PSR - Politics & Strategy Reviews

A strong and measured reply to Barzani

2007-04-24T22:54:00.000+03:00

What Massoud Barzani said regarding Turkey during an interview with al-Arabiya was grave and cannot be accepted. The reaction, a proportional and pretty strong one, came from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan.

“We were invited to attend the Riyadh summit of the Arab League. While there, we spoke with Iraqi President Talabani and it was agreed that we should not talk to the media,” said the Prime Minister. “I gave some reasons as to why, but now it seems that they broke their promises again.

“I would recommend that they walk the walk and talk the talk. They should establish their position clearly,” continued Erdoğan. “Or else, they will squirm beneath their own words. Northern Iraq, neighboring Turkey, is making serious errors for not adhering to their own policies, and they could pay dearly. We are a natural state, a state whose history dates back centuries. History knows what we have done in relation, to even Baghdad, let alone northern Iraq.

“Thus, one needs to be very careful when using such strong rhetoric. Barzani, unfortunately, has ignored that line again,” he said. “I don't know if he is satisfying himself with these remarks, but the Turkish Republic does not need to respond in kind in order to gain satisfaction. They should be writhing under those words. It would be to their benefit to be more careful.”
The reaction is strong, but still, “measured.”

*** *** ***

So, what did Barzani say?
First of all, it has to be noted that what Barzani said at the “Frankly Speaking” program of al-Arabiya television was not specifically about Turkey and the interview encompassed Iran, viewpoint on Israel and the situation inside Iraq. When the al-Arabiya reporter said, “Turkey says they would not let the Kurds to annex Kirkuk to Iraqi Kurdistan,” Barzani replies, “We will not allow the Turks to interfere in the issue of Kirkuk.”

Afterwards, the journalist reminded Barzani that the Turks have “a huge army.” Barzani continues, “I do not fear their military power. No matter how strong their military power might be, it will not be stronger than that of Saddam. I do not fear their military or diplomatic power because they interfere in an affair that does not concern them. They interfere in an internal affair of another country. Kirkuk is an Iraqi city of Kurdish identity. History, geography, and all facts prove that Kirkuk is part of Iraq's Kurdistan and Kurdistan is part of Iraq. Therefore, Kirkuk is an Iraqi city with a Kurdish identity and Turkey has no right to interfere in the issue of Kirkuk. If it does, we will interfere in the issue of Diyarbakır and other cities.”

Asked if this is a threat, Barzani replies, “This is not a threat but a reply to interference. What right does Turkey have to interfere in the issue of Kirkuk?” He then says, “If they allow themselves to interfere in the issue of Kirkuk for the sake of a few thousand Turkomans there, we will then interfere for the 30 million Kurds in Turkey.”

The journalist then asks if things will reach this limit. Barzani says he hopes not, and continues, “If the Turks insist on interfering in the issue of Kirkuk, I will be ready to bear all the consequences and not allow them to peddle their plan in Kirkuk.”

Responding to another question, Barzani adds, “If we are denied our right to settle down and live freely, I swear by God that we will not allow others to live in security or stability. We are ready to defend our freedom and our cause to the end.”

This reply brings forth the question whether the Iraqi Kurds are helping Kurds in Turkey and Iran. “Frankly speaking, we support their rights,” says Barzani. “We do not interfere in their affairs; they choose the way to demand their rights or to struggle for their rights.”

Barzani denies supporting them with funds and weapons and says, “They do not ask us and we are not ready to interfere in their affairs, but we support them morally and politically. We are against the use of violence. It is impossible to support them with weapons, but we are ready to help them with all other means.”

*** *** ***

This is not a “wise” speech. In addition, it is riddled with mistakes. He says there are 30 million Kurds in Turkey, thus lying through his teeth. Moreover, what he says regarding Kirkuk amount to “tautology.” Claiming that Kirkuk is a city of “Kurdish identity,” and that “history, geography and all facts prove that Kirkuk is part of Iraq's Kurdistan,” is a self-styled allegation. He tries to build politics on this claim, but you cannot build politics upon tautology.

His father had made the same mistake in 1974 and this “miscalculation” resulted in obliteration and great suffering for Kurds. The reason for Jalal Talabani's breaking up and forming a separate organization is a grave mistake of father Barzani. Thus, decision makers in Turkey should not think Talabani and Barzani are “the same thing.”

