A conversation with Olivier Roy on the nature of the alleged Marathon terrorists

A conversation with Olivier Roy on the nature of the alleged Marathon terrorists

    Wednesday, April 24, 2013   No comments

Olivier Roy has a different view of radical Islam from many of the experts you find writing in the American press. Roy, now 63, first went to Central Asia as a 19-year-old high school dropout, but eventually become a leading expert on Islamic politics. He has been a consultant to the French Foreign Ministry and United Nations and is currently a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Several of his books are landmarks in the field, including The Failure of Political Islam and Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah.  

Roy’s view is relevant in understanding the alleged Boston marathon bombers. A decade ago, Roy was pointing out that al Qaeda was drawing many of its recruits from Western Europe rather than from Saudi Arabia or Palestine or Pakistan. He saw al Qaeda as a product of the failure of Arab nationalism and Marxism-Leninism to establish viable popular societies. Its tactics and outlook derived from the Red Army Faction or Red Brigades or the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rather than from the Koran or from religious factions within Islam. Al Qaeda, Roy wrote in The Illusions of September 11, is “a junction of a radicalized Islam with a shrill anti-imperialism reshaped by globalization.”

read more >>

Erdoğan’s compromise: I will go to Gaza with Abbas

Erdoğan’s compromise: I will go to Gaza with Abbas

    Wednesday, April 24, 2013   No comments

Will what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said about the delay of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s trip to Gaza change his travel schedule? This was the question the journalist asked Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on board the night plane carrying them to Brussels for a NATO meeting on Syria the next day, April 23. Davutoğlu’s answer was a simple “No.”

“The main parameter of Erdoğan’s visit to Gaza is not what Kerry said,” Davutoğlu carried on. “It is the reconciliation talks between the Palestinians.” If the two rival Palestinian factions – Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas lead by Khaled Mashaal – would come to an agreement in talks expected early in May in Egypt, the current picture will change as Ankara believes. “If the Palestinians agree, it may be possible [for Erdoğan] to go to Gaza with Abbas,” Davutoğlu said. So that is Erdoğan’s formula for his Gaza trip, which has great symbolic importance for his foreign policy especially in the Middle East. “We have been talking about this both with Abbas and Mashaal,” Davutoğlu added.

The power base of Abbas is the West Bank and Mashaal’s is Gaza, which has been under Israeli embargo since 2006, the reason being shown as rocket attacks from there on Israeli towns. Israeli military operations on Gaza, which caused civilian losses of life caused Erdoğan’s outburst during the Davos meetings in 2009, the famous “one minute” incident with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

read more >>

Families of Lebanese hostages believe Turkey can secure release of captives

Families of Lebanese hostages believe Turkey can secure release of captives

    Tuesday, April 23, 2013   No comments

The families of Lebanese pilgrims currently being held hostage in Syria believe that the Turkish government can play an effective role in securing the release of the Lebanese nationals, Turkish diplomatic sources have said.
Syrian opposition forces abducted 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in May of last year as they were returning from a pilgrimage to Iran, apparently to use them in a prisoner swap with the Syrian government. Two of them were later released, reportedly thanks to Turkish efforts.

Turkish Ambassador to Lebanon Süleyman İnan Özyıldız has stated that the families believe Turkey has strong influence among the Syrian opposition and therefore, according to them, Turkey can solve the hostages issue if it makes a greater effort.

read more >>

Immigrant Kids, Adrift

Immigrant Kids, Adrift

    Tuesday, April 23, 2013   No comments

By MARCELO M. SUÁREZ-OROZCO and CAROLA SUÁREZ-OROZCO
THE alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.

In 1997, we started a large-scale study of newly arrived immigrants, ages 9 to 14, in 20 public middle and high schools in Boston, Cambridge, Mass., and the San Francisco Bay Area. Our participants came from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean; many fled not only poverty but also strife, in countries like Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Haiti. Over five years, we interviewed more than 400 students, as well as their siblings, parents and teachers. We gathered academic records, test scores and measures of psychological well-being.

The two brothers accused in the Boston bombings — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed on Friday, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, who was captured later that day — were around 15 and 8, respectively, when they immigrated. Both attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin, that city’s only public high school. They were not part of our study, but they fit the demographic profile of the subjects of our research: birth to families displaced by war or strife, multiple-stage (including back-and-forth) migration, language difficulties and entry into harsh urban environments where gangs and crime are temptations.

When asked “what do you like most about being here?” an 11-year-old Haitian boy in Cambridge told us, “There is less killing here.” His response was notably succinct, but not unique.

