WAR 04-16-2016-to-04-22-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

[Housecarl]

(211) 03-26-2016-to-04-01-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...01-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(212) 04-02-2016-to-04-08-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...08-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****

(213) 04-09-2016-to-04-15-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...15-2016_____****THE****WINDS****of****WAR****
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For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/15/polit...l-forces-europe-russian-submarines/index.html

Top Navy official: Russian sub activity expands to Cold War level

By Jim Sciutto, Chief National Security Correspondent
Updated 5:35 PM ET, Fri April 15, 2016

Washington (CNN) — Russia is deploying its ballistic missiles and attack submarines in numbers, range and aggression not seen in two decades, according to a top U.S. Navy official.

In an exclusive interview, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe told CNN that the buildup reflects an alarming strategic world view.

"NATO is viewed as an existential threat to Russia, and in the post-Cold War period, the expansion of NATO eastward closer to Russia and our military capability they view as a very visceral threat to Russia," Adm. Mark Ferguson said.

Ferguson spoke from his base in Naples, Italy, home to U.S. Naval forces in Europe and the Navy's 6th Fleet.

Adding to U.S. apprehension, Russia is deploying new submarines that are harder for U.S. naval forces to track and detect following years and billions of dollars in investment.

They are quieter, better armed and have a greater range of operation.

RELATED: U.S. issues formal protest to Russia over Baltic Sea incident

"The submarines that we're seeing are much more stealthy," Ferguson said. "We're seeing (the Russians) have more advanced weapons systems, missile systems that can attack land at long ranges, and we also see their operating proficiency is getting better as they range farther from home waters."

The U.S. currently has 53 submarines in its inventory, but because of decommissioning and budget decisions, Ferguson said that figure will drop to 41 by the late 2020s.

"We cannot maintain 100% awareness of Russian sub activity today," retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, told CNN. "Our attack subs are better, but not by much. Russian subs pose an existential threat to U.S. carrier groups."

The increased Russian sub activity is backed by a much broader military expansion.

Russia is adding or upgrading some 12 naval bases across the Arctic Circle -- expanding its capability to send subs in numbers through the crucial Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap into the Atlantic -- and closer to U.S. and NATO territorial waters.

They country also stationed six submarines in the Black Sea recently, giving them greater reach in the Mediterranean.

More worrying to the U.S., Moscow is also adding entirely new categories of submarines with greater capabilities to its arsenal.

"They have increased the readiness levels of the force," Ferguson said. "They are operating it with more ... out-of-area deployments, and what we are seeing is an improvement in the readiness of that force as well."

RELATED: U.S. sensors detect Russian submarines near underwater cables

The U.S. believes the new activity is designed to achieve multiple objectives, including denying NATO and the U.S. the ability to operate within Russia's so-called "near abroad."

Ferguson said that one important goal for Russia "is to build their own naval capability in the undersea domain to begin to deny NATO and the United States the ability to maneuver on the maritime flanks of NATO."

Increasingly alarmed by Russia's new sub developments, the U.S. and its NATO allies are launching new training exercises in anti-submarine warfare and deploying new systems, including the P8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft.

Russia's growing military activity extends above the surface as well.

A Russian fighter jet's fly-by of the USS Donald Cook this week -- coming within 30 feet laterally and 100 feet vertically -- is behavior U.S. naval commanders have not witnessed since the Cold War.

"We had radio calls in both English and Russian and the aircraft didn't respond and proceeded on a course directly at the ship," Ferguson said. "While we had seen these interactions before, this one was different because of the proximity to the ship, and the altitude and the flight path that it took."

CNN's Jamie Crawford and Jennifer Rizzo contributed to this report

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/europe-islam-and-radical-secularism/

Europe, Islam and Radical Secularism

April 14, 2016 Post-Enlightenment Europe has replaced its Christian values with secular ones.

By George Friedman

In traveling to Europe this week, I am going to a place that is experiencing both an influx of Muslim refugees at the same time that it is experiencing terrorist acts by Muslims. In one sense, this is a very old story. Muslims invaded Europe in the 8th century, seizing Spain and penetrating France. Muslims also invaded Europe from the southeast, penetrating as far as Vienna in the 17th century. Europe invaded Muslim lands during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Europeans again mounted major penetrations in the 19th and 20th centuries. These were accompanied by lesser attacks as well as population movements.

So in this sense, this conflict has been waged for well over a thousand years, with endless friction and occasional major movements. This has been a conflict between two religions, which both see their foundations in the book of the Jews, the Old Testament, but expanded on that with new and in some ways contradictory revelations. Both have many followers, and fairly defined, vast territories. In the struggle between Christians and Muslims, both have lost at some times and won at others, but neither has been able to decisively defeat the other.

This seems to be a rather minor phase of conflict in an ongoing war. But this chapter is different in a fundamental way. All prior conflicts have been between Christians and Muslims. This one is not. Since World War II, Europe has redefined itself. It was once Christian. It is now officially secular, and this is therefore a conflict between Muslim religiosity and European secularism. And that makes the dynamics of the conflict different.

Europe has embraced the principles of the French Enlightenment, which holds that religion is an entirely private matter that ought not become part of public life and that cannot be blamed for what others do in public life. The critique of the idea that Islam, migrants and terrorism are the same thing is rooted in a complex understanding of public and private, and collective and individual responsibility based on the complexities of the European enlightenment.

Europe has become profoundly secular, more so than the United States. That should not surprise anyone since Europe was the center of the Enlightenment. Europe therefore was once a Christian continent, until Christianity became a private matter, seen as one system of belief among many, with the public sphere neutral on all such matters.

Of course, such neutrality is impossible. Public life is impossible without some shared moral principles. European public life is filled with such principles, usually derived from the themes of the French Revolution, such as liberty, equality and fraternity – the right of citizens to live as they chose, to be treated equally under the law and with brotherhood, in which no one is excluded. These are of course complex values and more interesting in the things they exclude than what they include. They exclude any mention of God in general and Christ in particular. In other words, in neutralizing the public sphere, all religions have been rendered equal and made to respect the values of the public sphere.

Religions are also political movements, because in reshaping private things like conscience and obligation, they must reshape how the religious behave in public life. Christian private beliefs – or those of any other religion – ultimately demand public action and empower the leadership of the faith to make political demands. Therefore, today the demand to halt abortion derives from a private Christian belief that cannot be contained simply as a private value. Believing in that requires political action.

That action encounters not merely the moral imperative of public neutrality, but the entire structure of values derived from the Enlightenment. In a sense, Enlightenment values are more extreme than religious ones. They not only object to the religious political agenda, but demand that the religious not express their political will. So on the one hand, all religions are equal, but all must be apolitical, including Christianity, which used to be integral to Europe’s public life.

The complexity of Europe’s stance toward religion is part of the complexity of its most recent encounter with the massive Muslim migration. The Muslim world flirted with secularism during the 20th century, but in the end, the region has remained religious, and has intensified its Islamic stance. Islam, like traditional Christianity, is a political movement for which the Enlightenment’s distinction between public and private life is alien and the distinction between the individual and the community of believers is complex. The level of violence and the military dimension is nothing like what it was in the past. But this encounter between what I would call radical secularism and Islam is in many ways more complex.

From the standpoint of secularism, there is nothing incompatible between Europe and Muslims so long as they accept the distinction between public and private life, and between their private beliefs and participation in the community. For Muslims, those distinctions are alien and untenable. For secularists, the private realm is not only the realm of religion, but the realm of pleasure. There is a hedonism that is part of secularism. For Muslims, private life is the realm of a personal discipline away from hedonism, and that discipline must be found in public life as well.

There was a symmetry between Christianity and Islam. Both saw public and private lives as different aspects of the same existence. Each saw hedonism as the problem to be solved and not an option to be appropriated. And both were evangelical. Of course modern secularism is evangelical as well, in the belief that secular notions of human rights ought to be respected throughout the world. And that is the place where Christianity, Islam and secularism merge. Each is in a struggle for the others’ souls.

The concept of equality – between believers and non-believers, between men and women, between homosexuals and heterosexuals, and so on – is at the heart of political secularism. Secularism bans or seeks to ban public speech that rejects these principles, on the basis of hurtful speech unprotected by the First Amendment. Most important, secularists see the use of force as potentially acceptable to end injustice, which is defined as violations of liberty and equality. It is in this sense that secularism is evangelical. But there is also a deep difference. Traditional Christianity and Islam are unconflicted in their evangelical creed. Secularism cannot be straightforward, as it is continually trying to balance the rights of people to be divergent, against their need to marginalize those who disapprove of that divergence.

Secularism is a young religion in a way, and has not yet learned to carry political power gracefully. This places it on the intellectual defensive against Islam in a way that Christianity wasn’t. Christianity understood Islam in a way that secularism can’t. Christians and Muslims were enemies over the centuries. Secularism is both respectful of Islam and outraged at its values. In fighting a complex enemy, it is best to have elegantly consistent beliefs.

When I go to Europe, I speak for the most part to secularists, many of whom despise the increasing anti-secular sensibility of the European right, its xenophobia and its repressiveness. Having done that, the secularists must find a way to come to grips with Islam, which shares these traits unapologetically with the right. Yet, they do not wish to be seen as xenophobic and repressive. There is no simple solution for the political problem at the core of Europe. Europe is secular. Secularism has many virtues. Being effective in defining an enemy is not one of them. Secularism has not yet mastered its contradictions. Nor, I expect, will I be able to persuade secularists of these contradictions.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-usa-idUSKCN0XD0E3

World | Sat Apr 16, 2016 7:44am EDT
Related: World

Iran pushes U.S. for more access to global financial system

DUBAI | By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

Iran's main goal in its nuclear talks with world powers was to secure access to the global financial system, and the United States must now do more to remove obstacles to the banking sector, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday.

In January, world powers led by the United States and the European Union lifted most sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear program.

But some U.S. sanctions remain, and U.S. banks remain prohibited from doing business with Iran directly or indirectly because Washington still accuses Tehran of "supporting terrorism".

That has deterred European institutions, which fear they could face U.S. legal problems if they re-establish banking links.

Related Coverage
› EU, Iran pledge deeper ties after high-level EU visit to Tehran

Zarif used the visit of EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, the first by a high-level EU delegation since the deal came into force in January, to make his point.

"Iran and the EU will put pressure on the United States to facilitate the cooperation of non-American banks with Iran," Zarif said at a news conference in Tehran with Mogherini who said in a tweet that she was leading a team of seven EU commissioners.

"It's essential that the other side, especially the United States, fulfil its commitments not on paper but in practice and removes the obstacles especially in banking sector," he said.

Zarif and Mogherini said in a joint statement after the news conference that the EU and Iran were agreed on the expansion of economic relations, and "encouraging banking cooperation."

The White House said on Friday that an agreement with Iran does not include giving it access to the global financial system.

Iranian central bank Governor Valiollah Seif met U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday in Washington and said they discussed Iran's expectations under the nuclear deal.

Lew told Seif that the United States would keep meeting "its sanctions-related commitments in good faith" as long as Iran continues to uphold its end of the bargain.


(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-taliban-kunduz-idUSKCN0XD0FY

World | Sat Apr 16, 2016 6:42am EDT
Related: World, Afghanistan

Afghan officials say Taliban driven back in Kunduz fighting

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan | By Feroz Sultani

Afghan security forces drove back Taliban insurgents attacking areas around the northern city of Kunduz, officials said on Saturday, after heavy fighting overnight in which dozens were killed and wounded.

Kunduz, Afghanistan's fifth-biggest city, fell briefly to the Taliban last year and the militant Islamist movement has stepped up the pressure since announcing the start of its annual spring offensive this week.

Defense Ministry spokesman General Dawlat Waziri said 40 Taliban fighters had been killed and around 50 wounded after being beaten back by government forces. There were no details about any possible casualties among Afghan security forces.

U.S. surveillance aircraft were supporting Afghan security forces but there were no air strikes or other involvement by coalition forces in the fighting, a spokesman for the NATO-led Resolute Support mission said.

Mindful of the panic that prompted thousands to flee last year, Provincial Governor Asadullah Omarkhel walked around the center of Kunduz city on Saturday, speaking to residents to reassure them that there was no risk of a repeat of the rapid collapse of the city's defenses last year.

The renewed fighting in Kunduz and continuing combat in other regions, including the southern province of Helmand, point to another dangerous year for Afghan security forces, which lost some 5,500 troops killed last year after NATO ended its main combat mission in 2014.

It will also add to fears of another year of instability in Afghanistan driving an exodus that saw more than 200,000 Afghans reach Europe last year, the biggest single group after Syrians fleeing civil war.

The Kunduz provincial government said fighting was concentrated in Khanabad and Chardara districts and the villages of Charkh Ab and Talawka, and that 28 Taliban fighters had been killed and 38 wounded.

It said in a statement from its media office that Afghan and foreign forces had taken part in the operation but gave no detail beyond saying that weapons and ammunition had been captured from the insurgents.

Saad Mukhtar, head of the public health department in Kunduz, said six dead and 87 wounded, including children, had been taken to hospitals in Kunduz so far.

The city's medical facilities face a major challenge to cope with large numbers of wounded, with the large Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz still closed six months after it was destroyed in a U.S. air strike.


(Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Paul Tait)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-idUSKCN0XC1G1

World | Sat Apr 16, 2016 7:31am EDT
Related: World, Brazil

Raucous Rousseff impeachment process begins in Brazil

BRASILIA | By Maria Carolina Marcello and Silvio Cascione

Pro-impeachment lawmakers chanted "Dilma Out" in the lower house of Brazil's Congress on Friday, as it opened a raucous three-day debate on whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff on charges of breaking budget laws.

Pro-government demonstrators took to the streets in several states amid fears of violence as the debate began. Major trade unions and landless peasant movements planned bigger, nationwide protests on Sunday, when the debate is set to culminate with a vote that Rousseff is widely expected to lose.

The government lost a last-ditch appeal on Thursday before the Supreme Court to halt the impeachment process, which could bring further instability or even chaos to Latin America's largest economy after 13 years of rule by the leftist Workers' Party.

Rousseff is accused of manipulating budget accounts in 2014 to secure her re-election.

She has strongly rejected the accusation and planned to appeal to Brazilians in a televised speech on Friday night. But the increasingly isolated leader canceled the broadcast after an opposition party sought a court injunction to block it, arguing that she was unfairly using resources of the Brazilian state to defend herself.

Rousseff is fighting to survive a political storm fueled by Brazil's worst recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s and a spiraling corruption scandal that has reached her inner circle.

In a further blow for the president, Minister for Cities Gilberto Kassab resigned his post late on Friday, according to two sources familiar with matter. His Brazil Social Democratic Party (PSD) split from the government on Wednesday and said it would vote for Rousseff's impeachment.

Police stepped up security in the Brazilian capital where a half-mile-long (1 km) metal fence has been erected on the grass esplanade opposite Congress to avoid clashes between rival demonstrators expected to turn out by the tens of thousands over the weekend.

In Rio de Janeiro, police said they plan to form a cordon on the Copacabana beachfront avenue to separate the pro-impeachment crowd from Rousseff supporters.

Related Coverage
› Rousseff scraps impeachment broadcast after criticism

"I am very worried that there will be violence, depending on the result of the vote and the number of people who gather in Brasilia," said Congressman Rogerio Rosso, who chaired the lower house committee that backed Rousseff's impeachment.

The country's top network TV Globo plans to broadcast Sunday's critical roll-call vote from beginning to end, starting at 2 p.m. (1700 GMT), which analysts said will add pressure on lawmakers to vote for impeachment.