In fact, this rhetoric was not viewed positively by the Talabani. Two weeks ago, a Kurdish minister from the Baghdad government was in Turkey for a meeting and he complained of the “inciting remarks” of Barzani.

Why is Barzani behaving this way? It is related with his personality. Massoud Barzani has a “rigid” personality. Plus, he lives 20 kilometers north of Irbil, on top of a mountain in Selahaddin, closed off from the world. One cannot say he has a broad field of view. However, those words cannot be counted as a “miscalculation” as a whole. Barzani thinks Turkey is in an atmosphere of elections and cannot act freely because of domestic balances. He thinks the rhetoric against him in Turkey in essence stems from Turkish inner politics, and is about the ongoing power struggle. He is also aware that the United States is cornered both in domestic politics and in Iraq. Thus, he comes up with the conclusion that his room for maneuvering has widened during this critical year for Kirkuk.

Add to those the fact that Barzani thinks Turkey's real issue is not PKK, but the formation in Iraq's Kurdistan region, and that Turkey is determined not to recognize this formation. Adding his personal traits to this conviction, Barzani toughens more and more. It can also be thought that he is following the general “diplomatic line” in the Middle East, which is basically aiming to reach a “consensus point” by “escalating” issues first.

But, he is wrong. Of course, it is not on the agenda for Turkey to militarily intervene in northern Iraq “immediately.” Turkey's national interests, the situation in Iraq, the United States, regional and international stability, etc. would not let this happen. It is expected that the relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdish leaders would continue with “harsh declarations” for a while. Thus, Barzani might think he has got a “tactical advantage.”

But, it is pretty dubious that he gets a “strategic advantage” out of this situation. Enmity between Kurds and Turks would benefit none, but when one looks at the “balances of power,” it would be especially harmful for Kurds.

The “message” in Tayyip Erdoğan's measured but strong reply should be understood as such....

Cengiz Candar

Turkey weighs cross-border attack on PKK separatists

2007-02-02T12:50:00.000+02:00

By Vincent Boland and Guy Dinmore
Published: February 1 2007 02:00 Last updated: February 1 2007 02:00
Turkey made a decisive contribution to the Iraq war nearly four years ago when the parliament in Ankara rejected a US request to allow an invasion from the north. The military impact of this decision belongs to the "What if...?" school of history.

The diplomatic fallout is still casting a shadow over the US-Turkish relationship. Now Turkey could be about to make a second dramatic contribution.

Amid constant bloody clashes between Turkish troops and PKK Kurdish separatist guerrillas operating out of northern Iraq, Ankara is weighing up a cross-border incursion to attack PKK bases. Turkey, its political leaders insist, has the right and the determination to eliminate threats to its territory wherever they come from.

General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff, is expected to set out Turkey's concerns over Iraq when he visits Washington later this month. One possible outcome intended to guard against a unilateral Turkish intervention would be a joint anti-PKK military operation with US and Iraqi forces, says an analyst who asked not to be named.

Turkey is also becoming alarmed by what it claims is electoral and demographic gerrymandering by Iraqi Kurds in Kirkuk, the oil capital of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Ankara fears that Kurdish control of Kirkuk would give the Iraqi Kurds the economic basis for independence if Iraq were to break up.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, and other Turkish leaders have warned repeatedly that the gerrymandering threatens to make a fait accompli of a referendum on Kirkuk's status later this year that Turkey will not tolerate. Turkey is increasingly identifying with the Turkmen minority in the city, which Ankara believes is being ill treated by the Kurds.
Some see the danger of fighting erupting in Kirkuk. This would complicate US plans to "surge" troops into Baghdad, commented Glen Howard, head of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington security think-tank.

"The Turks are now signalling that they are going to arm the Iraqi Turkmen as the Kurds refuse to back off on the [Kirkuk] referendum," he commented.

Some of the talk in Turkey is election-year rhetoric: no Turkish politician ever lost votes by being tough on Kurdish separatism.

But diplomats and analysts say the debate is also serious. A military strike into northern Iraq - with or without the consent of the US - is militarily and politically possible, perhaps even probable, some believe.

A senior retired Turkish diplomat, with extensive knowledge of the political and military calculations involved in such a decision, said military planning was not as far advanced as public statements from politicians suggested.

