war, we are looking at your ... attempts to interfere to end the crisis... and keeping Lebanon away from foreign struggles especially with the Syrian crisis nearby.”

All such statements are a cynical pose. The UN is well aware that Washington is pursuing a deliberate policy of destabilisation in Syria in order to justify a war for regime change waged by its allies—above all in Riyadh, Ankara and Doha—with Washington’s military support. With the broader efforts now being made to forge a Sunni-based alliance of anti-Iranian states, this could yet ignite a full-scale regional war with devastating consequences.






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