Polls show that roughly two-thirds of Brazilians support impeachment.

"VIOLENT ACT"

As opposition congressmen called for Rousseff's ouster, Attorney General José Eduardo Cardozo addressed Congress in her defense, calling the impeachment process a "violent act with no parallel against democracy."

"History will never forgive those who broke with democracy," Cardozo said, as ruling lawmakers shouted: "There won't be a coup."

While the budget violations alleged against Rousseff are serious, she has not been directly implicated in the kickback scandal engulfing state-run oil company Petrobras, though her opponents say that bribe money was used to fund her election campaigns.

The move to impeach her, after months of political deadlock, is widely seen as a vote of no-confidence in a leader blamed for turning once-booming Brazil into the worst performer among the world's major economies.

Related Coverage
› Fact box: Brazil's presidential impeachment process
› Brazil builder made undeclared donations to Rousseff campaign: paper

Support for unseating Rousseff has gained momentum in recent weeks, with the defection of parties from her ruling coalition.

Nineteen of the 25 parties with seats in the lower house now back impeachment, the Brasilia-based consultancy Arko Advice said on Friday. They will deliver at least 350 votes and maybe 370, exceeding the two-thirds majority in the 513-seat house needed to send impeachment to the Senate, it said.

Former Justice Minister Miguel Reale Jr., a leading supporter of impeachment, opened Friday's debate by saying the process to oust Rousseff reflected the will of the people. "She was extremely irresponsible and knocked out the country," he said.

If her impeachment is approved by the lower house, the Senate must then vote on whether to go ahead with putting Rousseff on trial for disobeying budget laws.

If the Senate approved a trial, in a vote that would likely take place on May 11, Rousseff would automatically be suspended and replaced by Vice President Michel Temer.

Temer, who would serve out Rousseff's term until 2018 if she is ousted by the Senate, has little popular support. He would face a daunting task restoring confidence in a country where dozens of political leaders, including his close associates, are under investigation for corruption.

Temer is considering the chairman of Goldman Sachs in Brazil, Paulo Leme, and the founder of asset manager Maua Capital, Luiz Fernando Figueiredo, as candidates to join his economic team should he take over the presidency in coming weeks, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.


(Writing by Daniel Flynn and Anthony Boadle; Editing by W Simon and Tom Brown)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-benghazi-idUSKCN0XD0IX

World | Sat Apr 16, 2016 8:07am EDT
Related: World, Libya

At least 15 security personnel killed in attacks in Benghazi: medic

At least 15 members of the security forces were killed and 40 wounded in two days of clashes in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, a hospital source said on Saturday, as they try to consolidate gains made in February against Islamist militants.

On Friday, two Islamic State suicide bombers staged attacks near a cement factory in the west of the city where fighters are holding out, though only one of the bombs caused casualties, army spokesman Milad al-Zawie said.

Libya has been in crisis since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with violence escalating in 2014.

Islamic State posted a message on social media saying dozens of soldiers had been killed by the bombers, but Zawie said just six soldiers were killed and 25 were wounded on Friday.

A Reuters reporter saw the bodies of at least five militants, including two suicide bombers, killed in the clashes.

Eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar launched his Operation Dignity campaign against Islamist militants and other opponents in Benghazi in May 2014 and that fighting has caused major damage to the city.

Nevertheless, the military has been unable to achieve its stated aim of securing control of Benghazi.

Haftar is allied to a government that moved to eastern Libya after a rival administration was installed by its armed supporters in Tripoli in 2014.

A U.N.-backed unity government arrived in the Libyan capital late last month where it is trying to establish itself. The West hopes it can end Libya's security crisis and political turmoil and unite some of its armed factions to take on Islamic State.


(Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Louise Ireland)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-eu-idUSKCN0XD0I7

Business | Sat Apr 16, 2016 7:44am EDT
Related: World, Aerospace & Defense

EU, Iran pledge deeper ties after high-level EU visit to Tehran

BRUSSELS | By Julia Fioretti

The European Union said on Saturday it would support Iran's bid to join the World Trade Organization but it urged Tehran to refrain from further ballistic missile tests after the highest-level talks with Iran in more than a decade.

Seeking to capitalize on last year's nuclear deal, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini led a team of seven European commissioners on a one-day trip to Tehran where they agreed to cooperate on everything from banking to energy to transport issues.

"It is in the European interest and in the Iranian interest to make sure that banks engage and feel confident to come to Iran and facilitate and support this new economic engagement," Mogherini said at a news conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran.

With a view to opening a full EU diplomatic mission in Iran an EU liaison team will be sent to Tehran, Mogherini and Zarif said in a joint statement.

"Today is a new beginning in Iran and EU relations. We hope this cooperation between the Iranian nation and European Union brings about shared interests and global development," Zarif was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.

He also urged the United States to remove obstacles to Iran gaining access to the global financial system, saying this was the main goal of its nuclear talks with world powers.

The EU executive's visit comes on the heels of trips to Tehran by European governments seeking to revive ties with Iran after the July 2015 nuclear deal.

The EU and Iran will exchange business missions in the second half of this year and Brussels will assist Iran in becoming a member of the WTO, the statement said.

On the issue of human rights, which also figured in discussions, Mogherini said the EU would continue to be firm on its principles while maintaining dialogue with Iran.

The EU is troubled by the more than 1,000 executions in Iran last year, its ballistic missiles and its funding of blacklisted militant groups.

Mogherini repeated that she did not see Iran's recent ballistic missile tests as a breach of the nuclear accord between Iran and world powers, though she added it was a "worrying step".

"This doesn't mean that we are not concerned," Mogherini said. "On the contrary, we see this as a worrying step ... and we are encouraging (Iran) to abstain from further steps."

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards' support for President Bashar al-Assad puts Tehran directly at odds with the West in Syria.

Mogherini said the nuclear deal was important for improving the security landscape in the Middle East and the two sides had agreed to work together to foster dialogue in the region.

"Any step that could pass different messages in the region, that could escalate tensions is not welcome from our side," she said.


(Additional reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in Dubai; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...think-brazil-is-in-the-middle-of-a-soft-coup/

Monkey Cage

Here’s why some people think Brazil is in the middle of a ‘soft coup’

By Héctor Perla Jr. April 16 at 9:00 AM

Brazil’s elected government is in the news, but is it in the middle of a coup? Unlike Latin American coups in the 20th century, Brazil’s current turmoil involves no armies and no bloodshed — but Brazil could see a regime change, a “soft coup.”

I’ve been studying Latin American politics for the past 20 years, and documenting the right-wing strategy of manipulating public opinion to discredit socialist governments. What’s happening in Brazil has happened elsewhere.

A brief summary of the political crisis in Brazil

In Brazil, South America’s continent-sized, resource-rich giant, the Workers Party (PT) won the presidency in 2003 and has remained in power for the past 13 years. Led by Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, a charismatic leader Newsweek once called “the most popular politician on earth,” the PT built its broad appeal on economic policies that generated growth with low inflation, and created social programs for income redistribution in one of the most unequal countries in the world.

In 2011, Dilma Rousseff replaced her mentor and became the country’s first female president. Rousseff never enjoyed the same popularity as Lula, who was implicated in 2016 in a corruption case and money-laundering case involving the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Prosecutors have never accused Rousseff of being involved in the corruption, but the speaker of Brazil’s lower house has pushed forward impeachment charges against her for alleged misuse of money from public banks to cover gaps in the government budget. On April 11, a committee in Brazil’s lower house voted to recommend impeachment.

The full lower house is expected to vote on the impeachment on April 17. If a two-thirds majority votes for impeachment, the process would then be forwarded to the Brazilian Senate.

[Police detained Brazil’s ex-president. Here’s what you need to know.]

Both Lula and Rousseff have accused Brazil’s right-wing parties of conspiring to bring down the PT presidency, calling it a coup attempt. In an April 12 interview, Rousseff accused Vice President Michel Temer of conspiring openly “to destabilize a legitimately elected president.” In early April, thousands of Rousseff supporters protested in Brazil’s cities, chanting “There’s not going to be a coup.”

But there is a deeper story than just corruption, or simple opportunism by Rousseff’s political adversaries. Recent events in Latin America suggest that what’s happening in Brazil is part of a broad right-wing campaign to tarnish the PT and bring down Rousseff, as well as Lula.

Using a range of tactics, right-wing parties seek to tarnish left-wing politicians in power through institutional, as well as non-electoral and undemocratic means.

We’ve seen a similar right-wing backlash against socialist regimes play out successfully in Paraguay and Honduras. Right-wing parties have attempted to undermine left-wing regimes in Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Venezuela. Those on the left being targeted by the Latin American right see this strategy as the equivalent of a 21st century coup.

Corrupt investigations of corruption?

In the Brazilian case, the calls for impeachment are based on flimsy, indirect charges and double standards. To date, there is no evidence linking Rousseff to the corruption scandal. Meanwhile, the Brazilian speaker of the House, Eduardo Cunha, who is leading the impeachment charge, was named in the Panama Papers as taking bribes from a multinational corporation involved in the Petrobras corruption case. Likewise, many of the other right-wing politicians leading and supporting the impeachment efforts are in fact facing corruption charges themselves.

[Here’s the issue behind the Panama Papers: Why international rules aren’t stopping offshore tax evasion]

If the impeachment succeeds, Michel Temer would be the first president of Brazil representing his party (the PMDB) in over 25 years. But Temer himself may soon face impeachment charges for corruption.

While the right’s targeting of Rousseff could be unethical, it is legal and is being carried out through formal institutional channels. But impeachment proceedings are only one element of the right’s backlash against socialist governments in Latin America.

Looking closely at the tactics against left-leaning governments

The most powerful – and illegal – attacks against the left in Latin America involve surveillance, online hacking and cyberattacks, including smear campaigns via social media and news outlets. Teams of high-tech political operatives conduct illegal spying, including installing spyware in opposition offices, and stealing campaign strategies and opponents’ donor databases. These teams hack into and deface campaign websites and slander opponents. According to one analysis, using fake social media accounts to manipulate public opinion was a key part of attempts to discredit socialist candidates in Nicaragua, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and other countries.

As discussed here in the Monkey Cage, a judge ordered Brazil’s wiretapping of phone calls between Rousseff and Lula — so there is an appearance of a legal justification. In a highly unusual move, the judge who ordered the wiretaps immediately released the transcripts of conversations between the two to the public. Instantaneously, right-wing news outlets and social media began manipulating their conversations to give the appearance of wrongdoing and inflaming public sentiment against the Rousseff government.

[How the release of wiretapped conversations in Brazil threatens its democracy]

While all of this might sound like a conspiracy theory, a recent Bloomberg story, “How to Hack an Election,” uncovered the depth and pervasiveness of this right-wing strategy.

International hacker Andres Sepulveda now faces prison time for his role in an international right-wing movement interfering in various Latin American elections. Through his revelations, we can appreciate the institutional, psychological, news and social media tactics the right has developed to challenge 21st century socialism in Latin America. While Sepulveda was not hired to work in Brazil, the smear campaign against Rousseff takes a page directly out of his playbook.

For now, the PT is fighting back. As a well-organized national political party in Brazil, the PT is not likely to fold even if Rousseff’s impeachment moves forward. But what happens in the coming weeks in Brazil has longer-term implications for elected socialist governments throughout Latin America.

Héctor Perla, Jr. is an assistant professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His book “Sandinista Nicaragua’s Resistance to U.S. Coercion” will be published by Cambridge University Press in June.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.rferl.org/content/iranian-turkish-presidents-meet/27678930.html

Saturday, April 16, 2016
Iran

Iranian, Turkish Presidents Discuss Syria, Bilateral Trade

April 16, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rohani held an official meeting in Ankara on April 16 with the Syrian conflict and bilateral trade high on the agenda.

Turkey and Iran are on different sides of Syria's war: Shi'ite majority Iran backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while mainly Sunni Turkey has been one of his fiercest critics.

Erdogan said that despite their differences on regional issues, Turkey and Iran agreed on the need to end the bloodshed in the region.

The two neighbors are looking to boost bilateral trade and improve banking relations following the lifting of most international sanctions against Iran in January.

In a joint press conference, Erdogan said he hoped bilateral trade would reach $30 billion annually. It currently stands at just $10 billion after years of sanctions.

Rohani said "the situation is ripe for cooperation between Turkey and Iran in the post-sanctions era."

"The most important part is closer ties between banks," Rohani said, adding: "Turkish banks can now establish branches in Iran to help facilitate economic relations between the two countries."

Iran has called on the United States and the European Union to help it access the global financial system, including assets that Tehran says were supposed to be unfrozen following a landmark nuclear deal.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP

 

[Housecarl]

I wonder how this is going to square with the Russians....Never mind what kind of deal to divide up the Middle East the two made.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160416/1038132612/iran-turkey-energy-cooperation.html

Iran Ready to Pump All the Oil and Gas That Turkey Needs

© REUTERS/ Yasin Bulbul/Presidential Palace

Middle East
18:53 16.04.2016(updated 19:15 16.04.2016)

Hassan Rouhani stated that with the anti-Iran sanctions lifted, the country is ready to develop energy cooperation with Turkey, as well as with other partners.


ANKARA (Sputnik) — Iran is ready to ensure Turkey's energy security and satisfy its demand for oil and gas, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday.

"In the energy sphere, we agreed with the Turkish side on Iran possibly becoming a guarantor of Turkey's energy security and fully satisfy its demand for gas and oil, we can successfully cooperate on this… The [anti-Iran] sanctions have been lifted, and we are ready to develop cooperation between the two countries in different areas under new conditions," Rouhani said during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The two leaders met in the Turkish capital Ankara earlier to discuss regional issues and 13th Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit held in Istanbul earlier in the week.

Iran and Turkey should simplify regulations for businesses and develop cooperation in the banking industry and stock exchanges, as well as the tourist and transport industries, Rouhani added.

Iran began stepping up international trade and investment cooperation after reaching a historic deal on its nuclear program to ensure its peaceful nature in exchange for the suspension of international anti-Iran sanctions, in particular on its oil, in July 2015.

In mid-January, the sanctions were removed after the International Atomic Energy Agency verified Tehran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement.

Related:
Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey to Discuss Teaming Up to Take on Terrorism
Unexpected Twist: This is Why Turkey Wants to Be Friends With Iran
Iran's Rouhani, Turkey's Erdogan to Meet in Spring
Turkey, Iran Should Agree on Gas Discount in Upcoming Months

 

[Housecarl]

Migrants in Finland pose with preteen girlfriends on social media
Started by geoffsý, Yesterday 09:33 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...pose-with-preteen-girlfriends-on-social-media

British soldiers training Saudi forces in cruise missile attacks
Started by Possible Impactý, Yesterday 04:44 PM
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Turkey Says "Massive Escalation" In Syria Imminent *update #280, Saudis launch strikes
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...nent-*update-280-Saudis-launch-strikes/page44

Preparing for ‘Migrant Onslaught,’ Switzerland Ready to Post Tanks at Border with Italy
Started by China Connectioný, 04-15-2016 05:18 AM
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Saudi Arabia Threatens U.S. It Will Liquidate Treasury $ If Congress Passes Sep 11 bill
Started by Possible Impactý, Yesterday 06:00 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...idate-Treasury-If-Congress-Passes-Sep-11-bill

Doha Is Done: Saudi Prince Drops Bomb - "No Deal Without Iran...We Are Selling At Every Op
Started by twobarkingdogsý, Yesterday 04:39 AM

---

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...emen-its-iraq-and-isis-all-over-a6986086.html

Thanks to UK and US intervention, al-Qaeda now has a mini-state in Yemen. It's Iraq and Isis all over again

As has happened repeatedly since 9/11, the US and countries like Britain fail to combat terrorism because they give priority to retaining their alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies

Patrick Cockburn | @indyworld | Friday 15 April 2016 | 54 comments

They have done it again. The US, Britain and regional allies led by Saudi Arabia have come together to intervene in another country with calamitous results. Instead of achieving their aims, they have produced chaos, ruining the lives of millions of people and creating ideal conditions for salafi-jihadi movements like al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

The latest self-inflicted failure in the “war on terror” is in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Sunni states intervened on one side in a civil war in March 2015. Their aim was to defeat the Houthis - labelled somewhat inaccurately as Shia and pro-Iranian - who had seized most of the country in alliance with the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who retained the loyalty of much of the Yemeni army. Yemeni politics is exceptionally complicated and often violent, but violence has traditionally been followed by compromise between warring parties.