"This is not an easy decision to take, even though we are entitled by international law to undertake such a mission," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

"We have to ask ourselves whether it would achieve our objectives, would it satisfy public opinion, what impact it would have on our international relations."
The debate among the Turkish leadership, hesaid, "is hot, but the thinking is not yet at that stage [of military intervention]".

In 2006, the US and Turkish governments each appointed a retired general - Gen Joseph Ralston of the US and Gen Edip Baser of Turkey - as "PKK co-ordinators" to develop a strategy to target the separatists in northern Iraq. But last month Mr Erdogan branded the initiative "a failure", without quite specifying how it had failed.

The two generals met senior politicians in Ankara this week and the initiative appears to be still on track.

Mr Erdogan's remark, nonetheless, indicated Turkey's impatience with the apparent impunity with which the PKK is acting and the inability of the overstretched US and Iraqi military to crack down on the separatists in Iraq's most stable region.

Turkey is home to 15m ethnic Kurds, some of whom openly sympathise with the PKK. It fought a long war against the PKK in the 1980s and 1990s, which cost at least 35,000 lives. After that conflict petered out and its leadership was captured, the PKK disappeared into the Iraqi mountains to launch periodic attacks on Turkish soil.

Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, said in Ankara recently the US had "enormous sympathy" with Turkey's stance on the PKK, but he suggested Ankara needed to work more closely with Baghdad rather than undertake unilateral moves.

Diplomats say Ankara should be spreading largesse among the Kurdish communities, instead of threatening to disrupt the referendum process in Kirkuk. Others say Turkey's entire Iraq strategy - such as it is - will fail unless it wins the hearts and minds of the Iraqi Kurds.
Sahin Alpay, an academic and commentator, wrote this week: "The most effective way for Ankara to achieve its objectives in Iraq is to win the trust and friendship of the Iraqi Kurds."
Additional reporting Guy Dinmore in Washington

Star Wars Gangsta Rap and others

2007-01-24T12:52:00.000+02:00

Thats ok, alittle fun...(coffee ?)

1-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWKHbSxnfB8
2-http://outhouserag.typepad.com/outhouserag/2006/09/star_wars_gangs.html
3-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX3aSeHwf7A
4-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x2-AmY8FI8&mode=related&search=

Furor in Iran over ?Turkish dancing? accusations

2007-01-04T11:38:00.000+02:00

Thursday, January 4, 2007

An Iranian vice president has filed a complaint against two lawmakers after a furor erupted over his alleged attendance at a ceremony in Turkey where women were dancing, the Fars news agency reported.

Esfandyar Rahim Mashaie has accused the members of Parliament of conducting a smear campaign against him by distributing a CD which purports to show him applauding while a woman stages an oriental dance at an official ceremony in Turkey.

It is considered strictly forbidden under Islam in Iran for a man to watch an unrelated woman dancing and such allegations are deeply sensitive for a member of conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government.

Mashaie, who is also head of Iran's tourism and culture organization, has accused Members of Parliament Emad Afrough and Saeed Abotaleb of doctoring the video to show him applauding the dancing and said he did not attend that section of the ceremony.

?They lied since they edited a portion of the opening session when there was dancing, trying to say that I was there during the whole show,? he said. ?I was not there, you are wrong. Watch it again. I objected to the Secretary-General [of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu]... and I told him: ?No Islamic!'? he told Fars.

?The CD you saw was certainly an edited version. Of course I clapped, but not during that dance. ?I will pursue the case until they tell me that they were wrong and compensate me for the fuss they have caused,? said Mashaie, who was Ahmadinejad's cultural supremo during his tenure as the mayor of Tehran.

Asked why he had maintained his silence over a ceremony which took place more than a year ago, he replied: ?There was nothing to talk about. There is conspiracy. A conspiracy to tarnish the government's work.?

Afrough retorted to Fars that he would be filing a complaint of his own. ?I am also ready to file a complaint. We were expecting from him to leave the ceremony but apparently he did not and sat until the end of it.?

On Iraq, Israel's borders, Quebec, Republican voters, Turkey and turkey

2006-12-23T09:47:00.000+02:00

The year's big issue, again
SIR ? The ghosts of Lord Raglan and Sir Douglas Haig must be roaming your corridors late at night, because I detect the spirit of Balaclava and the Somme in your rejection of the Iraq Study Group's report (?Don't do it?, December 9th). In striking contrast to your ?stay the course? position, the cry of sauve qui peut is now resounding through the offices of Republicans hoping to be elected in 2008, and congressional and popular support is eroding in line with the deterioration in our position on the ground in Iraq.

