Iran: Violence against Muslims in CAR is ‘genocide’

Iran: Violence against Muslims in CAR is ‘genocide’

    Monday, March 10, 2014   No comments

The horrific violent behavior against Muslims in the Central African Republic is a “kind of genocide”, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said in a meeting on Wednesday with his South African counterpart Max Sisulu in Cape Town.

This issue poses a threat to the Central African Republic and actions must be taken to stop it, Larijani noted.

The Central African Republic has been facing a crisis since December 2013, when the Christian Anti-balaka militia launched attacks against the mostly Muslim Seleka group.

Many Muslims have fled to other parts of the Central African Republic or to other countries to avoid being killed by the Christian militia.

Source: TT

Tutu explaining his support for Israeli Apartheid Week: Israel's humiliation of Palestinians 'familiar to black South Africans'

Tutu explaining his support for Israeli Apartheid Week: Israel's humiliation of Palestinians 'familiar to black South Africans'

    Monday, March 10, 2014   No comments

The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation has voiced its support for Israeli Apartheid Week, saying the successful boycotting of apartheid South Africa was indispensable in bringing about its downfall.

“People who are denied their dignity and rights deserve the solidarity of their fellow human beings,” Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said on Sunday night.

“Those who turn a blind eye to injustice perpetuate injustice. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

“I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing in the Holy Land that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under apartheid.

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Kofi Annan: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have supplied the “Syrian opposition” with money and arms

Kofi Annan: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have supplied the “Syrian opposition” with money and arms

    Monday, March 10, 2014   No comments

Who armed the Syrian Rebels?

Former UN Secretary General and former international envoy to Syria Kofi Annan said Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have supplied the “Syrian opposition” with money and arms.

In an interview with the Austrian Die Presse newspaper, Annan noted that some regional and Western countries rejected the six-point plan which he presented for solving the crisis in Syria because they had differences with the Syrian leadership or with Iran, Russia and China, adding that those countries then formed the so-called “Friends of Syria” group.

He reiterated the need to solve the crisis in Syria by peaceful and political means, expressing his opposition to any form of military intervention.

Annan, who was appointed as UN Special Envoy to Syria in February 2012, highlighted that the Syrian government showed positive reaction to his efforts early in his mission with regard to declaring a limited ceasefire while the other parties rejected that step.

The former international envoy stressed that Iran must be part of the solution in Syria given its great capabilities that allow it to exert an influence in the region and play an objective role to end the crisis, pointing out that Saudi Arabia opposed any Iranian role as it views Tehran as a rival in the regional and international arena.

Annan underscored that what made the US President Barack Obama hesitant to launch any military action against Syria despite pressure by the Pentagon and the US’s Western and Gulf allies was because of the fact that the situation in Syria is totally different from Libya or any other country given its sensitive geopolitical position.

He said that belief matched his visions to end the crisis in Syria peacefully when he told everybody that there could not be a military solution to the “conflict” in Syria, adding that no full agreement on his proposals was reached at the UN Security Council, “and that was why I had to quit my mission as an international envoy to Syria”.

Annan quit his position as an envoy and informed the UN of his intention not to renew his mission, which lasted until August 31 of 2012.

Annan expressed regret that Austria withdrew its forces from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) in the occupied Syrian Golan, considering that the withdrawal of some Western states’ forces from Golan reflects these countries’ lack of desire and indifference to solve the crisis in Syria.

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Source: Die Presse

Saudis, UAE, Bahrain withdraw envoys from Qatar in security dispute: the move will further undermine the coherence of the support that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are providing rebels groups in Syria

Saudis, UAE, Bahrain withdraw envoys from Qatar in security dispute: the move will further undermine the coherence of the support that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are providing rebels groups in Syria

    Thursday, March 06, 2014   No comments

A long-simmering row between Qatar and other Gulf states over its links with the Muslim Brotherhood and the role of its television station, Al-Jazeera, has exploded into the open with an angry shouting match and the withdrawal of ambassadors.

A joint statement by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain said they were withdrawing ambassadors from the Qatari capital Doha because it had failed to stick to an agreement by the six Gulf states not to interfere in each others’ affairs.

The statement was released after a meeting in Riyadh of foreign ministers of the six Gulf countries - the other two are Kuwait and Oman - broke up in acrimony on Tuesday night, according to reports in the local media.