The Saudi intervention, supported in practice by the US and Britain, has made a bad situation far worse. A year-long campaign of air strikes was supposed to re-impose the rule of former president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose dysfunctional and unelected government had fled to Saudi Arabia. Relentless bombing had some success and the forces fighting in President Hadi’s name advanced north, but were unable to retake the capital Sanaa. Over the last week there has been a shaky truce.

The real winners in this war are al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which has taken advantage of the collapse of central government to create its own mini-state. This now stretches for 340 miles – longer than the distance from London to Edinburgh – along the south coast of Yemen. AQAP, which the CIA once described as the most dangerous protagonist of “global jihad” in the world, today has an organised administration with its own tax revenues.

Unnoticed by the outside world, AQAP has been swiftly expanding its own statelet in Yemen in 2015/16, just as Isis did in western Iraq and eastern in Syria in 2013/14. Early last year, President Obama contemptuously described Isis as being like a junior basketball team that would never play in the big leagues. Likewise in Yemen, the American and British governments misjudged the degree to which AQAP would benefit from Operation Decisive Storm, the ill-chosen Saudi name for its military intervention that has proved predictably indecisive.

The Saudi intervention turned a crisis into a catastrophe. Some 6,427 people are known to have been killed in the fighting, but these are only the figures for casualties known to the health authorities. Since the UN says that 14.1 million Yemenis, 54 per cent of the population, have no access to health care, this is likely to be an underestimate. Even before the war, Yemen was the poorest Arab nation and its people are now starving or malnourished. OXFAM estimates that 82 per cent of Yemen’s 21 million population are in need of humanitarian assistance.

The disaster is not only humanitarian, but political, and does not only affect Yemen. As in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan, foreign intervention energises and internationalises local difference as factions become the proxies of outside powers.

Yemen has always had Shia and Sunni, but it is only recently that sectarian hatred has begun to get anywhere near the level of Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia portrays the Houthis as pawns of Iran, though there is little evidence for this, so Yemen is drawn into the regional confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A point seldom given sufficient weight is that AQAP is expanding so fast, not because of its own strength, but because its opponents are so weak. The Saudi and Gulf financed media often refer to pro-President Hadi forces as taking territory, but in reality the government-in-exile remains in Saudi Arabia. It recaptured the port city of Aden last summer, but its few officials who are there dare not leave their heavily-defended compound except by helicopter. Even where Saudi-backed fighters advance, they leave anarchy behind them, conditions in which the arrival of disciplined AQAP forces may be welcomed by local people.

I have been struck, ever since the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003, by the extent to which their whole strategy depends on wishful thinking about the strength and popularity of their local ally who usually, on the contrary, is feared and hated. I seldom spoke to Afghans who truly supported the Taliban, but I was always impressed by the number who detested the Afghan government. Yet when one UN official stated publicly that the foreign powers fighting the Taliban, supposedly in support of the government, had “no local partner”, he was promptly fired.

There was the same lethal pretence by Western powers in Libya and Syria that the rebels they backed represented the mass of the population and were capable of taking over from existing regimes. In reality, the weakening or destruction of central government created a power vacuum promptly filled by extreme jihadi groups.

The dire consequences of the Saudi intervention and the rise of AQAP has been largely ignored by Western governments and media. Contrary to their grim-faced declarations about combating terrorism, the US and UK have opened the door to an al-Qaeda mini-state.

This will have an impact far beyond the Middle East because what makes the atrocities orchestrated by Isis in Paris and Brussels so difficult to stop is that they are organised and funded by a real administrative apparatus controlling its own territory. If one terrorist cell, local leader or bomb expert is eliminated, they can be replaced.

As has happened repeatedly since 9/11, the US and countries like Britain fail to combat terrorism because they give priority to retaining their alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, even when their policies – as in Yemen – wreck a whole country and enable al Qaeda and Isis to use the chaos to establish safe havens.

Patrick Cockburn’s 'Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East' (OR Books) is published this month

 

[Housecarl]

Saw the BBC World News story earlier this morning.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36035095?SThisFB

Syria war: The Afghans sent by Iran to fight for Assad

By Fariba Sahraei
BBC Persian
15 April 2016
From the section Middle East

Video

As the five-year conflict in Syria grinds on, BBC Persian has found evidence that Iran is sending thousands of Afghan men to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

The men, who are mainly ethnic Hazaras, are recruited from impoverished and vulnerable migrant communities in Iran, and sent to join a multi-national Shia Muslim militia - in effect a "Foreign Legion" - that Iran has mobilised to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Many have since fled the battlefield and joined the refugee trail to Europe.

In a small town in Germany, we meet "Amir", an Afghan man in his early twenties.

He was born to refugee parents in Isfahan, Iran, and is now himself an asylum seeker in Europe.

Like most of the almost three million Afghans in Iran, he lived as a second-class citizen.

Without legal residency or identity documents, he found it hard to get an education or a job. Fear of arrest and deportation was a daily reality.

It was difficult to move around freely, get a driving license or even buy a Sim card for his mobile phone.

But one day, Amir received an offer that changed everything.

"Some Afghans, who were close to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, approached me and my mates at the mosque," he said.

"They suggested we go to Syria to help defend the Shia holy shrines from Daesh," he added, using an acronym for the previous name of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

"They said we'd get passports and have an easy life afterwards. We'd be like Iranian citizens and could buy cars, houses..."

Bullet holes

Amir was drafted into the Fatemioun Brigade, an all-Afghan unit commanded by Revolutionary Guards officers.

The training, he says, was very short - a fortnight of tactical movement and basic weapons handling - and conducted in strict secrecy.

"The night we entered the base at Qarchak, near Varamin in Tehran province, all our mobile phones were confiscated - and after two weeks' basic training, we were driven to the airport in buses with blacked-out windows," he said.

Despite having no ,passports the Afghan recruits were flown directly to Syria on specially chartered jets.

"Everything was taken care of by the Revolutionary Guards," he said. "When we arrived, we saw the bullet holes and shell damage. It was a war zone. What I did and saw there affects me still. I can't sleep - I get angry for no reason."

Prof Scott Lucas of Birmingham University in the UK has been closely following Iranian involvement in Syria.

He says the first Afghan militias began to arrive in 2012.

"The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps decided that the Syrian military could not succeed on their own," he told the BBC. "The frontlines were too depleted and men were trying to avoid conscription."

The Iranians decided to set up a 50,000-strong National Defence Force to fight alongside the Syrian army.

With a shortage of willing fighters inside Syria, they began looking elsewhere - signing up Iranian Afghans, Lebanese, Iraqi and Pakistani Shia recruits.

'Blown to pieces'

As we travelled across Europe, we met many Afghan ex-fighters like Amir, and all told similar stories.

In the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, a clearly traumatised teenage veteran describes how Afghan Fatemioun fighters were used as first-wave shock troops and were effectively disposable.

"Sometimes we had no supplies, no water, no bread - hungry and thirsty in the middle of the desert," he told us.

"We were light infantry and we'd have to walk 20-30km (12.5-19 miles) to face the enemy and then fight them.

"We would take ground at great cost and then have to hand it over to the Syrian soldiers. But they would usually lose it back to Daesh after a day or two.

"One night we were surrounded in an orchard. They fired an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] towards us and I saw my mate blown to pieces, right in front of my eyes. After that, I hated war and started to fear war.

"For nights afterwards, I would picture my friend in my head and would think: 'My God, what happened to him!' I was really scared."

'Forced to fight'

At the port of Mytilene we found another group of young Afghan men. They all said they were ex-Fatemioun fighters.

One, who showed us his dog tags and de-mobilisation paperwork, explained how he had been effectively coerced into fighting in Syria.

"They took us to war by force," he says. "I wasn't happy with that but they said that because I was an Afghan who'd been arrested without identity papers, they'd either deport me to Afghanistan or send me to prison. I ended up being held in Asgar Abad detention camp before joining up."

He says he spent 12 months in Syria, as a tank driver and later a sniper, deployed across the country from Damascus to Palmyra. But when he finally got back to Iran, the Revolutionary Guards broke their promises.

"They gave me this small green identity document. It was just this 30-day temporary residency. I couldn't get a driving license with it - I couldn't even buy myself a Sim card!

"I complained and they said: 'You have to go back to do another tour of duty' - but I didn't want to. I ran away and here I am."

'Volunteers'

There are no official figures for how many Afghans Iran has sent to Syria - or how many have been killed there.

Human Rights Watch recently estimated as many as 10,000 Afghans may have been recruited by the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran's foreign ministry has denied any Afghans are being sent in an official capacity. The official narrative from Tehran is that they are all volunteers, off to defend holy sites of their own volition.

But every week in Iran there are more military-style funerals for fallen Fatemioun fighters.

And with a major government spring offensive around Aleppo in the offing, it seems Iran's Foreign Legion will be fighting - and dying - for President Assad for some time to come.

You can watch Fighting for Assad: Iran's Foreign Legion at the following times:

BBC News Channel (all times BST):

Friday 15 April 20:30

Saturday 16 April 00:30

BBC World (all times GMT):

Friday 15 April 14:30

Saturday 16 April 00:30

Sunday 17 April 05:30; 12:30; 18:30

Monday 18 April 08:00

 

[Housecarl]

Interesting that this is in the Boston Globe.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...e-dangerous/T4POP5pZtQBI2dXziK5JtM/story.html

The Obama Doctrine has made the world more dangerous

By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist
April 17, 2016
Comments 92

Five years ago, President Obama hailed the military campaign in Libya that toppled Moammar Khadafy as one of the foreign policy triumphs of his presidency. Today he calls Libya his worst mistake. But though he may have changed his grade from an A to an F, his commitment to “leading from behind” — a euphemism for American passivity and abdication — hasn’t budged.

On the day Khadafy was killed, in October 2011, Obama took a victory lap. “Our brave pilots have flown in Libya’s skies, our sailors have provided support off Libya’s shores, and our leadership at NATO has helped guide our coalition,” he declared. “Without putting a single US service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives.”

He was wrong. Libya soon imploded into chaos and violence. It became a terrorist badlands, where more than 10,000 people have been murdered — including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues, killed by Islamists in Benghazi just 11 months after Obama’s “mission accomplished” moment in the Rose Garden.

The president acknowledges now that his policy in Libya ended in disaster. In a Fox News interview last week, he confessed his negligence in “failing to plan for the day after” the dictator was overthrown.

In other interviews, Obama has pinned the blame for the Libya debacle less on his own lack of preparation for a post-Khadafy transition than on Europe’s failure to stay engaged. “When I go back, and I ask myself what went wrong, there’s room for criticism,” he recently told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, “because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.” But when the United States heads for the exits, its allies are apt to follow suit. And Obama, who had agreed only reluctantly to intervene in Libya in the first place, had no interest in sticking around.

It didn’t take long for Libya to drop off the White House radar screen. “The inattention was not just neglect. It was policy,” concluded The New York Times in a lengthy review of the Libyan fiasco earlier this year. The administration imposed “fierce limits” on any US role in Libya’s metamorphosis — conditions so strict that America in effect washed its hands of responsibility for the country’s fate. Not surprisingly, that fate has been ghastly.

It may seem astonishing that Obama, who so harshly condemned his predecessor’s blunders in Iraq, would wind up repeating the gravest of those blunders in Libya — namely, not being ready for the instability and insurgency that would follow Western intervention. As military historian Max Boot remarks, by 2011 “it was not exactly a secret that bad things happen if the United States and its allies overthrow a strongman without having a plan for what comes next.”

But Obama is better at deploring other people’s foreign policy messes than at learning from them. The lesson he takes away from the Iraq war was that the United States has no business intervening militarily in the Middle East — and that the greater the intervention, the greater the resulting fiasco. The facts haven’t borne out that conclusion. But Obama won’t be budged.

When George W. Bush announced in January 2007 that he intended to “surge” additional troops to Iraq and implement a new counterinsurgency strategy, then-Senator Obama was scornful: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” In the event, of course, Bush’s surge proved a remarkable success. By the time Obama took office, Al Qaeda in Iraq was crippled, attacks were down 90 percent, and Iraq was being governed by democratically elected politicians. The new commander in chief was happy to take political credit for victory in Iraq, which Vice President Biden trumpeted early on as “one of the great achievements” of the Obama administration.

But none of that led Obama to question the wisdom of pulling all US forces out of Iraq, or to heed warnings that the swift disappearance of tens of thousands of American peacekeepers would leave a catastrophic vacuum that the region’s deadliest forces would rush to exploit. Obama’s determined disengagement wrecked what had so painstakingly been won in Iraq. Without America’s restraining presence, Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government grew ruthlessly authoritarian, Iran’s influence intensified, and ISIS began its horrific reign of terror.

More “leading from behind” followed in Syria. Obama issued tough threats of chemical weapons “red lines” and demanded Bashar al-Assad resign, but the bristling words were never backed up with deeds. As America’s credibility diminished, predictable consequences ensued: soaring death tolls, vast refugee floods, and the emboldening of antidemocratic regimes from Moscow to Beijing.

Yet even now, Obama cannot see that a doctrine premised on avoiding American involvement in the world’s conflicts is bound to fail. A policy built around US disengagement only intensifies global disorder. The president concedes that he should have had a better “day-after” plan in Libya — but still maintains that the calamity his approach caused shows he was right all along.

In Goldberg’s words, “Libya proved to [Obama] that the Middle East was best avoided.” It reinforced his subsequent decision to do nothing about Syria. He has no regrets about abandoning his red line — he says now that he is “very proud” he decided not to stop Assad’s horror show. To this day, Obama has not altered the mindset he started with: that American power cannot fix what ails the planet’s bad neighborhoods, and will likely make them worse.

But Obama’s foreign policy stewardship teaches a very different lesson. Since 2009, America’s credibility has been badly eroded and the world has become far more dangerous and unstable. The price of American retreat has been terrible, made all the worse by a president too rigid to change his mind.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...00-missile-defence-system-at-army-day-parade/

Iran unveils S-300 missile defence system at Army Day parade

By Telegraph Reporters
17 April 2016 • 11:33am

Iran used its annual Army Day parade on Sunday to showcase parts of a long-awaited air defence system ordered from Russia, a move likely to irk critics of the arms deal.

The S-300 system has been on order since 2007 but Russia postponed the sale three years later after the UN Security Council passed a resolution relating to Iran's nuclear programme.

A deal between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear activities which lifted sanctions in January removed the barriers to delivery but the fully operational system is still awaited.

According to pictures published by the semi-official ISNA news agency, S-300 missile tubes and the radar equipment were shown during the military parade held in southern Tehran.