Maybe we should view superpower America as being a pitiful, helpless giant. The technical wizardry of the invasion was awesome, of course, but that is in stark contrast to the occupation, where an undermanned, underequipped army assigned to embody the neocons' nation-building dream has proved itself incapable of handling the job.

The prospect, then, is for some version of ?cut and run?, however well disguised, and however dishonourable. It would not be the first time in American history: Bill Clinton in Somalia, Ronald Reagan in Lebanon, and Gerald Ford in Vietnam come to mind?not to mention the 1876 election compromise that withdrew Union troops from the South, condemning Southern blacks to almost another century of servitude. And for a worst-case scenario, there was Britain's abrupt withdrawal from the Indian subcontinent in 1947, which forced millions to flee their ancestral homes, with roughly 1m dying in the attempt.

William Burke

San Francisco

SIR ? You argue that the announcement of an American withdrawal will weaken our leverage over the internal politics of Iraq. However, the opposite is equally plausible. As long as Iraq's leaders think America will keep its forces in the country indefinitely they will continue to refuse to compromise and turn a blind eye to sectarian violence. Maybe the prospect of American forces being pulled out will concentrate Iraqi minds. But because either option could fail, isn't it sensible for the United States to choose the one that will minimise costs and the loss of American lives?

Richard Greene

Hopewell, New Jersey

Marking the line
SIR ? It is incorrect to refer to the ?Green Line? as ?Israel's internationally recognised border? (?Rowing Rabbis (cont.)?, December 9th). The Green Line represents the ceasefire lines drawn up in 1949 after the Arab-Israeli war, and up until 1967 Israel's Arab neighbours never recognised this as an international border. Following the Six Day War, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 that called for Israel to withdraw from ?territories occupied in the recent conflict? (note it did not say all territories) in return for a permanent peace agreement and termination of all hostilities. It did not call for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line, nor recognise this as Israel's permanent border.

The language of the resolution was carefully drafted to allow for territorial adjustments as part of any peace negotiations, and this is reflected in the agreements that Israel eventually signed with Egypt and Jordan, the Oslo Accords signed with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Ehud Barak's proposals to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. The recent proposal made by Ehud Olmert to resume negotiations with the Palestinians is also consistent with this principle.

Raphael Lerner

Glencoe, Illinois

Not a nation apart
SIR ? You completely missed the subtle nature of the motion on Quebec passed by Canada's Parliament (?Nation bidding?, December 2nd). It recognised that the Québécois do form a nation within a united Canada, but because Québécois are French-speaking Canadians, tied to French culture and ethnic ancestry from France, the motion refers only to a people with no mention of provincial boundaries. Many Quebeckers are not Québécois. As such, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, has assuaged the pride of the separatists, yet given them no ground to further their ends of separating the province of Quebec from Canada.

Matt Hurst

Ottawa, Canada

SIR ? A few years ago I sat next to a young Quebecker on an aeroplane and she explained to me how she saw herself as living in a distinct society, but one which was not simply French. She had once visited Paris, where she had been treated to haute cuisine at a restaurant of the utmost elegance, causing her to feel part of something very superior to Anglophone Canada. After the meal she slipped down to the ladies' room and there, in a moment of horrified revelation, she had understood that she was also a North American.

Edward Lidderdale

London

Primary state of mind
SIR ? Regarding Lexington's thoughts on whether the Republicans can become a national party again (?A national party no more?? December 2nd). I'm a ?Live Free or Die? New Hampshire gun-owning libertarian fiscal conservative Republican-leaning independent who has voted a straight Democratic ticket for two elections in a row now. That makes me just the sort of voter Lexington had in mind. I have always found the way that the GOP won the South distasteful, but under George Bush the party has finally become an organisation I would be ashamed to support in any way. Karl Rove is not a genius and now his luck is running out. Perhaps the Republicans need to remember their first and greatest president, who proved conclusively that the South, for all its delusions, doesn't amount to much alone. Otherwise, we'll just have to bring back the Whigs.

Bruce Morley

Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire

A bird's tale
SIR ? Naile Berna Kovuk's indignation at Turkey being named after poultry is misplaced (Letters, December 2nd). The bird was actually named after the presumed country of origin, not vice versa. When first encountered, the turkey was confused with guinea-fowl, known then as turkeycocks. They were introduced to Europe from their native Africa via Turkey. The rest is (etymological) history.