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Qatar has said it “regretted” the decision but would not retaliate. It said it was committed to GCC agreements but admitted to "differences” over unspecified “issues".

David Roberts, author of a recent book on Qatari foreign policy, said that the other Gulf states had previously entertained unrealistic expectations that Qatar’s approach might change when the new ruler, Emir Tamim, came to power last year after the abdication of his father.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE are in such a security-focused state of mind at the moment that it is the only lens they can see things through," he said. “Qatar’s approach is thus seen as deeply, deeply unhelpful.”

The rift is unlikely to have knock-on effects immediately, despite the importance of the region’s oil and gas supplies.

But it will further undermine the coherence of the support that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar are providing rebels groups in Syria.

Each has supported different rebel militias, and the lack of co-ordination and in-fighting on the ground has frustrated the rebels' western backers.

The US and UK had hoped that the two Gulf powers would more closely align their strategy after Emir Tamim took over, but those hopes look set to be dashed.

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Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar

    Wednesday, March 05, 2014   No comments

GCC states

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday in an unprecedented public split between Gulf Arab allies who have fallen out over the role of Islamists in a region in turmoil.

Qatar's cabinet voiced "regret and surprise" at the decision by the fellow-members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, but said Doha would not pull out its own envoys and that it remained committed to GCC security and stability.

The Saudi-led trio said they had acted because Qatar failed to honor a GCC agreement signed on November 23 not to back "anyone threatening the security and stability of the GCC whether as groups or individuals - via direct security work or through political influence, and not to support hostile media".

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fuming especially over Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement whose political ideology challenges the principle of dynastic rule.

They also resent the way Doha has sheltered influential Brotherhood cleric Yusuf Qaradawi and given him regular airtime on its pan-Arab satellite television channel Al Jazeera.

The GCC, which normally keeps its disputes under wraps, is a pro-Western alliance of monarchies set up in the 1980s to counter Iranian influence in the Gulf, and includes several of the world's biggest producers and exporters of oil and gas.

Kuwait and Oman did not join the diplomatic rebuke to Qatar. Kuwait's parliament speaker Marzouq al-Ghanim said he was concerned by its implications. Oman has not commented.

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The Ajnad al-Sham Islamic Union: Islamist alliances have emerged to overshadow the rest

The Ajnad al-Sham Islamic Union: Islamist alliances have emerged to overshadow the rest

    Tuesday, March 04, 2014   No comments

Like everywhere else in Syria, the rebel groups fighting in the Damascus region are badly divided on the ground.

A year ago, one could identify at least a handful of rival alliances among the many dozens of factions in and around the Syrian capital. All these factions seemed to be just as busy splitting from each other as they were fighting the regime. But in the past few months, as new money has started to flood in from abroad, a haphazard process of unification has begun to yield results. Today, although many smaller groups continue to fight on separately alongside them, two Islamist alliances have emerged to overshadow the rest.

THE ISLAM ARMY

The most well-known and probably largest faction in Damascus is the Islam Army of Zahran Alloush. From humble roots in the northeastern satellite town of Douma in 2011, it has grown into one of Syria’s largest guerrilla groups, with affiliates in several areas of the country. Formerly known as the Islam Brigade, it took its current name at a ceremony marking the inclusion of new groups on September 29, 2013.

While many of the Islam Army’s subfactions seem to have been cobbled together from local rebel groups that began without any discernible ideology, its leadership is firmly Islamist: Alloush is a longtime Salafi activist and the son of a Saudi Arabia–based theologian. His virulently sectarian rhetoric has found support among like-minded groups, and in November 2013 the Islam Army became a founding faction in the Islamic Front, a large, countrywide alliance that seeks to transform Syria into a Sunni theocracy.

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President Barack Obama talks about Iran, the Middle East, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and U.S. foreign policy in general

President Barack Obama talks about Iran, the Middle East, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and U.S. foreign policy in general

    Monday, March 03, 2014   No comments

President Obama sitting down for an extensive interview

Obama to Israel -- Time Is Running Out

By Jeffrey Goldberg

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House tomorrow, President Barack Obama will tell him that his country could face a bleak future -- one of international isolation and demographic disaster -- if he refuses to endorse a U.S.-drafted framework agreement for peace with the Palestinians. Obama will warn Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy. And the president will make the case that Netanyahu, alone among Israelis, has the strength and political credibility to lead his people away from the precipice.