Iran insists the system is necessary to defend itself from threats of attack, including possible bombing of its nuclear facilities, and the S-300 would allow early detection of approaching aircraft.

Israel and the United States have hit out at the sale, which is seen as a means for Russia to maintain influence in the Middle East.

Iran and Russia are also in talks on a sale of the Sukhoi SU-30 fighter, another proposal criticised by the US. Iran's current air force fleet dates from the pre-revolutionary era of the Shah.

Speaking at Sunday's parade, President Hassan Rouhani insisted Iran's plans to upgrade its military capabilities were defensive in nature, referring to the worst conflicts in the Middle East.

"Our military, political and economic power is not directed against neighbouring countries and the countries of the Islamic world.

"When Baghdad was threatened by terrorists, the Islamic Republic of Iran responded to the call of the people, the army and the Iraqi government to defend Baghdad and the holy places," he said, referring to the surge of the jihadist Islamic State group in June 2014.

The same action was taken in Syria, where Iran has supported President Bashar al-Assad's regime with military and financial aid, he added.

The upgrading of Iran's military following the nuclear deal has also alarmed Saudi Arabia, Tehran's regional rival.

Riyadh routinely accuses Iran of interfering in Arab countries.

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in January after a row broke out over the execution of Shiite cleric and activist Nimr al-Nimr by the Sunni kingdom.

Angry Iranian mobs stormed and set fire to Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran and its mission in Mashhad, Iran's second city.

The attacks were immediately condemned by Mr Rouhani and, a few weeks later, by the Islamic republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...or-protests-during-rousseff-impeachment-vote/

Brazil prepares for protests during Rousseff impeachment vote

By Donna Bowater, Brasilia
17 April 2016 • 2:11pm

Brazil was braced for nationwide protests today as the country’s lawmakers vote on the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff.

Crowds of government supporters marched on congress in Brasília last nightSAT while thousands of union members and activists were expected to arrive in the capital on buses from around Brazil.

Pro and anti-impeachment protesters will be divided on the esplanade in front of the national congress by a fence with a heavy police presence.

Meanwhile, mass demonstrations both against and in favour of impeachment were expected in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, and Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, to coincide with the roll call vote, which will begin at 2pm local time.

The ballot of 513 members will take place after a record-breaking 43-hour session in congress in which almost 400 spoke during a marathon discussion.

Tensions are likely to run high as members begin casting their vote to end or prolong the mandate of the widely unpopular Leftist Ms Rousseff.

Both the president and her team, and her estranged vice-president Michel Temer have spent the weekend personally bargaining for votes for and against. For the petition to remove Ms Rousseff to progress to the senate, 342 congress members must vote in favour.

“It’s like a football game when the two sides are so bad, the final result will come down to who made the fewest mistakes,” said Gabriel Petrus, political analyst with Barral M Jorge consultancy firm in Brasília.

Today’sSUN vote marks D-day in a process that began in December when speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, accepted a petition to impeach the president.

The coalition government became increasingly fractured under the pressure of an unprecedented anti-corruption probe, which arrested dozens of politicians, bankers and executives.

Yet Ms Rousseff is actually accused of manipulating government finances to conceal the state of the economy.

Around 60 per cent of the population support Ms Rousseff’s removal, while her approval ratings dwindle at around 10 per cent.

“It’s pretty hard to explain to normal people the grounds on which they’re trying to impeach her,” said Mathieu Turgeon, a political scientist at the University of Brasília whose work is supported by the British Council’s Newton Fund.

“Instead, what I think it happening is they’re just attaching corruption to her government and that’s what driving part of public opinion, making people so angry.”

 

[Housecarl]

So how big of a bang are they going to make this time and will it be "enough" to make everyone pay attention. For that matter are they going to release video of the preparations including showing the purported "device"?....


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2016/04/485_202728.html

Posted : 2016-04-17 13:02
Updated : 2016-04-17 13:02

S. Korea say movements at N. Korea's nuke site indicate imminent detonation

South Korea has recently detected a sharp increase in vehicle and human activities at North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site and concluded the country is likely to carry out an additional nuclear test before early May, officials said Sunday.

"Compared to last month, the frequency of vehicle, workforce and equipment movements increased two- to threefold recently" at the nuclear test site in the country's northeast, multiple government sources said.

"Related officials concluded that it is a convincing sign that North Korea is preparing for its fifth nuclear test, and they are keeping close tabs on the situation," the sources said.

They said vehicles were seen moving in and out of the site's North Portal tunnel, and they may be carrying nuclear technicians.

One of the sources indicated that since the start of April, there has been a growing increase in the movements of cars and humans, adding that, "If they are signs of nuclear test preparations, it seems (the preparations) are in the final stages."

Concerns have been growing in recent weeks that Pyongyang could undertake additional military provocations like a nuclear detonation test as the country will hold its first congress of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea in more than 30 years in early May.

In a series of recent warlike rhetoric, North Korea has also claimed to have secured key intercontinental ballistic missile technologies like the re-entry and engine technologies and threatened to conduct a "nuclear warhead detonation" test.

South Korea's officials are now closely monitoring the nuclear site to detect if North Korea is preparing to test a miniaturized nuclear warhead as the country has claimed.

"If North Korea goes ahead with a fifth nuclear test, it may announce (after the test) a success in testing a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could be loaded onto an ICBM," another source said.

In a related development, the U.S.-based website 38 North said last week that recent satellite imagery strongly indicates that North Korea has already begun or is set to start reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at its Yongbyon reactor site to harvest plutonium for nuclear weapons.

The reactor has provided Pyongyang with weapons-grade plutonium that the regime used in its first three nuclear tests: in 2006, 2009 and 2013. The North conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6, claiming it successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb.

South Korea has been certain that North Korea is technically ready to conduct a nuclear test at any time and the test would take place as soon as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un makes a decision.

South Korea predicts the test will likely come before the party congress.

The military provocation may further escalate tension on the Korean Peninsula following the North's fourth nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year. (Yonhap)

 

[vestige]

From 13:

The Obama Doctrine has made the world more dangerous

^^^^ understatement of the year^^^^

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.thehindu.com/news/nation...rcraft-carrier-cooperation/article8483827.ece

WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI, April 17, 2016
Updated: April 17, 2016 03:36 IST

India, U.S. to conclude pact on aircraft carrier cooperation

IEA will formalise exact technology that U.S. will share’

India and the U.S. may not have signed the Logistics Support Agreement as planned during Defence Secretary Ashton Carter’s visit early this week but both sides are close to finalising an Information Exchange Agreement (IEA) on aircraft carrier technologies, as well as cooperation on air wing operations for carrier Vikrant under construction at Kochi.

The IEA will formalise the exact technology that the U.S. will share and at what classification level, design side, operations among other things, a senior U.S. Admiral said. Both sides had already signed the Terms of Reference on June 17, 2015 during the first meeting of the India-U.S. Joint Working Group (JWG) on carrier technology cooperation.

“We provided them a draft when I visited them in February and it is going through the necessary channels of the Indian government to make sure you are ok with it. We are very close,” said Rear Admiral Tom Moore in an exclusive interview to The Hindu, in the US capital late last month. He is the U.S. Navy’s Program Executive Officer for Aircraft Carriers, and the Co-chair of the JWG. From the Indian side it is chaired by Vice Admiral G.S. Pubby, Controller for Warship Production and Acquisition.

“It is a necessary document to take the next step. We have made a lot of progress over the last year,” he noted.

EMALS technology

Once the IEA is in place a case will be put under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme of the U.S. government under which the Electro Magnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) technology will be sold to India, if the Navy decides to buy it. The IEA found mention in the joint statement issued after talks between Mr. Carter and his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar.

India and the U.S. agreed to cooperate on aircraft carrier technologies as part of six “path-finder” projects under the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative during President Barack Obama’s visit to India in January last year.

Consequently the JWG was set up to explore possibility of installing the Electro Magnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) under development by General Atomics on India’s second Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC-II) which is currently on the drawing board.

On the future roadmap of the JWG, Rear Adm Moore said that the US is currently engaged in a formal process of reviews required as per their law covering high technology sales to other countries and stated, “We are in the stage of looking into that and expect to finish that in the next 6-8 months which will allow us to come to a decision on sharing the technology.”

Meanwhile the Indian Navy too is carrying out a feasibility study to determine the characteristics of the carrier like propulsion, kind of aircraft and type of launch mechanism for which EMALS is under consideration. The Navy intends the carrier to be of 65,000 tons.

Cooperation on Vikrant

In addition to EMALS, the IEA has an agreement for cooperation on air wing operations for the first IAC - Vikrant which is currently in an advanced stage of construction and is on course to begin sea trials by September 2017 and aviation trials after December 2018.

Mr. Moore stated that there is a detailed process for testing, certification and delivery. “We can hold discussions on certifying the flight deck, testing and so on as you are doing it for the first time,” he said.

The third meeting of the Carrier Working Group is scheduled this summer around July in the US. “IEA will be done by then,” Mr. Moore added.

The US Navy has also offered courses related to carrier operations to Indian navy personnel at their Defence Acquisition University. The Indian side is currently reviewing the course catalogue and a decision is expected shortly.

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[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.defensenews.com/story/de...billion-rafale-fighter-jets-reports/83120806/

India To Pay $8.8 Billion for Rafale Fighter Jets: Reports

Agence France-Presse 3:52 p.m. EDT April 16, 2016
Comments 2

NEW DELHI — India has agreed to pay $8.8 billion to France's Dassault for 36 fighter jets, reports said Friday, as sources from both countries hinted a long-delayed deal to purchase the aircraft was imminent.

The purchase of the Rafale jets, first mooted in 2012 and signed off in January, has faced stumbling blocks over the price tag throughout.

"The negotiations are in the final stages but nothing has been concluded so far," an Indian defense official said.

DEFENSE NEWS
Dassault Says It's Close to Rafale Deal With India

NDTV broadcaster said India would pay $8.8 billion for the jets, adding that the final agreement is set to be signed in India in three weeks, but delivery of the aircraft will not take place for another 18 months.

The head of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, said Wednesday he hoped a final agreement would be reached in the coming days.

"I have high hopes that the contract will be signed soon," he told France's Radio Classique.

Both the French defense ministry declined to comment on the matter.

India entered exclusive negotiations on buying 126 Rafale fighters four years ago, but the number of planes was scaled back in tortuous negotiations over cost and assembly of the planes in India.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-scs-training-idUSKCN0XE0GZ

World | Sun Apr 17, 2016 7:22am EDT
Related: World, China, South China Sea

China launches upgraded drills for South China Sea fleets

China's South China Sea fleets have conducted training drills with upgraded methods that resemble actual combat conditions to increase the fleets' combat effectiveness, according to an article published by the PLA Daily on Sunday.

Begun on April 7, the drills include new methods such as training within an electromagnetic environment. Previously, the fleets have also conducted all-weather drills, beyond visibility range training and low-altitude, high-speed exercises to hammer their pilots into shape, the article said.

"To think about special situations in an even more complex way, to make the enemy situation even more dangerous, to make the battlefield environment even more lifelike, is an important path in order for the navy and air force to stick close to the demands of real combat and accelerate its transformative production model for fighting strength," division commander Tian Junqing was quoted as saying.

The article did not specifically say where in the South China Sea the drills took place.

The fleets will further explore 24-hour maritime attack drills, minimum altitude defensive dashes and other military tactics, the article added. They also will work in coordination with early aerial warnings, surface ships and ground anti-aircraft defense, among other branches of the military.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year. Its Southeast Asian neighbors including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also claim part of the sea, as does Taiwan.


(Reporting by Jessica Macy Yu and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Stephen Coates)

 

[Housecarl]

USS Donald Cook buzzed again by Russian jets in Baltic
Started by Possible Impact‎, 04-13-2016 08:57 AM
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...-buzzed-again-by-Russian-jets-in-Baltic/page2

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russian-jet-threatened-u-s-recon-aircraft/

Russian Jet Threatened U.S. Recon Aircraft

Barrel rolls over plane in latest Baltic Sea provocation

BY: Bill Gertz
April 16, 2016 3:25 pm

A Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday in the latest military provocation by Moscow over the Baltic Sea, the U.S. European Command said Saturday.

“On April 14, a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft flying a routine route in international airspace over the Baltic Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” said Navy Capt. Danny Hernandez.

“This intercept comes shortly after the unsafe Russian encounters with USS Donald Cook,” he added. “There have been repeated incidents over the last year where Russian military aircraft have come close enough to other air and sea traffic to raise serious safety concerns, and we are very concerned with any such behavior.”

Hernandez said the U.S. aircraft, a militarized Boeing 707 jet, was operating in international airspace “and at no time crossed into Russian territory.”

“This unsafe and unprofessional air intercept has the potential to cause serious harm and injury to all aircrews involved,” he said. “More importantly, the unsafe and unprofessional actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries.”

According to Hernandez, the Su-27 carried out “erratic and aggressive maneuvers” by approaching the RC-135 at a high rate of speed from the side.

The Russian jet “then proceeded to perform an aggressive maneuver that posed a threat to the safety of the U.S. aircrew in the RC-135U,” the spokesman said.

“More specifically, the SU-27 closed within 50 feet of the wing-tip of the RC-135 and conducted a barrel roll starting from the left side of the aircraft, going over the top of the aircraft and ended up to the right of the aircraft,” he said.

The U.S. government is protesting all the incidents this week to the Russian government through diplomatic channels, he said.

The RC-135U, an electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft, is normally operated by five air crew and up to 16 electronic warfare officers and six or more regional specialists.

The dangerous aerial incident came two days after a simulated Russian aerial assault against the guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea. Washington called the simulated assault a military provocation, and said it nearly caused an international shootout.

Two Russian fighter-bombers, identified as Su-24s, made close passes over the Cook, including one jet that came within 30 feet of the warship.

A Navy officer said the buzzing was the most reckless flyover of a U.S. warship by either a Russian or Chinese warplane since the Cold War. “I’ve been in a lot of those situations and I’ve never seen any plane come that close,” the officer said.

The aerial harassment appears to be part of a Russian military campaign of intimidation against the United States and NATO.

Moscow has adopted hostile military policies toward the United States over U.S. deployment of missile defenses in Europe, which Moscow says threaten its missile forces. The Russians also have been upset by Western sanctions against its military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

Strategically, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been seeking to regain control and influence over what Moscow calls the “near abroad”—former Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc nations along the periphery of Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe.

The policy has led to military aggression against the Republic of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, where Russian troops took over the Crimean peninsula and are continuing to fuel separatist activity in eastern Ukraine.

In response, the United States and NATO are bolstering U.S. and allied military forces in Eastern Europe, with a specific emphasis of increasing military forces and troops near the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as in Poland.

The recent Russian military provocations coincide with military activities by Moscow in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which remains a major subject of U.S. monitoring. Russia in the past has threatened to deploy nuclear-capable Iskander short-range missiles in the enclave on the Baltic Coast between Poland and Latvia.

Earlier this week, Brian McKeon, principal undersecretary of defense for policy, told a House subcommittee hearing that Russia has prevented U.S. and allied flights over Kaliningrad that are allowed under the Open Skies Treaty.

Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic forces analyst who specializes in Russian affairs, said the recent incidents over the Baltic Sea, including the simulated attack of a U.S. warship, are fundamentally different from past Russian provocations.

“It is a major escalation of Russian aggressiveness although it fits into a pattern of Russian activity that goes back years,” Schneider said. “The Russian Defense Ministry reaction was blatantly dishonest.”