Michael Metcalf

New York

SIR ? English merchants in Turkey discovered a most delicious bird to eat and exported it back to England, where it became very popular, and was known as a ?Turkey bird? or simply a turkey. There are odd names for a turkey in other languages as well, where the bird always seems to have come from somewhere else. In Turkey itself it is known as hindi (meaning from India), in Italy tacchino (peacock) or pollo d'India (India again); in Arabic it is called an ?Ethiopian bird?.

Tony Allwright

Killiney, Ireland

SIR ? The Poles call the same species indyk, perhaps after the French name for it, dinde (of the Indies). The Portuguese call it peru. The turkey is a truly global bird and should be used as a fitting symbol for the next round of World Trade Organisation talks.

Konrad Brodzinski

London

With Lasers and Daring, Doctors Race to Save a Young Man?s Brain

2006-12-19T13:31:00.000+02:00

He picked up a sponge soaked in antiseptic and began scrubbing the shaved skull of Chris Ratuszny, 26, a mechanic from Lindenhurst, N.Y.

Mr. Ratuszny lay on the operating table, anesthetized and oblivious. His head jutted out past the end of the table, supported by four pins that had been screwed into his skull. The pins were attached, like spokes in a wheel, to a semicircular frame ? surreal but standard, the hardware typically used to immobilize the head for brain surgery. A thick purple line had been drawn from his neck to the top of his head, to guide the scalpels.

He was about to become the first person in the United States to undergo an operation involving the use of an excimer laser to treat a giant brain aneurysm, a dangerous ballooning of an artery that could burst and kill him or leave him with devastating brain damage. The aneurysm was too big for the most common treatments, which involve clips or metal coils; it required bypass surgery on an artery in the brain.

The laser is not approved for brain surgery in the United States, but Dr. Langer got permission from the Food and Drug Administration to use it on an emergency basis for Mr. Ratuszny (ra-TOOSH-nee) last Tuesday at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. The Dutch neurosurgeon who devised the laser procedure, Dr. Cornelius Tulleken, flew in from the Netherlands to help. He has performed the operation on about 300 patients in Europe.

Dr. Tulleken?s technique involves a seemingly small variation on the standard procedure and takes just a few minutes in an eight-hour operation. But it could make all the difference for patients like Mr. Ratuszny, said Dr. Langer, who traveled to Utrecht in 1999 to learn the procedure from Dr. Tulleken. The advantage of the laser is that it lets surgeons operate without clamping a major artery in the brain ? a step required in the standard operation, but one that can cause a stroke.

?It?s a high-risk operation in the best of hands,? Dr. Langer said.

He estimated that the laser could reduce the risk of stroke from bypass surgery for aneurysms to 12 percent, from 15 percent. But comparative studies have not been done. Some surgeons are skeptical, while others are eager to learn the technique, and it has begun to catch on in Europe, Dr. Tulleken said. A neurosurgeon from Chicago came to New York just to see how Mr. Ratuszny?s procedure was done.

The laser definitely makes the operation easier, Dr. Langer said, because just knowing that the brain arteries are still open takes enormous time pressure off the surgeon during critical parts of the operation. To him, that alone makes it worthwhile.

?If it was me, my head, and there was a new device that would allow me to have this operation without occluding an artery, that?s what I?d want,? Dr. Langer said.

Besides making operations easier, the laser may make surgery possible for some aneurysms that would otherwise be inoperable, Dr. Tulleken and Dr. Langer say. Hoping to get the device approved in the United States, Dr. Langer plans to direct a study of it at several medical centers in the United States starting in March. The hospital invited The New York Times to observe and report on the operation, whatever the outcome. Even if the device is approved, it is unlikely to come into widespread use, he said. It costs about $500,000, and giant aneurysms like Mr. Ratuszny?s are rare. Dr. Langer estimated that no more than 1,000 patients a year in the United States would need operations like Mr. Ratuszny?s.

The equipment is made by Elana, a company started by the University Medical Center in Utrecht, where Dr. Tulleken teaches. He owns no stock, he said but relatives do, as does Dr. Langer.

Three million to six million people in the United States have brain aneurysms but do not know it, according to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation in Boston. Aneurysms form when artery walls weaken, but the underlying cause is unknown. Most do not rupture.