In an hour long interview Thursday in the Oval Office, Obama, borrowing from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel, told me that his message to Netanyahu will be this: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?” He then took a sharper tone, saying that if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach." He added, "It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.”

Unlike Netanyahu, Obama will not address the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, this week -- the administration is upset with Aipac for, in its view, trying to subvert American-led nuclear negotiations with Iran. In our interview, the president, while broadly supportive of Israel and a close U.S.-Israel relationship, made statements that would be met at an Aipac convention with cold silence.

Obama was blunter about Israel’s future than I've ever heard him. His language was striking, but of a piece with observations made in recent months by his secretary of state, John Kerry, who until this interview, had taken the lead in pressuring both Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to a framework deal. Obama made it clear that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu’s.

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I returned to this particularly sensitive subject. “Just to be clear,” I asked, “You don’t believe the Iranian leadership now thinks that your ‘all options are on the table’ threat as it relates to their nuclear program -- you don’t think that they have stopped taking that seriously?”

Obama answered: “I know they take it seriously.”

How do you know? I asked. “We have a high degree of confidence that when they look at 35,000 U.S. military personnel in the region that are engaged in constant training exercises under the direction of a president who already has shown himself willing to take military action in the past, that they should take my statements seriously,” he replied. “And the American people should as well, and the Israelis should as well, and the Saudis should as well.”

I asked the president if, in retrospect, he should have provided more help to Syria’s rebels earlier in their struggle. “I think those who believe that two years ago, or three years ago, there was some swift resolution to this thing had we acted more forcefully, fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the conflict in Syria and the conditions on the ground there,” Obama said. “When you have a professional army that is well-armed and sponsored by two large states who have huge stakes in this, and they are fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict -- the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”

He portrayed his reluctance to involve the U.S. in the Syrian civil war as a direct consequence of what he sees as America’s overly militarized engagement in the Muslim world: “There was the possibility that we would have made the situation worse rather than better on the ground, precisely because of U.S. involvement, which would have meant that we would have had the third, or, if you count Libya, the fourth war in a Muslim country in the span of a decade.”

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 We also spent a good deal of time talking about the unease the U.S.'s Sunni Arab allies feel about his approach to Iran, their traditional adversary. I asked the president, “What is more dangerous: Sunni extremism or Shia extremism?”

I found his answer revelatory. He did not address the issue of Sunni extremism. Instead he argued in essence that the Shiite Iranian regime is susceptible to logic, appeals to self-interest and incentives.

“I’m not big on extremism generally,” Obama said. “I don’t think you’ll get me to choose on those two issues. What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives.”

This view puts him at odds with Netanyahu's understanding of Iran. In an interview after he won the premiership, the Israeli leader described the Iranian leadership to me as “a messianic apocalyptic cult.”

I asked Obama if he understood why his policies make the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries nervous: “I think that there are shifts that are taking place in the region that have caught a lot of them off guard,” he said. "I think change is always scary."

Below is a complete transcript of our conversation. I’ve condensed my questions. The president’s answers are reproduced in full.

read the interview >>

Bomb attacks by Sunni extremists in Lebanon have seen an increase in volunteers for the Shia militia that supports President Assad

Bomb attacks by Sunni extremists in Lebanon have seen an increase in volunteers for the Shia militia that supports President Assad

    Monday, March 03, 2014   No comments

Hizbollah Supporters

Hizbollah, the militant Lebanese Shia group, is seeing a surge in recruitment as sectarian conflict spreads from the Syrian civil war, members of the group have told the Telegraph.

A spate of car bomb attacks against Shia towns and villages in Lebanon has caused a spike in the number of young men volunteering to fight for the group in Syria as the minority sect increasingly sees its own survival as tied to that of President Bashar al-Assad.

"All the men from this area are getting guns and asking to fight in Syria, whether they are already members of Hizbollah or not," said one supporter of the militia, who asked not to be named. "We are in a critical situation and we have to fight for the sake of the Shia."

He spoke sitting in a cafe in Hermel, a town of mainly Shia inhabitants in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa valley, that has long been a bastion for the secretive paramilitary group.