Schneider said the likely U.S. response to these provocations are what former Pentagon official Richard Perle once dubbed “demarche-mellows,” or very weak, pro forma protests.

“If so, incidents like this will probably continue to escalate,” Schneider said.

Thursday’s aerial encounter involving the RC-135 was at least the second time this year that Russian jets have conducted a dangerous intercept of a reconnaissance aircraft.

On Jan. 25, a Russian Su-27 came within 20 feet of an RC-135 over the Black Sea in what Navy Capt. Daniel Hernandez said was an “unsafe and unprofessional” action.

Unlike Thursday’s encounter, the Russian jet in January did not do a barrel roll, but instead made an aggressive, high-speed banking turn away from the intelligence aircraft.

The maneuver disturbed the pilot’s control of the RC-135.

The dangerous Su-24 overflight of the Cook on April 12 came a day after two other Russian Su-24s flew over the ship 20 times, including a dangerous pass as an allied helicopter was being refueled, causing a delay in flight operations until the Su-24s left the area.

The same day, a Russian Ka-27 Helix helicopter flew around the Cook, which had finished a port visit to Poland and had a Polish helicopter on board.

“The Russian aircraft flew in a simulated attack profile and failed to respond to repeated safety advisories in both English and Russian,” the European Command said in a statement.

The Pentagon released video of the encounter showing the close pass, which created a wake in the water.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday criticized the Russian military provocation, though he declined to say what steps the United States would take in response.

The State Department lodged formal protests with Russia.

“We condemn this kind of behavior. It is reckless. It is provocative. It is dangerous. And under the rules of engagement that could have been a shoot-down,” Kerry told CNN and the Miami Herald.

“People need to understand that this is serious business and the United States is not going to be intimidated on the high seas. … We are communicating to the Russians how dangerous this is and our hope is that this will never be repeated,” Kerry said.

The Cook is equipped with anti-aircraft defenses including the Close-In Weapons System, an automated air defense gun that can destroy aircraft with 25-millimeter rounds. The weapon was not readied because the ship was operating under the U.S.-Russian agreement not to illuminate each other’s aircraft.

“We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight maneuvers,” the European command said in a statement.

“These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries, and could result in a miscalculation or accident that could cause serious injury or death.”

Kerry on Friday discussed the Cook incident with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a State Department spokesman said.

Moscow sought to play down the incident involving the Cook. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told the state-run Interfax news agency that the Russian pilots acted within safety guidelines.

The incidents violated the bilateral U.S.-Russian agreement designed to prevent incidents at sea. The accord prohibits conducting simulated attacks and also limits the use of automated anti-aircraft guns.

Other incidents in recent months included a near collision between a Russian fighter and an RC-135 over the Black Sea on May 30, and on April 7, 2015, a Su-27 flew within 20 feet of an RC-135 over the Baltic Sea.

Additionally, last October, two Russian Tu-142 bombers made low passes near the aircraft carrier USS Reagan as it sailed in the Sea of Japan near the Korean peninsula. And on July 4, 2015, two Tu-95 nuclear-capable bombers approached within 40 miles of the California coast and radioed a “happy birthday” message to intercepting U.S. pilots.

The July 4 provocation occurred the same day President Obama held a telephone call with Putin.

Russia also has sent Tu-95 bombers to circle the Pacific island of Guam several times. The island is a major military hub and central to the U.S. military’s pivot to Asia.

 

[vestige]

A Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday in the latest military provocation by Moscow over the Baltic Sea, the U.S. European Command said Saturday.

“On April 14, a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft flying a routine route in international airspace over the Baltic Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” said Navy Capt. Danny Hernandez.

That's two.

 

[TammyinWI]

posted a dup story

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm.....Anyone else not willing to bet on that?...


For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/dipl...nlikely-come-north-koreas-defence-if-tensions

China unlikely to come to North Korea’s defence if tensions escalate over nuclear weapons tests, say Chinese experts

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 17 April, 2016, 12:10am
UPDATED : Sunday, 17 April, 2016, 9:03am
Comments 13

China is unlikely to defend North Korea in case tensions escalate on the Korean peninsula over Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations *despite a mutual defence pact between the two communist allies, mainland scholars say.

The North failed in its attempt to launch a missile on Friday to mark the birthday of the nation’s founder, Kim Il-sung, according to the US and South Korean militaries. It was the latest in a series of public displays of its advanced rocket technology,which prompted the UN Security Council to respond with beefed up sanctions.

The remarks by mainland scholars came after the overseas edition of the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published an online commentary earlier this month saying China was still committed to protecting North Korea against potential outside attacks.

China and North Korea signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance 55 years ago, under which Beijing pledged to give assistance to Pyongyang in the event of an attack.

Professor Pang Zhongying, an international relations expert at Renmin University, said Pyongyang’s nuclear development, which Beijing viewed as a threat to its security interests, had irreversibly damaged Sino-North Korean relations and rendered the treaty effectively null and void.

“The treaty is China’s only legally binding bilateral security pact remaining in force. But it exists only in the legal sense and it is highly unlikely that China will provide military aid in the event of a conflict or war,” he said.

Professor Shen Jiru of the Institute on World Economy and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said Beijing should not be bound by the treaty if Pyongyang continued to pursue its programme to develop nuclear weapons.

“The treaty was a relic of the cold war which made no mention of specific circumstances under which China would provide military aid,”he said.

He noted when the treaty was signed in 1961, the Chinese government was “immature and diplomatically inexperienced” in entering into a vaguely worded defence treaty.

Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies at London’s King’s College, said the treaty put China in “permanent quandaries”.

“In 1961, I guess the treaty was a means for China to control North Korea against Soviet influence. But now the tables are turned and it is North Korea which is blackmailing and controlling China,” he said.

Shen also said the treaty did not make any sense in the light of the national security concept Beijing has adopted since Jiang Zeminwas president, namely opposition to military alliances with other countries.

Experts noted that senior Chinese diplomats have repeatedly warned North Korea against its nuclear sabre-rattling and said that Beijing would not permit chaos or war on the Korean *peninsula.

When asked at a press conference last month on the sidelines of the *National People’s Congress meeting whether China would help defend North Korea in case of a conflict or war as Beijing did during the 1950-53 Korean war, Foreign Minister Wang Yisaid China would neither tolerate instability on the Korean peninsula, nor accommodate Pyongyang’s pursuit of a nuclear and missile programme.

In a sign of China’s growing frustration and impatience with North Korea, China backed a United Nations resolution early last month to toughen sanctions against Pyongyang. Last week, China’s Ministry of Commerce rolled out new bans on imports of coal, iron ore, gold, titanium and rare earths, and exports of a range of products, including jet fuel, to North Korea.

While the official text of the bilateral treaty makes no mention of a *renewal mechanism, many *experts believe the treaty has been renewed twice and is now valid until 2021.

Experts said the strained relations between Beijing and Pyongyang over the North’s nuclear *ambitions cast uncertainty over the future of the treaty.

“[The treaty’s future] largely depends on whether North Korea will yield to international pressure to halt its nuclear programme, which could trigger a military build-up in northeast Asia and further destabilise the region. But so far escalating tension on the Korean peninsula shows little sign of easing,” Pang said.

Shen said Beijing’s recent steps sent out a clear and unequivocal message that China’s national interests would not be kidnapped by North Korea’s provocations.

“China does not need to formally terminate the treaty because it has already declared a ‘red line’ against North Korea [over its continued nuclear provocations]. I think there’s little doubt that China will not provide its assistance to North Korea if a war breaks out as a result of Pyongyang’s nuclear development,” he said.

Kerry Brown also said the treaty would need to be substantially revised if it was to be renewed in 2021.

However, Professor Lee Jung-nam, a China affairs expert at Korea University’s Asiatic *Research Institute, said China might be caught in a difficult position because of its security commitments in case of an emergency or conflict.

“North Korea is simply too strategically important to be abandoned by China amid *simmering tensions in the East Asia region. As long as the treaty is still in force, China is obliged to *intervene if tensions continue to escalate or even get out of *control,” she said.

But Lee said Beijing would be unlikely to act in the same way as in the previous Korean war.

“Things have changed dramatically under the rule of Xi Jinping. *Instead of throwing its full weight behind North Korea in the event of war, China would definitely try to negotiate a solution first with the United States and South Korea,” she said.

 

[Housecarl]

This shouldn't surprise anyone paying attention.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/16/space-war-game-wasted-u-s-satellites.html

Heavens Above
04.15.16 9:05 PM ET

Space War Game Wasted U.S. Satellites

The American military depends on satellites to direct its soldiers, bombs, and drones. But an eye-opening exercise showed that those spacecraft are frighteningly suceptible to attack.

David Axe

Every spring, the top people in America’s space industry—scientists, researchers, military officers and executives—gather for a four-day conference at the century-old Broodmoor Hotel nestled at the base of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs.
They talk, they plan, they eat and drink. It’s equal parts professional confab and party.

Not for Bob Work. In April 2015, the avuncular former Marine artilleryman was just one year into his new job as deputy defense secretary. He was worried. And he was on a mission.

Work found John Hyten, the square-jawed four-star general in charge of Air Force Space Command, the organization that oversees the production of America’s military spacecraft and sensors. “I like what you’re doing in space,” Work said, according to Hyten.

“But you’re not ready,” Work added.

Specifically, Work said, Hyten and his command weren’t ready “to do space operations in a conflict that extends into space.”

For a career military officer such as Hyten, those words surely stung. Work was telling Hyten that, yes, the general was a great manager. But his team wasn’t prepared to wage a war that extended into space.

Five months later came the proof. A mock attack on U.S. military satellites showed America’s space forces getting their clocks cleaned.

The simulated space battle, which is only now being discussed in public, showed the general and his team realized that, when it came to preparing for orbital warfare, they had to do better.

It was all part of the beginning of a new era for the world’s leading space power. Just a few months after Hyten’s 2015 conversation with Work, the United States’ national-security space agencies—the Air Force, Army and Navy; Strategic Command, which owns America’s nukes; the spy satellite-operating National Reconnaissance Office; the eavesdropping National Security Agency; and the ground-mapping National Geospatial Intelligence Agency among others—had, for the first time, teamed up.

Occupying an unused command center at Schriever Air Force Base, not far from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, the 30 space officials began writing battle plans for a possible war in space. Their advice would drive far-reaching reforms in the U.S. space community.

In classic government fashion, the Pentagon gave the group a vague, awkward and forgettable name—the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center, officially and weirdly abbreviated “JICSpOC,” pronounced “jick-spock.”

The collective kick in the ass that Work aimed at the U.S. space community came at a critical time. The United States possesses by far the largest fleet of satellites—military, government-owned, and private—and the most extensive network of ground-based sensors for peering into space, as well as the world’s biggest and most sophisticated space industry.

The military depends on satellites for navigation, communication and surveillance. American civilians count on space, too—for all the same functions plus entertainment and even banking. See how long your car, smart phone and T.V. work without a strong link to a satellite.

But the hundreds of U.S. satellites and sensors and the electronic links that connect them to their human operators are all, well, fragile. The spacecraft are lightly built. The rockets that boost them into orbit are so massively expensive—$100 million apiece or more—that the military and commercial operators can’t afford to launch new satellites very often.

The command-and-control network underlying the space infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking and jamming. Equally worrying, the thousands of men and women who actually monitor and control U.S. spacecraft aren’t trained to respond to direct attacks—from laser blasts, ramming, computer hacking or electronic jamming—on their pricey hardware.

Everyone in the space industry knew all this, had known it for years, but Work was determined to actually do something about it. America can’t assume any longer that space is a safe “sanctuary” for American hardware, Work said at this year’s Broadmoor confab. “Even regional powers like North Korea or Iran have the ability to take out our space assets.”

And its the major powers that are the most threatening. “Both Russia and China have been vocal… about their ambitions to counter our access to space,” Adm. Cecil Haney, the head of Strategic Command, told The Daily Beast.

Russia is recovering from its long, post-Cold War funk and is now rebuilding its armed forces. China has been binging on new technology for more than a new decade. Both countries have jealously eyed America’s dominant position in space—and have determined to undermine it.

Moscow has deployed several small, maneuverable “inspection satellites” that could sneak up on other sats—and hijack, disable, or destroy them. Beijing has sats like that, too, and has also tested ground-based rockets designed to wipe out low-orbiting satellites.

Washington possesses all the same kind of offensive space weaponry, of course. But America’s space defenses are practically nonexistent. And that makes Work nervous. “People are more likely to attack if they see you as weak or vulnerable,” he said.

The first thing the JICSpOC did after setting up shop at Schriever in September 2015 was, apparently, stage a mock attack… on its own satellites. One enemy spacecraft, perhaps modeled on Russia and China’s dangerous inspection-sats, targeted one U.S. spacecraft in a computer simulation.

It was Hyten’s idea—and it didn’t go over well, at first. Some of the old space veterans in the room didn’t think the orbital war game was complex or challenging enough to be worth their time. “We got calls from everywhere saying, ‘What are you doing?’” Hyten recalled.

“I said, ‘I don’t think you understand. This first one is going to be hard.”

And it was. The space officials assumed that, once they put their minds to it, they could handle a simple orbital attack. Butthey quickly discovered, among other flaws, that America’s various spacecraft, sensors, and control systems can’t talk to each other. If, for example, one satellite comes under attack, other spacecraft and sensors should be able to come to its aid—alerting the craft to enemy movements or even directly intervening by going after the attacking sat.

That’s only possible if the hardware and software are compatible and the various operators on the ground can quickly team up. Lacking a single command system or any way to display all the spacecraft data on one set of screens, some of the three dozen increasingly harried members of the JICSpOC actually ran out to Office Depot and bought a bunch of white boards and erasable markers.

To do what Hyten called “integration,” the JICSpOC officials had to read data off of separate command systems then manually combine the figures on the white boards. In ink. As soon as it could, the JICSpOC brought in coders to write a new program capable of combining all the disparate data.

But Hyten—and, indirectly, Work—had made his point. It’s a new world. America can’t take its space advantage for granted. And it’s time for U.S. space operators to start thinking like warriors.

The changes since then have been dramatic. The Obama administration added $5 billion to the military space program for the years 2016 to 2020, including an extra $2 billion just for new defensive systems. The Air Force organized new satellite crews and put them on a rotating shift. While one crew is operating a satellite in shifts, a duplicate crew is off at some school learning new orbital tactics. Every few months, they switch.

Commanders expect these crews to be aggressive. Before, when a satellite malfunctioned, it was standard Air Force procedure to put the sat in “safe mode”—basically, hitting pause—then call a technician. “But that assumes no active threat,” Hyten explained. You can’t very well wait around for the tech guy when some Russian spacecraft is clawing at your GPS satellite.

So Hyten and other commanders changed the procedure. Now, if a spacecraft is on the fritz or suffers damage during an attack, the Air Force expects operators to adapt, figure out some technical work-around—and keep fighting. They must be “steely-eyed space warriors,” Work said.

New hardware and software are also in development, including small so-called “situational awareness” satellites that can maneuver and keep tabs on potentially hostile spacecraft—and can travel into space atop smaller, cheaper rockets.

Other new systems are classified, but they apparently include space vehicles or ground-based system that can destroy spacecraft threatening America’s own orbital hardware. “We are not going to talk about offensive capabilities, but we will develop and continue to operate capabilities to defend ourselves,” Hyten said at the same 2015 conference where Work spurred him into action.

Transforming America’s space operators into space warriors will take longer than one year. But the process has begun. And by government standards, it’s moving fast. “The stand up was done quickly,” Haney, the head of Strategic Command, said of the JICSpOC. “We’re still working on capability.”