But 30,000 people a year do suffer ruptures, with dreadful results. Half die within a month, and many survivors wind up with significant brain damage.

In Mr. Ratuszny?s case, the problem seemed to come out of nowhere. He had always been healthy. A soft-spoken, powerfully built man who works out, he has been a lifeguard at ocean beaches and served in the Army Reserves. Now, he works as a Lexus mechanic. He is recently divorced and dotes on his son, Sam, a 3-year-old with a mohawk who shares his father?s solid physique and knack for taking things apart.

One morning two years ago, when he was 24, Mr. Ratuszny woke up with an excruciating pain in his head. At first, the diagnosis was migraine, but when the usual drugs did not help, doctors ordered an M.R.I. scan.

By the time Mr. Ratuszny got home from the scanning center, he had five telephone messages waiting ? telling him to go straight to the emergency room.

He had what doctors call a giant aneurysm. A three-inch length of an artery had ballooned out to several times its normal diameter and coiled back on itself to form a tangled mass the size of a golf ball inside his head. The vessel was an especially sensitive one: the left internal carotid artery, which feeds the brain centers that control the right hand and create speech and personality.

Mr. Ratuszny was sent to Dr. Langer, the director of cerebrovascular neurosurgery at St. Luke?s-Roosevelt, Beth Israel and Long Island College Hospital.

The only way to fix such a large aneurysm would be to bypass it ? create a detour for blood to flow around it ? by taking a vein from Mr. Ratuszny?s leg and sewing its ends to the artery on either side of the aneurysm. Once the bypass was in place, the aneurysm could be sealed off with clips or stitches. It would gradually shrink.

But the operation was risky. The bypass would run from the carotid artery in the neck up over the brain and then down through the Sylvian fissure between the frontal and temporal lobes, to attach to a brain artery beyond the aneurysm. The standard operation would require cutting a hole in the brain artery and then sewing an open end of the bypass vein to the hole ? like making a T-shaped junction between pipes.

But to cut an artery, the surgeon must temporarily clamp it, or the patient will bleed to death. The clamps may have to stay on for a half-hour or even an hour. And that is where the risk comes in: cutting off blood flow to the brain can cause a stroke that leaves permanent damage.

Some patients can tolerate the clamping because they have other blood vessels that will fill in for the artery. But Mr. Ratuszny seemed to lack those collateral vessels. Dr. Langer thought he had a high risk of a serious complication like a stroke from the operation ? at least 10 percent to 15 percent. And yet the risk of doing nothing was even worse: for giant aneurysms, studies put the odds of rupture or death in one to five years at 50 percent.

Dr. Langer thought Mr. Ratuszny was a perfect candidate for Dr. Tulleken?s technique. Not only would it spare him the clamping, but it would allow Dr. Langer to attach the bypass directly to the left internal carotid, which he considered a better repair method than the standard operation. But the laser was not yet available in the United States.

Mr. Ratuszny?s aneurysm appeared stable, and Dr. Langer thought it would be safe to postpone the operation until the Food and Drug Administration allowed him to use the laser in a study. Mr. Ratuszny agreed to wait, hoping for a safer operation, even though the aneurysm was causing double vision and tremendous pain in his head that sometimes put him in the hospital.

Dr. Tulleken, gaunt and wry at 66, is a man of formidable eyebrows, and a fan of Spinoza and The New York Review of Books. He spends one day a week in the laboratory practicing microsurgical techniques, and he believes that neurosurgery should not be ?rude,? because the brain does not like being manhandled or having its blood supply clamped off.

This belief led him to devise a new technique. The idea is deceptively simple: instead of cutting a hole in the brain artery and then sewing a vein to it, he sews first and cuts later. That way, the artery does not have to be temporarily clamped, and blood flow to the brain is not cut off. A excimer laser is used to make the hole because it can be slipped into a tight space on the tip of a slender tube and makes a clean cut that stays open without burning nearby tissue.

Late in November, Dr. Langer was shocked to see that Mr. Ratuszny?s aneurysm had expanded markedly. It was pressing dangerously on his optic nerve and bulging into his nasal sinus, where it had actually eaten through a bony wall. Mr. Ratuszny?s left eyelid drooped, light hurt his eye and he had such severe pain in the eye, face, neck and head that it sometimes made him vomit.