Once a sleepy country haunt, Hermal today has the feel of a town at war.

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When the Telegraph met him again last week, all criticisms of Hizbollah were bygones.

Dissenters, he said, no longer had the privilege to question and criticise.

Now the Shia needed Hizbollah.

He spoke sitting at a table in an open air restaurant, beside the Orontos river, which, just a few miles down stream flows across the border into Syria. The tranquil seen was interrupted by shouting from the nearby highway and the air became acrid with smoke.

A group of youths had set fire to tyres, blocking the road as a protest because they wanted Hizbollah, and not the Lebanese national army to man the main checkpoint to enter the town. In times of peace, Hermel's Shia residents were happy to abide by the rules of the Lebanese national government, but, when feeling endangered they immediately reverted to militia they trust to protect them.

"The war is here now. It is across the borders and in out areas. We have to protect ourselves," the teacher said. "Believe me, now I would have no hesitation in sending even my own children to fight in Syria."

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Report: Obama pushes Israel to stop assassinations of Iran nuclear scientists

Report: Obama pushes Israel to stop assassinations of Iran nuclear scientists

    Sunday, March 02, 2014   No comments

President Barack Obama is pressuring Israel to stop carrying out assassinations of top nuclear scientists in Iran as the Islamic Republic continues its negotiations with world powers over its uranium enrichment program, according to a new book.

Apart from pressure from Washington that Israel give up the assassination program, sources close to Israel's intelligence agencies told CBS News’s Dan Raviv that Mossad itself viewed the campaign as too dangerous to continue. Raviv, who was updating a book he co-wrote about the history of Israel's intelligence agencies, said the pressure form the Obama administration was “more than a hint.”

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Meanwhile, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told defense officials on Saturday the country had given up its nuclear program because owning weapons of mass destruction is a sin.

“Even if there were no NPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty) or other treaties, our belief, our faith, our religion and principles tell us not to seek weapons of mass destruction,” Rouhani said.

In November, Iran agreed to stop enriching uranium beyond 20 percent and to dilute its already enriched stockpiles in return for an estimated $7 billion in sanctions relief. That deal came into effect January 20.

Following the latest round of Iran nuclear talks in Vienna on February 20, Iran and the P5+1 agreed to a framework on which to strike a final agreement within the coming months. Both sides have agreed to hold an additional round of talks in Vienna later this month.

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Jeff Bezos and the Imperial Paper; Washington Post’s prestige based on proximity to power

Jeff Bezos and the Imperial Paper; Washington Post’s prestige based on proximity to power

    Saturday, March 01, 2014   No comments

If the United States derived its might primarily from its economic power, the Washington Post would enjoy the same degree of international influence as, say, the Xinhua newspaper of Beijing. The two countries have roughly comparable outputs, with China’s GDP being about 80 percent the size of the US economy when adjusted for purchasing power, according to the IMF.
But a large part of what makes the United States a unique superpower is its role as the world’s military hegemon, reflected in part by its roughly 1,000 overseas bases. (China has none.)
It is this added power emanating from the Pentagon that helps confer an outsize authority to the opinion pages of the capital’s major paper. The Post’s status as a weathervane for the political winds of official Washington makes its views—unlike those of any other paper serving a city of a mere 630,000—virtually required reading for much of the world.

Billionaire Internet mogul Jeff Bezos seemed to understand this when he made his first foray into the industry by acquiring the Post, the go-to newspaper for Beltway policymakers, and not, for example, the Los Angeles Times, which boasts greater daily circulation.
And therein lies one underacknowledged key to understanding the Washington Post editorial board’s foreign-policy stances: As beneficiaries of the prestige and reach that come with worldwide US dominance, board members would just as soon advocate for policies that run counter to US power as they would trade places with their counterparts at, say, the Denver Post.
And yet this bipartisan support for Washington’s supremacy, which the Post mirrors, runs counter to the public will. A Washington Post blog post titled “Team America No Longer Wants to Be the World’s Police” (9/13/13) highlighted two polls showing that by a 2-to-1 margin, the US public disapproves of its government taking “the leading role among all other countries in the world in trying to solve international conflicts,” and disagrees that the US “should be ready and willing to use military force around the world.”
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