For a country whose military prowess utterly depends on space, the stakes are enormous. America has staked out the orbital high ground. Now it needs to appreciate that advantage—and defend it. “Space has allowed us to project power,” Work said. “We want to keep it that way.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/04/15/peshmerga-troops-running-on-empty-in-fight-against-isis.html

Middle East

Peshmerga troops running on empty in fight against ISIS

By Perry Chiaramonte, Hollie McKay · Published April 15, 2016 · FoxNews.com
Comments 86

Kurdish Peshmerga forces – arguably the most effective ground troops battling the Islamic State terror group in Iraq – have been fighting for the past three months without a paycheck, according to experts and a top official from the region.

“Unless we get direct [financial] support, we will not be able to continue the way we are currently doing so,” Qubad Talabani, Deputy Prime Minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), said at a forum held by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington on Wednesday.

A lack of direct financial support isn’t the only problem, according to Talabani. The Kurdish-controlled area of Northern Iraq also has been forced to absorb a loss of more than $100 million a month in declining oil revenues and diminished support from the central Iraqi government in Baghdad.

“The situation is dire. People are not getting paid. Including their frontline troops,” said John Hannah, a senior counselor with the FDD and former national security advisor for former Vice President Dick Cheney, told Foxnews.com.

Hannah said the Kurds “have a lot of issues,” including a bloated government that was built on the expectation of a $100 per barrel of oil. The KRG has also taken on almost two million refugees, on top of a population of only five million Kurds, which has put an incredible strain on their finances.

“They're facing incredible burdens with few good options for relief. They have been cut off from any of their budget from Baghdad, and have no easy access to international debt markets or to the international donor community since they are not a sovereign state,” Hannah said. This shortfall has affected not just Peshmerga fighters, but public service like teachers and healthcare workers.

But sources familiar with the KRG’s current financial issues say it’s likely they are actually losing hundreds of millions more than officials say. And the lack of payments to Kurdish forces is becoming more of a problem.

Some fighters have reportedly gone home to visit their families without returning to the combat zone. Many have begun to look for work elsewhere. Some have pulled double duty, refusing to quit the battle by day but moonlighting as cab drivers or laborers at night.

"When I come [home] from the frontlines, I have to work because of my family’s needs. It is my responsibility," Haval Muhammed, 28, a Peshmerga fighter from the Sulimani area, told Foxnews.com.

Muhammed says he has two disabled daughters, leaving his wife unable to get a job. Along with his Peshmerga work, he said he often finds work in home construction when he’s back from the fighting - if the work is available. "There are not a lot of jobs," he said. "Most of the days I can’t find work, people don't have money to build houses."

KRG officials say that despite the lack of payment, a majority of the Peshmerga have not given up the fight.

“We are facing many challenges. International community has helped us but we need more,” Farhan Jawhar, head of the KRG’s Cultural Committee, recently told FoxNews.com. “We need more money… two years ago [this] started, we are fighting the same enemy as Baghdad, but they cut our funds.

“The salaries for the Peshmerga haven’t been paid. How do we stay here fighting?”


Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @perrych

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-violence-idUSKCN0XE10V

World | Sun Apr 17, 2016 3:31pm EDT
Related: World, United Nations, Africa

Ethiopia says death toll from raid rises to 208; 108 children kidnapped

ADDIS ABABA | By Aaron Maasho

The death toll from a raid carried out by South Sudanese gunmen in western Ethiopia has risen to 208 people and the assailants kidnapped 108 children, an Ethiopian official said on Sunday.

The attack took place on Friday in the Horn of Africa nation's Gambela region which, alongside a neighboring province, hosts more than 284,000 South Sudanese refugees who fled conflict in their country.

By Sunday afternoon, the number had risen to "208 dead and 75 people wounded" from 140 a day earlier, government spokesman Getachew Reda told Reuters, adding the assailants had also abducted 108 children and taken 2,000 head of livestock.

"Ethiopian Defense Forces are taking measures. They are closing in on the attackers," he said.

Getachew did not give further details, but officials in Gambela said on Saturday Ethiopian troops had crossed the border in pursuit of the attackers.

Cross-border cattle raids have occurred in the same area in the past, often involving Murle tribesmen from South Sudan's Jonglei and Upper Nile regions - areas awash with weapons that share borders with Ethiopia.

Previous attacks, however, were smaller in scale.

The gunmen are not believed to have links with South Sudanese government troops or rebel forces who fought the government in Juba in a civil war that ended with a peace deal signed last year.

South Sudanese officials were not immediately available for comment.

Under pressure from neighboring states, the United States, the United Nations and other powers, South Sudan's feuding sides signed an initial peace deal in August and agreed to share out ministerial positions in January.


(Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Editing by Elias Biryabarema and Stephen Powell)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-idUSKCN0XE05M

World | Sun Apr 17, 2016 10:55pm EDT
Related: World, Brazil

Brazil's Rousseff loses crucial impeachment vote in Congress

BRASILIA | By Maria Carolina Marcello and Alonso Soto

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff lost a crucial impeachment vote in the lower house of Congress on Sunday and appeared almost certain to be forced from office in a move that would end 13 years of leftist Workers' Party rule.

As thousands of pro- and anti-impeachment protesters demonstrated outside Congress, the opposition comfortably surpassed the two-thirds majority needed to send Rousseff for trial in the Senate on charges of manipulating budget accounts.

The floor of the lower house was a sea of Brazilian flags and pumping fists as dozens of lawmakers carried the deputy who cast the decisive 342nd vote in their arms. In Brazil's largest cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, fireworks lit up the night sky and cars honked their horns in celebration after the vote.

If the Senate now votes by a simple majority to proceed with the impeachment as expected in early May, Rousseff would be suspended from her post and be replaced by Vice President Michel Temer as acting president pending her trial. Temer would serve out Rousseff's term until 2018 if she is found guilty.

The impeachment battle, waged during Brazil's worst recession since the 1930s, has divided the country of 200 million people more deeply than at any time since the end of its military dictatorship in 1985.

It has also sparked a bitter battle between the 68-year-old Rousseff and Temer, 75, that appears likely to destabilize any future government and plunge Brazil into months of uncertainty.

Despite anger at rising unemployment, Rousseff's Workers Party can rely on strong support among millions of working-class Brazilians, who credit its welfare programs with pulling their families out of poverty during the past decade.

"The fight is going to continue now in the streets and in the federal Senate," said Jose Guimaraes, the leader of the Workers' Party in the lower house. "We lost because the coup-mongers were stronger."

Opinion polls suggest more than 60 percent of Brazilians support impeaching Rousseff, Brazil's first female president.

While she has not been accused of corruption, Rousseff's government has been tainted by a vast graft scandal at state oil company Petrobras (PETR4.SA) and by the economic recession.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from both sides took to the streets of towns and cities across the vast nation. Millions watched the congressional vote live on television in bars and restaurants, in their homes or on giant screens in the street, like they would for a big soccer match.

Related Coverage
› Brazil's government says confident Senate will dismiss impeachment

On the grassy esplanade outside Congress, a 6.5-foot-high (2-metre) security barrier ran for more than 1 km separating rival demonstrations, a symbol of the political rift that has emerged in one of the world's most unequal societies.

As the vote came to an end, hundreds of Rousseff supporters sat downcast on red flags and banners on the grass. A young couple, on the verge of tears, hugged each other.

On the pro-impeachment side of the wall, protesters sang and danced, drinking beer and munching popcorn. Some took selfies and performed handstands, celebrating a decision that many said was a victory against corruption.

"Impeachment sends a clear message that the politics of this country needs to be cleaned up," said Alesandra Dantas, a 28-year-old social worker.

PARALYZED GOVERNMENT

The impeachment battle has paralyzed the activity of government in Brasilia, just four months before the country is due to host the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and as it seeks to battle an epidemic of the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects in newborns.

Critics of the impeachment process say it has become a referendum on Rousseff's popularity - currently languishing in single digits - which sets a worrying precedent for ousting unpopular leaders in the future.

They note that Rousseff is accused of a budgetary slight of hand commonly employed by many elected officials in Brazil.

With Brazilians transfixed by the congressional vote, broadcast live on television, legislators denounced corruption and the economic downturn as they voted against Rousseff. But few of them mentioned the budgetary allegations.

However, business lobbies have thrown their weight behind the ouster of Rousseff, as they look to Temer to restore business confidence and growth to the world's ninth largest economy.

Related Coverage
› Brazil credit risk slips as lower house votes for Rousseff ouster

Adriano Pires, head of the Rio de Janeiro-based Brazilian Infrastructure Institute, said the departure of Rousseff could lead to an opening of the country's crucial oil sector. Union leaders, however, have voiced fears about privatizations and job cuts.

Once regarded as an emerging markets powerhouse, Brazil has been hit by the end of a long commodities boom and lost its coveted investment grade credit rating in December.

Brazil's stocks and currency have been among the world's best-performing assets in recent weeks on growing bets that Rousseff would be removed from office, allowing Temer to adopt more market-friendly policies.

In a sign that rally could continue, an exchange-traded fund of Brazilian equities (1325.T) gained 3.8 percent shortly after the result was announced.

While Rousseff herself has not been personally charged with corruption, many of the lawmakers who decided her fate on Sunday have been.

Congresso em Foco, a prominent watchdog group in Brasilia, said more than 300 of the legislators who voted - well over half the chamber - are under investigation for corruption, fraud or electoral crimes.

As they cast their vote, some lawmakers said the next politician to be impeached should be the man leading the proceedings, Speaker Eduardo Cunha. He is charged with corruption and money laundering in the kickback scandal involving Petrobras, and he also faces an ethics inquiry over undeclared Swiss bank accounts.

"God have pity on this nation," Cunha said as he cast his vote in favor of impeaching Rousseff.


(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle, Stephen Eisenhammer and Lisandra Paraguassú in Brasilia, Guillermo Parra-Bernal in Sao Paulo and Jeb Blount in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Daniel Flynn, Stephen Eisenhammer and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Peter Cooney, Kieran Murray and Mary Milliken)

 

[Housecarl]

From the "November Sierra" file....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence-idUSKCN0XF1KY

World | Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:27am EDT
Related: World

Mexican army accused of withholding evidence in student massacre probe

MEXICO CITY | By Anahi Rama and Lizbeth Diaz

Mexico's army is withholding key evidence from international investigators in the case of 43 trainee teachers abducted and apparently massacred in late 2014, hampering their efforts to reach the truth, the experts told Reuters.

More than 18 months after the incident and just one week before the team of experts' window to investigate closes, the army has still not handed over an undisclosed number of photographs and video taken by a military intelligence officer as police clashed with the students on Sept. 26, 2014, the five investigators said.

When Reuters requested the original photographs of police rounding up a group of the students from the military, via a freedom of information request, the army responded that the evidence was "inexistent."

The investigators have also not been allowed to question the soldiers on duty that night at Battalion 27, based in Iguala in the restive southwestern state of Guerrero.

"Access to Battalion 27 and its members is fundamental to the investigation ... The state needs to explain," said James Cavallaro, president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which commissioned the panel of experts.

Testimony given by soldiers to the attorney general's office shows the army was aware of the clashes and did not intervene.

"We have repeatedly asked the attorney general's office to get (the military) to give us photographs, videos and documents which have been referred to in their own testimony," said Francisco Cox, a Chilean member of the independent panel of five experts commissioned by the IACHR.

"We made a list of people who needed to testify. Some haven't and there are others who ought to testify again," he added. "They have made declarations and the fundamental issues still haven't been answered."

The panel members say the testimony the soldiers have given so far to the attorney general's office is flawed and incomplete, because the questioning was too basic and they see some discrepancies.

Mexico's defense ministry, which is in charge of the army, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Previously, the army has said there is no reason its soldiers should be interviewed by the team of international experts.

"I can't permit them to treat soldiers as criminals or interrogate them and make it seem as though they had something to do with it," Salvador Cienfuegos, who is Mexico's defense minister and the head of the army, said in October.

The attorney general's office declined to comment, but a source told Reuters the investigation would remain open and they have not called soldiers to give evidence again because they are preoccupied dealing with other parts of the case.


IMPUNITY

The case has drawn fresh attention to police abuses and impunity in Mexico. Drug cartels often have local security forces in their pockets, government purges of police ranks have shown.

The trainee teachers studied at a rural college in the restive state of Guerrero. About 100 were attacked in the town of Iguala on Sept 26, 2014 after they hijacked five buses to transport them to a march commemorating a massacre back in the 1960s.

Forty-three disappeared and are believed to have been murdered. But just one of them has been identified from a charred bone and the team of international experts rejected a government assertion that the 43 were burned in a pyre at a garbage dump.

The Mexican government said in January 2015 it believed that corrupt police working with a local drug gang murdered the students, citing testimony given by detained suspects. But relatives of the disappeared rejected that account, and accused the government of trying to close the case early.

No-one has yet stood trial over the case.

The government has said the gang mistook the youths for rival gang members, and that police handed them over to Guerreros Unidos henchmen, who then burned them to ashes at a garbage dump in the town of Cocula, in the hills near Iguala.

President Enrique Pena Nieto agreed with the IACHR in late 2014 to allow the international experts to investigate the case and promised them access to all the information they needed.

The experts, who examined the site, say the government's garbage dump fire account is scientifically impossible given the heat needed to reduce human remains to ash and charred bone fragments. The fate of the students, who were long seen by local authorities as troublemakers, is still unclear.

Families and lawyers of the disappeared students believe the army was involved in their abduction, though no evidence has been presented to support this.

"The army pitched in to form a cordon so the aggressors could act," said Vidulfo Rosales, one of the lawyers representing families of the victims.

Since 2007, the army has been tasked with ensuring public security in some of the most violent corners of Mexico. However, lawmakers say there is no specific law that requires the army to intervene in such cases of unrest.

One military intelligence operative, Eduardo Mota, testified to the attorney general's office in December 2014 that he snapped an undisclosed number of photographs as police threw tear gas at a group of the students in front of the local courthouse in Iguala and detained them. That group of students, which investigators number at about 17, was never seen again.

The army has not handed over the original photographs he testified to taking to the experts, who say they believe Mota also filmed video, citing standard army operating procedures. Mota could not be reached for comment.

Instead, officials later gave them a presentation that included a power-point containing four photographs from the night in question, one of the investigators said, but not the original files.


(Editing by Simon Gardner and Kieran Murray)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-raid-idUSKCN0XF1HT

World | Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:21am EDT
Related: World, Iraq

U.S.-led raids in Iraq kill and capture Islamic State fighters

ERBIL, Iraq | By Isabel Coles

A member of Islamic State's war council and two aides were killed in northern Iraq on Monday by U.S. and Kurdish commandos in the second helicopter raid in two days in the area by a U.S.-led coalition, Kurdish security sources said.

A statement by the Kurdish regional security council said Monday's raid south of the Iraqi city of Mosul killed Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri, also known as Abu Saif.

As a member of the militant group's war council, the statement said, he had been responsible for offensives in Makhmour, 80 km (50 miles) from Mosul, where an Iraqi army push launched last month has stalled.

In a separate operation on Sunday, troops from a U.S.-led coalition landed a helicopter north of Mosul and seized at least one Islamic State member from a vehicle, witnesses and Kurdish security sources said.

The force quickly took off again with their captive, the sources told Reuters.

"It all happened in less than 10 minutes," said a witness of the raid in Badush district, around 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Mosul, the largest Iraqi city still in the hands of Islamic State.

