Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview

Transcript: President Obama's Full NPR Interview

    Tuesday, December 30, 2014   No comments

NPR's wide-ranging interview with President Obama covers recent executive actions on Cuba and immigration, race relations in the U.S., health care, the midterm elections and extending democracy in the Middle East.

STEVE INSKEEP: Since your party's defeat in the election, you have made two major executive actions — one on immigration, one on Cuba. One of those might have been difficult to do before the election; the other surely would've been difficult to do before the election, which makes me wonder: Is there some way in which that election just passed has liberated you?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I don't think it's been liberating. Keep in mind that all these issues are ones that we've been working on for some time.

It took about a year to arrive at the Cuba policy that was announced yesterday, including extensive negotiations with the Cuban government, meetings with the Vatican, making sure that we had looked at all the policy ramifications. And I was persuaded that ultimately this would be good for the Cuban people and more likely to lead to a loosening up of the restrictions or oppression that exists there.

With respect to immigration reform, obviously I'd been working on that for six years. And the truth ...

But this was the moment when you could do those things?

Yeah. Well, I do — here's what I do think is true: that I have spent six years now in this office. We have dealt with the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. We have dealt with international turmoil that we haven't seen in a lot of years.

And I said at the beginning of this year that 2014 would be a breakthrough year, and it was a bumpy path.

But at the end of 2014, I could look back and say we are as well-positioned today as we have been in quite some time economically, that American leadership is more needed around the world than ever before — and that is liberating in the sense that a lot of the work that we've done is now beginning to bear fruit. And it gives me an opportunity then to start focusing on some of the other hard challenges that I didn't always have the time or the capacity to get to earlier in my presidency.

Can I think of you as shifting from things you had to do to things you more want to do?

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Over 60% of Tunisians able to vote voted; 56% of them voted for Beji Caid Essebsi, 44% voted for Mohamed Moncef Marzouki

Over 60% of Tunisians able to vote voted; 56% of them voted for Beji Caid Essebsi, 44% voted for Mohamed Moncef Marzouki

    Monday, December 22, 2014   No comments

Over 60% of Tunisians able to vote voted; 56% of them voted for Beji Caid Essebsi, 44% voted for Mohammed Mouncef Marzouki. 

Essebsi, 88, appeared before 2,000 supporters who gathered outside his campaign headquarters in the capital Tunis shouting “Long live Tunisia!” and thanked the voters.

“Tunisia needs all its children. We must work hand in hand,” he said as supporters cheered.

Marzouki dismissed the declaration as unfounded and refused to concede defeat. His camp said the result was too close to call and accused the Essebsi of election “violations”.

It is the first time Tunisians have freely elected their president since independence from France in 1956.

Authorities had urged a big turnout to consolidate democracy following a chaotic four-year transition. Election organisers said turnout was at 59.04%.

Just hours before polling began on Sunday morning, troops guarding ballot papers in the central region of Kairouan came under attack and shot dead one assailant and captured three, the defence ministry said.

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The bodies of more than 230 people believed to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) have been found in a mass grave in eastern Syria

The bodies of more than 230 people believed to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) have been found in a mass grave in eastern Syria

    Wednesday, December 17, 2014   No comments

From archives: ISIL committed similar crimes in Iraq in 2014

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they were thought to be members of a tribe that fought the jihadist group in Deir al-Zour province in the summer.

The mass grave was discovered after the Sheitat were allowed to return to their homes by IS leaders, it added.

Last month, the UN said it had received reports of a massacre there in August.

Investigators said it appeared to have been perpetrated by IS in a struggle for control of oil resources near the town of Mohassan.

One survivor described seeing "many heads hanging on walls while I and my family escaped", while locals saw several freshly-dug mass graves.

Video published online also indicated that IS fighters had conducted a mass execution of fighting-age Sheitat tribesmen.

In early November, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reportedly issued a statement granting members of the tribe permission to return to their homes upon the condition that they did not assemble. They were also told to surrender all weapons and inform on all "apostates" to the group.

All "traitors" would be killed, Baghdadi's statement warned.

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Qatar and Terror Finance

Qatar and Terror Finance

    Wednesday, December 17, 2014   No comments

Qatar’s performance in the fight against terror finance tests the notion that it is a reliable friend and ally. Despite its tiny size, Doha is now being described by some U.S. officials  as the region’s  biggest source of private donations to radical groups in Syria and Iraq.

Qatar’s  historical legacy of negligence against terror finance stretches back over two decades. Doha mishandled al-Qaeda’s  old guard in  the lead-up to 9/11, making those events more rather than less likely. In recent months, there has been considerable focus on Abdulrahman al-Nuaymi, a Qatari national who has been blacklisted by the  United  States, United Nations, and European Union on charges of financing al-Qaeda. Reports indicate that Nuaymi is still a free man in Qatar, presumably because of his extensive ties to Doha’s ruling elite. This report reveals new details about several other major Qatar-based terror finance cases over the past decade in which Doha’s  policies fell considerably short of full enforcement, allowing suspected terror financiers to continue their activities after coming under initial scrutiny. This report also explains why Qatar’s mishandling of these cases cannot be attributed to a lack of institutional capacity or societal opposition but instead must be understood as willful negligence on the part of Qatari authorities.