A Salvadoran 10-year-old whose family had narrowly escaped death squads recounted intense loneliness. When a firecracker was set off in his working-class Cambridge neighborhood, he plunged into the arms of a stunned researcher.

read more >>

Rand Paul Wants to Ban 8-Year-Old Immigrants from America

Rand Paul Wants to Ban 8-Year-Old Immigrants from America

    Monday, April 22, 2013   No comments

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul won the coveted position of "Republican liberals kind of like" with his drone-related filibuster earlier this year. Paul will surely disappoint them today with his demand that the Senate delay immigration reform until until we figure out how the Boston marathon bombers got into America, and how to prevent that from happening in the future. The thing is, we know how the Tsaraevs got into America. It's not because there were warning signs and they slipped through our fingers. They got into America because they were kids.

read more >>

Algerians in London protest against shale gas and the lack of a national debate

Algerians in London protest against shale gas and the lack of a national debate

    Monday, April 22, 2013   No comments

by HAMZA HAMOUCHENE, AMINE MOUFFOK, MERIEM AIS, and RACHIDA LAMRI

It was during an informal discussion in London, organised by Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC) on the topic of the dangers of shale gas exploitation in Algeria, that some participants, learning of the imminent official visit of the Algerian Minister of Energy and Mining to London, felt compelled to take action.

The information presented during the discussion left participants extremely concerned with the potentially deleterious consequences of shale gas extraction in Algeria, through hydraulic fracturing “fracking”. A shale gas well requires the high-pressured injection of colossal quantities of water (20 000 m3), mixed with a concoction of over 750 chemical substances (29 of which are known or suspected carcinogens, presenting health and environmental risks), together with sand, in order to fracture highly impermeable rock, leading to the release of shale gas. This technique has raised major concerns for its substantial use of water (particularly worrying for the Sahara) and for the potential leaking of these chemical substances into groundwater. It was, therefore, rejected by many communities across the world, including France. Indeed, the latter banned it on its soil, but has been invited to experiment with it in Algeria.
read more >>

Partial Readings: The Violence We Can, and Can’t, Prevent

Partial Readings: The Violence We Can, and Can’t, Prevent

    Monday, April 22, 2013   No comments

By Colin Kinniburgh

It’s been a grim week. Whether it was the bombing at the Boston marathon or the explosion of a fertilizer plant in small-town Texas, the week’s events have instilled, for many in the U.S., a renewed sense of vulnerability to mindless violence. Reports of atrocities in all corners of the globe, many of them far more lethal than the Boston bombing, have hardly been comforting. Neither have developments in Congress, where the crucial components of new gun control legislation were shot down, while CISPA—the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a major blow to internet freedom—passed in the House.

Killing three and leaving close to two hundred wounded, the Boston marathon bombings have resonated around the world, with their symbolic weight adding to the trauma experienced by the immediate victims. Messages of sympathy and solidarity are pouring in from around the world, including from actual war zones. In response to the violence, many on the scene have showed tremendous courage and fortitude, including runners who ran on from the finish line to the hospital to donate blood.

read more >>

FBI: Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev followed 'radical Islam'

FBI: Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev followed 'radical Islam'

    Sunday, April 21, 2013   No comments

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by a foreign government as a "follower of radical Islam and a strong believer" whose personality had changed drastically in just a year, according to the FBI.

As investigators considered possible motives for Monday's fatal bombings, U.S. authorities acknowledged that an unnamed government had contacted the FBI to say the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen “had changed drastically” since 2010 and was preparing to leave the United States “to join unspecified underground groups,” according to an official statement from the FBI.

U.S. officials have not named the foreign nation, but it is presumed to be Russia. Tsarnaev traveled there in 2012 and stayed for six months.

read more >>

US prepares $130m military aid package for Syrian rebels

US prepares $130m military aid package for Syrian rebels

    Sunday, April 21, 2013   No comments

The US readied a package Saturday of up to $130m in non-lethal military aid to Syrian opposition forces while European countries consider easing an arms embargo, moves that could further pressure the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

US secretary of state John Kerry was expected to announce the plans about the defensive military supplies at a meeting Saturday that was bringing together the Syrian opposition leadership and their main international allies.

The supplies possibly could include body armor, armored vehicles, night vision goggles and advanced communications equipment.

US officials said the details and costs were to be determined at the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss Kerry's announcement.

read more >>

President Assad's army is starting to call the shots in Syria

President Assad's army is starting to call the shots in Syria

    Monday, April 15, 2013   No comments

ROBERT FISK

Old Mohamed Said al-Sauda from Deraa, in his tawny gown and kuffiah headscarf, sat at the end of a conclave of tribal elders, all newly arrived in Damascus for an audience with no less than the President himself. They sat – only one woman in a blue dress among them – round a long table in the Damas Rose Hotel drinking water and coffee, rehearsing their anxieties. How should they talk to the young armed men who came into their villages? How should they persuade the rebels not to damage their land and take over their villages? "We try to talk to the saboteurs and to get them to go back to rebuilding the country," al-Sauda told me. "We try to persuade them to put aside their arms, to stop the violence. We used to have such a safe country to live in."

These men, middle-aged for the most part with tough, lined, dark faces, are the first line of defence of the Assad regime, the landowners and propertied classes of the peasants who benefited most from the original Baathist revolution and whose prosperity has been threatened by the mass uprising against the regime. They come from Tartus, Deraa, the Damascus countryside, from Hama and Latakia, and they speak the language of the Assad government – up to a point. "Syria is a mosaic unlike any other in the world," says Salman Hamdan. "The sectarian divide does not exist in our country. Muslims, Christians, they are the same. It is a conspiracy that is classifying people. Some have chosen the homeland; others have decided to be ungrateful to their country for personal gain."

read more >>