A spokesman for the U.S. coalition could not immediately be reached for comment on the latest raid. He previously declined to confirm or deny reports of the earlier raid.

A news agency that supports Islamic State said the militants had thwarted the earlier raid in Badush.

There appears to be an increase in these sorts of operations since the United States announced last December it was deploying a new force of special operations troops to Iraq to conduct raids against Islamic State there and in neighbouring Syria.

The militant group's second-in-command and other senior leaders were likely killed last month by an air strike after a U.S. special forces' helicopter was fired on from the ground.

U.S. special forces operating with Kurdish commandos rescued 69 Iraqis in an October raid in the northern city of Hawija in which one U.S. soldier was killed.

The operations are aimed at escalating pressure on Islamic State after the Iraqi army won its first major victory over the insurgents last December in Ramadi.

The authorities have said they want to retake Mosul this year but Iraqi officials privately question whether this is possible.


(Additional reporting and writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-boko-haram-idUSKCN0XF0Y9

World | Mon Apr 18, 2016 8:03am EDT
Related: World, Africa

Boko Haram attacks soldiers in northeast Nigeria: army

Boko Haram fighters attacked Nigerian soldiers early on Monday near the border with Niger in the jihadists' northeast heartlands, the army said.

The militants struck as the troops were on their way to the border town of Damasak, a military source said. The army took the area back from Boko Haram last year but has struggled to hold it.

The group allied to Islamic State had been fighting to carve out an Islamist caliphate in the region for at least seven years in a conflict which has displaced more than 2 million people and killed thousands.

"Boko Haram terrorists attack troops of 113 Battalion," army spokesman Sani Usman said in a brief statement. "The troops have been battling the insurgents since (the) early hours of today."

The troops had been trying to establish a permanent base in Damasak as Boko Haram remains active in its hinterland, the source said.

No further information was immediately available from the remote area which is largely disconnected from mobile phone networks.

Boko Haram controlled a swathe of land in northeast Nigeria around the size of Belgium at the start of last year but was pushed out by Nigerian troops, aided by soldiers from neighboring countries.

The group has since stepped up cross-border attacks and suicide bombings against markets, bus stations and places of worship.


(Reporting by Felix Onuah, Ulf Laessing and Lanre Ola; Editing by Dominic Evans and Andrew Heavens)

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/04/18/budgeting_for_deterrence_109270.html

April 18, 2016

Budgeting for Deterrence

By Joshua Hampson

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently held an event on the 2017 defense budget and its relationship with the U.S. strategic outlook. Much of the conversation focused on the growing risks of near-peer competitors and how best to deter conflict around the world. During 2017’s Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee hearing on current readiness, Senator Ayotte argued that defense spending should provide capabilities that, “make costly conflicts less likely.” Warfighting capability itself is important if conflict breaks, but the United States can’t fight everywhere simultaneously. Deterrence is important, and should be an integral part of Pentagon planning and budgeting.

Deterrence is in no way an easy task. Even with the major actors identified—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—determining how to get the best bang for buck is an even harder task. The Department of Defense does not have to look far to see how it should (or rather, shouldn’t) approach budgeting for deterrence.

As Jerry Hendrix of the Center for a New American Security as argued, "presence" is an important part of a deterrence posture. Having forces in a region allows the United States to show its national interests, to interact more frequently with other countries, and to better define its global goals. Presence also provides a tripwire by placing American assets in potential theaters of war. That presence signals rival actors that belligerence in that theater, because of the risk it may pose to American military assets, will lead to deeper conflict. Presence-focused assets are not necessarily supposed to fight off enemies by themselves, but to deter aggression by providing reasons for American involvement.

The problem is that the Pentagon struggles to reconcile the need to have these presence-focused assets with its own risk-averse nature. The Littoral Combat Ship was supposed to be one such presence-increasing platform, but its costs increased when it was shifted towards a war-fighting platform. The increased cost of the platform reduces its viability for presence-focused deterrence.

In a contested environment, a peer rival might conclude that the United States would not be willing to risk expensive ships for less than an existential threat—and so remain undeterred. Ironically, this has caused the Navy to spend even more money to upgun the ship, in order to justify its existence while being ordered to cut production. The focus on warfighting capability for the LCS has therefore reduced its usefulness for American deterrence.

Being able to fight in the event that conflict does occur is also important. If deterrence presence is low-end, then warfighting capability rests on high-end platforms that respond to threats. Presence without the ability to respond is no deterrent, after all. The F-35, however, has demonstrated the need for reform in the Pentagon’s thinking about these platforms too. Decades-long development cycles and high costs prevent the military from quickly responding to new threats, both because platforms can become obsolete before they are finished and because high costs eat into the ability to pivot to developing threats. The military needs a new approach to fiscal risk. A broader range of smaller investments, with the expectation that some will fail, would allow quick divestment of programs that are not working. One way to accomplish this goal is through creative prototyping that allows for quicker assessment of the viability of a technology.

Budgeting for deterrence also requires new operational thinking. Michael McCord, the Pentagon comptroller, rightly argued that using new tools with old mindsets was useless. This is not only true of future systems, but can be applied today. In the electromagnetic spectrum, for example, some of the DOD’s decreased advantage is due to its lack of new operational approaches and not a lack of novel technology. As mentioned, the Pentagon could apply new thinking to defense acquisition as well, using prototyping to test technology and diversified investments that can be ramped up as needed.

The ability to respond effectively to an attack is part of deterrence, but it is not the only tool that the United States needs. The military should develop systems that allow it to fight, but should not ignore that deterrence requires not having to risk highly expensive and exquisite systems. Without low-end capabilities, the United States might get pulled into conflicts that it could not deter because rivals determined that they had the advantage in cost and willpower. To prevent this, the military needs to retool how it manages acquisitions, addressing the incentives that favor exquisite capabilities over low-end capacity. Otherwise, the Pentagon may wind up with a small, expensive, and inflexible fighting force and a weakened deterrence posture.


Joshua Hampson is a Research Associate at the Niskanen Center where he focuses on defense, national security, and foreign policy. He has been published by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, The Hill, and cited in a variety of articles. He graduated from the University of St. Andrews with a degree in economics and international relations.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/turkey-imams-at-the-center-of-strom-again.html

'Imamization' raising eyebrows in Turkey

Author Pinar Tremblay
Posted April 15, 2016
Comments 7

Nevzat Turan, a high school vice principal from Malatya province, shared a photo of folkloric dance on social media and equated with adultery any dance where women and men hold hands. As public criticism soared, Turan deleted the April 10 post, but he also had supporters. Among these, Mirac Gocmez, from the local Justice and Development Party (AKP) establishment, wrote on Facebook, “What happened to the freedom of expression that they cherish? The man [Turan] is righteous, and he is stating the truth. And most importantly, he expressed himself in the language of Islam. That is what is really bothering you.”

The struggle to interpret secularism and religious freedom did not end, as many had hoped, with the conclusion of the headscarf wars. To the contrary, it has spread into other public arenas in Turkey. Tellingly, the number of employees at the Diyanet (Religious Affairs Directorate) has doubled in the last decade, and the increase has allowed the directorate to initiate programs in collaboration with other ministries to provide religious services in their domains. A case in point involves the Ministry of Family and Social Policies.

The ministry, which has been harshly criticized for its incompetence in dealing with skyrocketing cases of pedophilia, again made headlines April 9 because of its questionable policies. On Dec. 29, Veli Agbaba, a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, had submitted a parliamentary query asking the ministry, “Why did you eliminate the positions of 37 psychologists, 37 child education experts and 12 physical therapists and hire 25 imams and other positions. Will the imams be replacing those positions dealing with children? And what kind of roles will these new hires serve at your ministry.”

On March 29, the ministry provided a brief and vague response: “The duties and responsibilities of imams depend upon the individual agencies they belong to under our ministry.” It also claimed that it was within the bylaws of the ministry to cancel the positions it eliminated, because they were no longer needed, and create new posts.

The Ministry of Family and Social Policies is not the only institution to adopt this policy of employing imams. Diyanet has also signed protocols in the last couple of years to provide services to the Ministries of Youth and Sports, Justice, Health and Education. Although in the news, the personnel contracted out are referred to as imams, some have been scholars from subfields of theology. Al-Monitor spoke with professors and other experts on the issue.

Yusuf Nazlim, a preacher from Diyanet, provided insight into Diyanet's operation, stating, “In 1995, there was an agreement between Diyanet and the Ministry of Health to provide moral motivation and religious advising services, but it was cancelled. In 2015, a new protocol was initiated to provide spiritual support services.”

Under the new initiative, all Diyanet personnel assigned to serve in hospitals are to have graduate degrees in fields such as religious psychology, sociology and consultancy. They can only provide services to those who explicitly ask for their help, including patients, their relatives and hospital personnel. Their services could be viewed as one part of a holistic healing program, designed to complement modern medicine.

Indeed, in one instance, Gulay G. whose father is battling cancer at an Ankara hospital, told Al Monitor, “Patients here are lonely. Imams are attentive. My dad, who did not want to continue chemotherapy, was much more willing to work with the doctors after meeting with an imam.”

Despite the hard work of individual Diyanet employees, however, the “imamization” programs raise serious concerns. Among them, Diyanet only provides services to Sunni Muslims. By interpreting democracy as a tool to serve the majority, instead of everyone, AKP members seem annoyed when questioned about providing services for people of other faiths and beliefs, such as atheists, Shiites, Alevis, Christians and Jews. Why are government funded services only available to one group exclusively?

Also of concern is the increasing frequency of troubling reports on K-12 schools across Turkey. In 2015, the Education and Science Workers Union published a detailed report, “Islamization of Education,” compiling news, evaluations and numbers on grades K-12. It estimated that there are almost a million students enrolled in 2015-16 at religious secondary schools. The report indicates that the aim of the education system is to raise obedient generations of observant Sunnis through an increased focus on religious education at the expense of other fields.

Despite a European Court of Human Rights ruling against mandatory religion classes, they remain compulsory in Turkey. Indeed, even students with autism have been enrolled in such classes. Prayer and Quran-reading competitions have also increased in frequency, while co-ed education has come under close scrutiny.

Mind-boggling examples of the imamization process are plentiful. In June 2015, the Ministry of Education invited 220 imams from the 11 Kurdish-majority southeastern provinces to discuss why skipping school was prevalent. While education experts tried to comprehend why the imams were consulted, instead of teachers, principals and themselves, ministry officials concluded that imams could be effective in lessening absenteeism.

The prominent attorney Erdal Dogan told Al-Monitor, “The Turkish state has never been able to achieve a proper functioning secularism, but never before has it been this far from secularism either. Jihadism has now been normalized in all of Turkey’s institutions.”

Dogan emphasized how government-sponsored religion can lead to discrimination and intimidation on multiple levels. “Anyone who is critical of the government is immediately labeled an enemy of the state, and this ‘one religion, one language, one nation’ ideology becomes particularly threatening to the most vulnerable groups — minors, prisoners and hospital patients,” Dogan said. Indeed, these are the groups currently being targeted through imamization.

Hatice Altinisik, chairwoman of the Alevi Bektasi Institute, told Al Monitor, “In a country where there are more mosques than schools, more imams than teachers, where science, philosophy, art, dance, theater are discouraged at the expense of religious education for minors, what should we expect? Soon, perhaps, when we need to see a doctor, we will first be required to get a permission slip from our local imam.”

What is a Shiite, Alevi, or atheist to do when authorities do not acknowledge their existence? The imamization process is not hidden. To the contrary, it is front and center in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself a graduate of an imam high school, has kept his promise from 2012, when he famously announced, “Imam hatip’s will become the apple of this nation’s eye.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/18/south-korea-says-north-is-preparing-fifth-nuclear-test/

South Korea says North is preparing fifth nuclear test

By Julian Ryall, Tokyo
18 April 2016 • 3:28pm

North Korea is believed to be making preparations for a fifth nuclear test, in defiance of international sanctions imposed on the regime of Kim Jong-un.

Park Geun-hye, the South Korean president, summoned her cabinet on Monday morning to confirm earlier indications of activity at the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

"Signs that it is preparing a fifth nuclear test have recently been detected," Mrs Park said.

South Korea's military has been monitoring a noticeable increase in vehicles, equipment and workers entering and leaving the Punggy-ri site in recent weeks.

"There have constantly been similar signs in recent weeks and as we have repeatedly said that the North is ready to conduct another test at any time, if needed, it remains to be seen when it will actually take place," a military spokesman told Yonhap News.

Satellite images have shown vehicles and equipment close to the shaft used for the North's previous nuclear test, conducted on January 6. Pyongyang insists the test was of a powerful hydrogen bomb, although experts dismissed that claim.

North Korean media has hinted that another nuclear test is imminent, with the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) underlining the importance of the regime's nuclear programme, describing it as the "the inevitable self-defensive option" against the United States and South Korea, which are presently conducting joint military exercises.

"The stronger the striking capability of the DPRK's nuclear weapons grows, the more powerful the capability to deter aggression and war will become," the KCNA reported.

Analysts believe that Mr Kim wants to carry out a demonstration of his regime's might in the run-up to next month's congress of the Workers' Party, the first in more than 30 years.

A new test could also be linked to the failed launch of a medium-range ballistic missile on April 15, intended to celebrate the birthday of the country's founder, Kim Il-sung.

The nuclear-capable Musudan weapon, which has a range of 2,500 miles, failed "catastrophically" shortly after launch, US military intelligence has confirmed.

The UN Security Council condemned the attempted launch as a "clear violation" of a series of UN resolutions that ban North Korea from carrying out ballistic missile launches.

 

[Housecarl]

Drip, drip, drip.....

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/carter-arrives-iraq-talks-beef-fight-065213023--politics.html

US to send 200 more troops, Apache helicopters, to Iraq

LOLITA C. BALDOR
April 18, 2016

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. has agreed to deploy more than 200 additional troops to Iraq and to send Apache helicopters for the first time into the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq, the first major increase in U.S. forces in nearly a year, U.S. defense officials said Monday.

The uptick in American fighting forces — and the decision to put them closer to the front lines — is designed to help Iraqi forces retake the key northern city of Mosul, and to help retake Raqqa, the extremist's group self-proclaimed capital in Syria. Last June the Obama administration announced that hundreds of troops would be deployed to help the Iraqis retake Ramadi — a goal they accomplished at the end of the year.

Of the additional troops, most would be Army special forces, who have been used throughout the anti-Islamic State campaign to advise and assist the Iraqis. The remainder would include some trainers, security forces for the advisers, and maintenance teams for the Apaches.

The decisions reflect weeks of discussions with commanders and Iraqi leaders, and a decision by President Barack Obama to increase the authorized troop level in Iraq by 217 forces — or from 3,870 to 4,087. The advise-and-assist teams — made up of about a dozen troops each accompanied by security forces — would embed with Iraqi brigades and battalion, likely putting them closer to the front lines and at greater risk from mortars and rocket fire.

The proximity to the battlefront will allow the U.S. teams to provide more tactical combat advice as the Iraqi units move toward Mosul, the country's second-largest city, still under Islamic State control. Until now, U.S. advisers have worked with the Iraqis at the headquarters level, well back from the front lines.

The Apache helicopters are considered a significant aid to any attack on Mosul.

Last December, U.S. officials were trying to carefully negotiate new American assistance with Iraqi leaders who often have a different idea of how to wage war. At that time, the Iraqis refused Apache helicopters for the battle to retake Ramadi.

Speaking to U.S. troops at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Ash Carter also said that the U.S. will send an additional rocket-assisted artillery system to Iraq.