Because of the sheer volume of material on Qatar’s terror finance challenges, FDD’s Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance will release two additional documents after this one. Part Two takes a recent list of U.S. terror finance designations from September as a jumping off point for demonstrating how private terror finance networks linked to Qatar still appear to be intact. Part Three explains why it is up to Washington to change Doha’s  strategic calculus and reveals how sustained, high-level terror finance networks with links to Qatari territory have benefitted al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups in Syria, Gaza, Somalia, Yemen, Egypt, South Asia, and Iraq. The international community cannot successfully defeat terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, the Khorasan Group, and other manifestations of al-Qaeda’s malevolent ideology until private terror finance of this sort is significantly curtailed.

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ISIL origins roots are in U.S. prisons in Iraq

ISIL origins roots are in U.S. prisons in Iraq

    Thursday, December 11, 2014   No comments

In the summer of 2004, a young jihadist in shackles and chains was walked by his captors slowly into the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq. He was nervous as two American soldiers led him through three brightly-lit buildings and then a maze of wire corridors, into an open yard, where men with middle-distance stares, wearing brightly-coloured prison uniforms, stood back warily, watching him.

“I knew some of them straight away,” he told me last month. “I had feared Bucca all the way down on the plane. But when I got there, it was much better than I thought. In every way.”

The jihadist, who uses the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed, entered Camp Bucca as a young man a decade ago, and is now a senior official within Islamic State (Isis) – having risen through its ranks with many of the men who served time alongside him in prison. Like him, the other detainees had been snatched by US soldiers from Iraq’s towns and cities and flown to a place that had already become infamous: a foreboding desert fortress that would shape the legacy of the US presence in Iraq.


The other prisoners did not take long to warm to him, Abu Ahmed recalled. They had also been terrified of Bucca, but quickly realised that far from their worst fears, the US-run prison provided an extraordinary opportunity. “We could never have all got together like this in Baghdad, or anywhere else,” he told me. “It would have been impossibly dangerous. Here, we were not only safe, but we were only a few hundred metres away from the entire al-Qaida leadership.”

It was at Camp Bucca that Abu Ahmed first met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the emir of Isis who is now frequently described as the world’s most dangerous terrorist leader. From the beginning, Abu Ahmed said, others in the camp seemed to defer to him. “Even then, he was Abu Bakr. But none of us knew he would ever end up as leader.”

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Jordanian King Abdullah II: Muslim Brotherhood hijacked Arab Spring

Jordanian King Abdullah II: Muslim Brotherhood hijacked Arab Spring

    Sunday, December 07, 2014   No comments

Jordanian King says Brotherhood hijacked Arab Spring
Jordanian King Abdullah II on Saturday said that the Muslim Brotherhood was an organized entity that had hijacked the series of popular uprisings that swept through the Arab world and came later to be called the "Arab Spring."
In an interview with U.S. interviewer and broadcast journalist Charlie Rose, King Abdullah said the Brotherhood was an official organization in his country.
He said his government had asked the Brotherhood to be part of Jordan's political process at the beginning of the Arab Spring.
He added that the Brotherhood was the first political party he had talked to at the beginning of the spring.






King Abdullah said the Brotherhood had called for changing the Jordanian constitution, the creation of a constitutional court and a national dialogue committee, noting that most of the group's demands were met.

Erdoğan: You cannot bring women and men into an equal position; this is against nature

Erdoğan: You cannot bring women and men into an equal position; this is against nature

    Monday, November 24, 2014   No comments

Erdoğan: Gender equality against nature  

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday took issue with gender equality, saying that women and men cannot be equal because they have different “natures and bodies.”

“You cannot bring women and men into an equal position; this is against nature,” Erdoğan said while addressing a meeting of an association promoting women rights in Ankara. “You cannot subject a pregnant woman to the same working conditions as a man. You cannot make a mother who has to breastfeed her child equal to a man. You cannot make women do everything men do like the communist regimes did… This is against her delicate nature.”

Erdoğan instead promoted the notion of "equivalence" and equality of women before the justice system.

"They talk about equality between men and women. The correct thing is equality among women and equality among men. But what is particularly essential is women's equality before the justice [system]," he said. "What women need is to be equivalent, rather than equal; that is, justice."

The president then went on to explain that Islam exalts women as “mothers” and said that when he was a child he used to kiss his mother's feet, referring to a hadith of Prophet Muhammad that says “Heaven lies at the foot of your mother.”

“My mother would be shy, but I used to say, ‘Mother, don't pull your feet away, because the scent of heaven is there.' Sometimes, she would cry [when I would say that],” Erdoğan said.

He also slammed feminists, saying they “don't accept the concept of motherhood.”

“But those who do understand are enough for us. We'll continue down this path with them,” he said.

Participant forced out of conference hall

A conference attendee was forcefully taken from the hall when she interrupted a speech by Family and Social Policies Minister Ayşenur İslam and said she wanted to ask a question.