U.S. officials have also said that the number of special operations forces in Syria would be increased at some point, but Carter did not mention that in his comments. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Carter's announcement Monday came after several meetings with his commanders and Iraqi leaders about how the U.S. can best help Iraqi forces retake Mosul.

He met with Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. military commander for the Islamic State fight, as well as a number of Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Iraq's minister of defense Khalid al-Obeidi.

He also spoke by phone with the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani

Late last month, U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that he and Carter believed there would be an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in the coming weeks.

Later this week, Obama will be in Saudi Arabia to talk with Gulf leaders about the fight against the Islamic State and ask for their help in rebuilding Ramadi, which took heavy damage in the battle.

U.S. military and defense officials also have made it clear that winning back Mosul is critical, but will be challenging, because the insurgents are dug in and have likely peppered the landscape with roadside bombs and other traps for any advancing military.

A senior defense official told reporters traveling with Carter that while Iraqi leaders have been reluctant to have a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq, they also need certain capabilities that only more American or coalition forces can provide.

Iraqi leaders, back the addition of more U.S. troops if their work is coordinated with Iraqis and directed toward the retaking of Mosul. The official was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Iraq has been struggling with a political crisis, as efforts to oust the speaker of parliament failed. Al-Abadi's efforts to get a new cabinet in place met resistance, and influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr issued a deadline, giving parliament 72 hours to vote in a new Cabinet.

At the same time, the costs of the war against IS, along with the plunge in the price of oil — which accounts for 95 percent of Iraq's revenues — have caused an economic crisis, adding fresh urgency to calls for reform. Iraqi officials predict a budget deficit of more than $30 billion this year.

 

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...g-All-The-BRICS-Tumbling-Down-Forbes-Magazine

For links see article source.....
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/douglas...ing-all-the-brics-tumbling-down/#1b2f55965e75

Apr 18, 2016 @ 06:58 AM

How China Will Bring All The BRICS Tumbling Down

Douglas Bulloch, Contributor

The concept of the BRICs isn’t heard much these days beyond some cooperative institution building efforts. Originally a Goldman Sachs authored attempt to identify growth opportunities for investors (referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China), it was picked up by those countries to symbolise a hoped-for rotation in the world order: away from the old hierarchy of the West and the Rest, towards a more balanced configuration of global economic progress. For inclusiveness, the ‘s’ was eventually capitalised into ‘South Africa’ so that the African continent was not left out.

With hindsight, it remains curious that the idea was ever taken seriously beyond the confines of investor advice. The nominated states have little in common, although the public diplomacy of developing economy cooperation has a lingering appeal. The Russian economy was always based largely on hydrocarbons, and Brazil’s expansion was a broader commodity play. Each, therefore, nurtured an important relationship with China. Now, though, as commodity prices have sunk, China is the only buyer left and has no qualms about driving a hard bargain.

Massive Chinese infrastructure investment created the temporary illusion of wealth while global debt levels grew relentlessly. The commodity curse then undermined real economic progress around the world, as elites chased diminishing surplus for patronage and popularity. This has left producers exposed; one – Venezuela – rapidly becoming a wasteland. In other countries, what limited democracy there was has been hollowed out, leaving Russia in a state of egregious industrial and demographic decline, and Brazil confirming stereotypes about Latin American corruption. All because the orders are drying up and the money has run out. Both Brazil and Russia are facing the possibility of imminent collapse. India, by contrast, is its own story, a perpetual tale of slow promise that plays tortoise to China’s hare.

The only real story behind the BRICs was always just the ‘C,’ as in China, and the huge investment boom that powered commodity prices towards the fantasy of a ‘super-cycle’ – another word we don’t hear much anymore – drove the whole world mad. There was money for social programs in Brazil to lift up the poor, money for Putin’s new model army in Russia to restore imperial prestige, and money for the Olympics and World Cup in both countries. Then there was money for London palaces, money for Panamanian bank accounts, money for small wars and some leftover for the supposed institutions of a ‘new world order,’ since deferred.

Now, China’s policy dilemma belongs to everyone. Having spent 15 years sucking consumption and investment from everywhere, China now has a productive capacity it cannot possibly sustain, and faces a world reluctant any longer to make up for the deficiencies in Chinese demand. It therefore confronts a build up of debts it will struggle to pay and investors who expect a return they may not receive.

Worldwide redundancies in the steel and coal industries have raised the prospect of protectionism, but the problem will not end there. Unless China can stoke up private, domestic consumption, their huge export surplus will start to look abusive to job hungry and mutinous populations in the US and Europe. Particularly as Chinese markets remain deliberately hard to access for foreign producers, not to mention China’s constant stalling on serious TRIPS reforms.

Currently, China is revving up the investment engine once again, as real growth rates – behind the increasingly mistrusted official figures – stumble. Long promised structural reforms are being progressively deferred in search of the sugar high of instant – debt fuelled – growth, and the suspicion is rising that the RMB exchange rate will soon be allowed to fall.

Unfortunately for China, the world is watching now. For as long as China was an engine of growth, her protectionist instincts were tolerated. Now that China is a source of global deflation, as the vast productivity overhang depresses prices, wages and earnings worldwide, there are fewer reasons to be sanguine. And for a country so dependent upon exports as China, a rise in protectionism around the world, in the form of outright tariffs, competitive devaluations, or just domestic preferences, could prove catastrophic.

Often overlooked, in the general opposition to protectionism, is that although it is bad for everyone, it has differential effects. The causes and consequences of the Great Depression, for example, are still hotly debated, but the impact of Smoot Hawley is probably underestimated. Although net exports occupied only a small share of the US economy in 1929, bankruptcies and bank failures were concentrated in the industries and regions most exposed to exports; agriculture, minerals and steel. In each case, the markets that disappeared in response to Smoot Hawley tariffs produced a domestic surplus, a large fall in prices and a tipping point for a highly leveraged economy. Most economists talk more about the failed policy responses, rather than the constitutive vulnerabilities, but it should be obvious that an economy heavily dependent upon exports has many reasons not to upset its customers.

The BRICs were always an illusion looking for an explanation, but that explanation was in plain view the whole time. China’s accession to the WTO created an investment boom of unprecedented scale, and which may not yet have ended. But all investment booms must eventually reach a point where they start generating economic returns able to cover the accumulated debts. We have instead reached a point where debts continue to rise, while unemployment spreads and global growth diminishes.

As China and the wider world contemplate the next steps along the current and perilous economic path, they might remember that the key economic question is, and always was, how it all fits together: how policy in one part of the world has an impact elsewhere. Having spent years thinking about the BRICs as a kind of separate challenge to the world order and source of new thinking on how to conduct policy, we lost sight of how decisions in Beijing have a direct impact on jobs, and therefore political realities, around the world. The consequences of this oversight can be seen in the ongoing Trump/Sanders insurgency in the USA. It all fits together in the end. In other words, forget about the BRICs and concentrate on the mortar.

 

[Housecarl]

Hummm......

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Posted for fair use.....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-security-chief-urges-sweeping-crackdown-counter-us-140223609.html

Russian security chief urges sweeping crackdown to counter US influence

AFP
April 18, 2016

Moscow (AFP) - The powerful chief of Russia's equivalent to the FBI on Monday called for sweeping new rights restrictions, including curbing Internet freedoms and making it illegal to question Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

The head of Russia's Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin backed a radical crackdown citing th need to counteract the "destructive" influence of the United States.

"It's time to stop playing at pseudo-democracy, following pseudo-liberal values," argued the official in charge of the country's most high-profile criminal investigations in a comment piece in Kommersant Vlast weekly.

Calling for Russia to impose a strong national ideology, he condemned "falsification of information on historical facts" and proposed outlawing any criticism of Russia's controversial annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Russia should amend its extremism legislation to include "denial of the results of a public referendum," he said, likening this to an existing ban on Nazi propaganda.

Russia is struggling with a "hybrid war, unleashed by the US and its allies" and has entered a phase of "open confrontation," he said.

He accused the US of funding opposition parties that openly criticise the Kremlin, stirring up the recent fighting in breakaway Nagorny Karabakh and destabilising the Middle East by backing rebels in Syria.

"I feel it is time to put up an effective barrier against this information war. We need a harsh, appropriate and symmetrical response," Bastrykin said.

Russia and the West have seen ties slump to their lowest point since the Cold War over the crisis in Ukraine.

Bastrykin praised China's blocks on websites of foreign media to "defend the national information space" and proposed that "to a reasonable degree we could very well add this experience to our armoury in Russia."

Bastrykin also called for all religious, cultural and youth organisations in the country to be subjected to a "wide-scale and detailed check" to see if they were supporting extremism.

He proposed stripping benefits to families of those convicted on charges of extremism and terrorism and confiscating their property, echoing Stalin-era practices.

"Someone who chooses to commit these crimes should know that not only will he be buried in an unmarked grave, but he will also strip his close relatives of support from the government," Bastrykin said.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in 2014 vowed to destroy the homes of relatives of insurgents, prompting the torching of several houses. He was rebuked by President Vladimir Putin, who has now backed him to serve another term.

 

[Housecarl]

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...g-in-Jerusalem.-Update(2)-21-reported-injured

For links see article source.....
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http://jpupdates.com/2016/04/18/breaking-news-bus-explosion-in-jerusalem-at-least-20-wounded/

Bomb Rips Through Jerusalem Bus, Leaving 21 Wounded

04/18/2016 5:15 PM by JP Newsroom

(AFP). A bomb blast ripped through a bus in Jerusalem on Monday and sparked a fire, wounding at least 21 people, Israeli police said, in an apparent escalation in a wave of violence.

Details were still emerging, but police said a bomb had exploded on one bus in a relatively isolated area of Jerusalem, with the flames spreading to another one as well as a car.

Israeli domestic security agency Shin Bet referred to the explosion as a “terror attack”.

The bombing was expected to lead to a sharp increase in security ahead of Jewish Passover celebrations beginning Friday night.

If confirmed as a Palestinian bombing, it would both reverse a decline in a wave of violence that erupted in October and mark an escalation, with most of the attacks having been stabbings.

“A professional examination of police sappers has proven that a bomb exploded on the back part of the bus, resulting in the wounding of passengers and the burning of the bus,” a police statement.

“In addition, another bus and car were damaged.”

An AFP journalist at the scene said one bus was completely burnt out while another was partially burned, with a large contingent of firefighters battling to extinguish the blaze.

Police said 21 people were injured, with medics reporting at least two hurt seriously. Police were investigating whether any of the wounded were behind the bombing.

Initially police said the explosion was on an empty bus, with people on a bus and car nearby wounded by the ensuing fire, correcting later to say it was the bus with passengers that was hit by the bomb.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “we’ll find whoever prepared this explosive device”.

“We’ll reach the dispatchers and those behind them. We’ll settle the score with these terrorists. We’re in an ongoing struggle against terror, knife terror, shooting terror, bombs, rockets and tunnel terror.”

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, welcomed the attack as “a natural response to Zionist crimes”, but there was no claim of responsibility for the bombing.

– Security implications –

The blast struck in an area of the city without any major buildings or homes and which is not heavily used by pedestrians.

The location was on Moshe Baram Street close to the so-called Green Line dividing mainly Jewish west Jerusalem from mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat called on residents to be vigilant, “but continue with your plans”.

“It’s part of the deep understanding that if it’s a terror attack, they want to deter us from our normal life, and what we must do… is go back to normal life as fast as possible,” he said.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said that on a day “frightened citizens returning from their daily routine are being rushed to hospital — it is clear to us all, that the struggle against terrorism is ceaseless.”

“We will pursue and we will reach all those who wish us harm, until quiet is assured,” he said in a statement.

The explosion comes with tensions high following a wave of violence that began in October that has killed 201 Palestinians and 28 Israelis.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

The last bomb targeting a bus in Jerusalem dates back to 2011, when a British tourist was killed.

In Tel Aviv, a bomb exploded on an empty bus in 2013 in what Israeli authorities called a “terrorist” attack.

Suicide bombings were frequent during the second Palestinian intifada between 2000-2005.

Daniel Katzenstein, a first responder with the United Hatzalah medical service, said when he arrived on the scene “we saw a pile of smoke that was reminiscent of the bus bombings in the early 2000s”.

“There were many people far too dangerously close to the bus when it was burning. Our first task was to get them to a safe place and to begin to treat them,” he said.

Speaking before the bomb was confirmed, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said “if it was a terrorist attack, the implications are very great in terms of security on the ground”.

Attacks have steadily declined in recent weeks, though there have been concerns the Passover holiday could lead to a new surge in violence.

Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the recent unrest.

Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence.

(This story update is the latest report by AFP.)

 

[Housecarl]

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http://38north.org/2016/04/punggye041816/

Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site: Limited Activity Continues

By 38 North
18 April 2016

A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr.

ROK President Park Geun-hye and the Ministry of National Defense have strongly suggested that North Korea will soon conduct a fifth nuclear test, based on what has been reported as a significant up-tic in activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the run-up to the Party Congress in May. Recent commercial satellite imagery shows very limited activity at the site and key areas are clear of snow and being maintained. While there is little evidence of that a test is imminent, the possibility cannot be ruled out since the North has demonstrated the ability to conduct detonations on short notice by slow rolling preparations, masking significant indicators from satellite view.

Imagery from April 14 shows limited activity at the North Portal, the location of all of North Korea’s previous tests except the 2006 detonation. One small object (approximately 1.5 m wide x 2.5 m long), which is likely a trailer or small passenger vehicle, is present outside the tunnel entrance, whereas there were two similar sized objects present three days earlier.

Figure 1. Trailers or vehicles seen near the North Portal tunnel entrance.

Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.
Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.

At the Main Support Area, where equipment and personnel are marshaled in preparation for tests and the site of low-level activity throughout 2016, imagery shows the presence of what is likely a shipping container or equipment trailer—or possibly two positioned close together—in the main courtyard. Overall, this object measures approximately 1.25 meters by 4.75 m meters. The area in and around the Main Support Area is clear of snow and well maintained, which also indicates that it is active.

Figure 2. Large object seen at the Main Support Area.

Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.
Image includes material Pleiades © CNES 2016. Distribution Airbus DS / Spot Image, all rights reserved. For media licensing options, please contact thirtyeightnorth@gmail.com.

As for the other two operational areas where a test might be conducted—the West and South Portal—there is no apparent activity at either site in the April 14 image. However, it is noteworthy that the areas around the portals are clear of snow and well maintained, indicating that they are active.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-india-idUSKCN0XG03Y

World | Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:27pm EDT
Related: World, China

China 'positive' on India military hotline proposal

China is "positive" towards proposals to establish a military hotline with India to deal with issues along their disputed border, Defence Minister Chang Wanquan told his Indian counterpart during a meeting in Beijing, state media reported.

The two nuclear-armed neighbors have been moving to gradually ease long-existing tensions between them.

Leaders of Asia's two giants pledged last May to cool a festering border dispute, which dates back to a brief border war in 1962, though a messy territorial disagreement remains.

Chang "reacted positively toward setting up a military hotline with India on border security", state news agency Xinhua reported late on Monday, after Chang's meeting with Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar.

Chang "also suggested the two sides strengthen defense exchanges and jointly safeguard peace and tranquillity of the border area", the report added.

Xinhua cited Parrikar as saying India is ready to work with China to maintain the stability of the border.

China lays claim to more than 90,000 sq km (35,000 sq miles) ruled by New Delhi in the eastern sector of the Himalayas. India says China occupies 38,000 sq km (14,600 sq miles) of its territory on the Aksai Chin plateau in the west.

India is also suspicious of China's support for its arch-rival, Pakistan.


(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)