The participant raised her hand while İslam was delivering her speech, but the minister said she would take her question afterward. When the participant insisted, security guards grabbed her, covered her mouth and took her out of the conference hall.

____________

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_erdogan-you-cannot-make-men-and-women-equal_365182.html; November 24, 2014

In birthplace of Arab Spring, Tunisia’s Islamists get sobering lesson in governing

In birthplace of Arab Spring, Tunisia’s Islamists get sobering lesson in governing

    Saturday, November 22, 2014   No comments

TUNIS — On a recent warm evening, hundreds of men and women were mingling outside the offices of Tunisia’s Islamist party. They were singing and cheering. They were waving little red-and-white Tunisian flags. It looked as if they had just won an election.

In fact, they had just lost control of parliament. But in a strife-torn Arab world, this young democracy had pulled off a rare feat: a clean, peaceful election.

“What are we celebrating today?” the Islamists’ leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, a 73-year-old scholar, cried into a microphone as fireworks popped overhead. “We are celebrating freedom! We are celebrating Tunisia! We are celebrating democracy!”


Nearly three years after the Arab Spring, the hopes unleashed by the mass uprisings have largely given way to despair. Egypt suffered a coup; Libya is lurching toward civil war; Syria has experienced a bloodbath. Tunisia is the only country to overthrow a dictator and build a democracy. On Sunday, Tunisians will cast ballots in the second round of national elections, choosing a president after the Oct. 26 parliamentary vote.

Still, the Islamists’ defeat in the first round reflects the clear discontent with what democracy has yielded. Ghannouchi was symbolic of Islamists in the region who surged to power after the uprisings and hoped to transform countries ruled by secular autocrats. But Tunisia’s government has struggled to contain terrorism, revive the economy and win over a deeply secular society.

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Saudi state and the religious establishment have for decades fueled sectarian animosities across the region

Saudi state and the religious establishment have for decades fueled sectarian animosities across the region

    Thursday, November 20, 2014   No comments

Public beheadings in Saudi Arabia inspire ISILand like-minded groups

Saudi state and the religious establishment have for decades fueled sectarian animosities across the region. Saudi recruits for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group are often motivated by a desire to contain Shiism and stem Iranian influence in the region – strategic objectives that Saudi media perpetuates ad infinitum. Anti-Shiite (and anti-Christian and anti-Jewish) incitement is spread across the region by Saudi-based television channels. It was encouraging that immediately after the attacks the long-standing Saudi Minister of Information Abdel Aziz Khoja announced the closure of perhaps the worst of those TV stations, Wisal. But in a sign that factions within the Saudi regime are divided over how to deal with the Shiites and with Sunni extremism in the kingdom, the minister was dismissed the next day, and Wisal, which retains some popularity in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, is still up and running.

Nimr’s political role is rooted in a long tradition of Shiite activism, which goes back to the foundation of the Saudi kingdom, and which has led to the establishment of Shiite Islamist movements since the 1970s. He hails from a prominent family from Awamiya, a relatively poor Shiite village surrounded by date farms outside of Qatif, the largest Shiite city in Saudi Arabia. Awamiya has a long history of resistance to the Saudi monarchy. Indeed, Nimr’s grandfather led an armed revolt in 1929-1930 against Saudi tax collectors and Wahhabi missionaries, who were sent to the Eastern Province after the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz bin Saud, conquered it in 1913.

Awamiya was also one of the centers of the Shiite uprising in 1979 that was inspired by the Iranian Revolution. Nimr became politicized during these events and joined the Shirazi movement, which had started the uprising. The Shirazi movement was a transnational Shiite political organization led by the Iraqi-Iranian cleric Muhammad Mahdi al-Shirazi, but the bulk of its supporters were Shiite Muslims from the Persian Gulf states (mainly Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). Nimr enrolled in the movement’s religious school (hawza) in Iran and then became a teacher in the movement’s hawza in Sayyida Zeinab, the suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus that became a key transnational hub for Shiite pilgrims, students and activists.

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Obama says no change in Syria policy, removing Assad still not priority

Obama says no change in Syria policy, removing Assad still not priority

    Monday, November 17, 2014   No comments

Despite Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's recent remarks claiming that the US administration is signaling a change of policy over Syria and saying that both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the radical Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) must go, US President Barack Obama has said his administration hasn't changed its Syria policy and is not actively working on plans to remove Assad from power.

During a press conference in Brisbane, where the G-20 Leaders' Summit is being held, Obama on Sunday was asked whether the US is recalibrating its Syria policy and making the removal of Assad part of its strategy, even though the removal of Assad initially had not been a priority.

“Certainly, no changes have taken place with respect to our attitude towards Bashar al-Assad,” said Obama.

Stressing once again that Assad has lost legitimacy in the eyes of his own people, Obama explained further why removing Assad from power is not a priority at this point:

“For us to then make common cause with him against ISIL would only turn more Sunnis in Syria in the direction of supporting ISIL, and would weaken our coalition that sends a message around the region this is not a fight against Sunni Islam, this is a fight against extremists of any stripe who are willing to behead innocent people or kill children, or mow down political prisoners with the kind of wanton cruelty that I think we've very rarely seen in the modern age.”

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