The artery was stretched thin. Dr. Langer ordered Mr. Ratuszny to head for the hospital if his nose began to bleed, because it could be the first sign of a hemorrhage.

The operation could not be postponed any longer. Mr. Ratuszny?s father was prepared to take out a second mortgage on his house to pay to have the surgery in Utrecht, but the F.D.A. allowed Dr. Langer to use the device this one time.

A few days before the operation, Mr. Ratuszny said he was eager to get it over with. ?If that thing blows up in my head, it?s not something I?m going to survive,? he said.

Dr. Langer said, ?The best case is he goes back to work in about a month and can be a dad, for the rest of his life.?

At 2:40 p.m. last Tuesday, everyone in the operating room was ordered to put on safety glasses. A two-minute countdown was begun by Michael Münker, a physicist from Elana, the Dutch company that makes the laser-tipped tubes.

?Thirty seconds left,? he called. ?Fifteen seconds. Five seconds.?

It was not quite ?Star Wars.? The laser fired ? invisibly. All eyes were on monitors that showed a magnified image of the surgical field. As Dr. Langer withdrew the laser, a flap of tissue cut from the artery wall was stuck to the tube and blood began to flow. The artery was open.

Working through the microscope, using long forceps to grip a fine, curved needle, Dr. Tulleken began the delicate task of sewing the ends of a vein together to complete the bypass. A resident watched, awed by his deft hands.

By 5 p.m., Dr. Michael Tobias, a neurosurgery resident, was fastening metal plates to Mr. Ratuszny?s skull with a screwdriver to replace a 4-inch-by-2-inch oval of bone that had been cut out with a saw.

At 6 p.m., the anesthesiologist, Dr. Jonathan Lesser, prepared to wake Mr. Ratuszny, who had been under anesthesia for more than nine hours.

For brain surgeons, the biggest worry comes not during the operation, but after. They watch the waking patient with hope and dread, searching but not wanting to find signs of a stroke. Can he talk? Move his limbs? Respond to commands?

Almost as if he were afraid to watch, Dr. Langer rested on a stool, leaning against the wall, his head bowed. He seemed unaware that he was bouncing his foot in time with a beeping monitor, matching Mr. Ratuszny?s every heartbeat.

?This is the painful part,? he said. ?Sometimes you do everything right in neurosurgery and the patient doesn?t do well.?

He had predicted that Mr. Ratuszny would most likely have some speech problems after the operation from brain swelling, but that they would be transient.

?Chris!? Dr. Lesser called loudly, standing beside operating table. ?Open your eyes, big guy!?

It took a few more rounds of yelling, but Mr. Ratuszny began to respond. His left knee rose.

?They always move the leg you?re not worried about,? Dr. Langer said.

But within moments, Mr. Ratuszny was moving all his limbs and even raising his head and shoulders, as if he might bolt up off the table. Dr. Langer leapt from the stool to his side, and he and Dr. Tobias joined the chorus: Squeeze my hand! Stick out your tongue! Groggily, Mr. Ratuszny obeyed. He mumbled a few words in answer to questions, then began shivering violently. The doctors called for extra blankets.

?Chris, you did great,? Dr. Langer said. ?You?re all done, buddy.?

As predicted, the day after the operation Mr. Ratuszny did have some speech trouble: he repeated himself and had difficulty finding the right words. But he spoke fluently and laughed at jokes, and the problems began to diminish over the next few days. In his hospital room last Friday, three days after the operation, Mr. Ratuszny greeted visitors cheerfully and said his eye pain had already decreased. By Monday, he was up and about, despite a painful infection in one arm from an intravenous line. He couldn?t wait to go home, see his son and return to work.

China 'crackdown on online games'

2006-12-13T09:11:00.000+02:00

Online games are popular in China's internet cafes

China is enforcing more monitoring of online games after some were found to contain banned religious or political material, a state news agency reported.

The announcement adds to government controls on Chinese newspapers, television and other media.

China has more than 23 million online gamers, generating revenues of more than $850m (£440m) a year.

Distributors must now obtain approval before releasing new games, reported Xinhua news agency.

Companies must also submit monthly monitoring reports, confirming developers have not added forbidden content.

The latest round of enforcement was prompted by "a rash of problems with imported online games, some of which contain sensitive religious material or refer to territorial disputes", Xinhua said.

It said some were criticised as pornographic or too violent.

Chinese officials said distributors concealed the content of the games when applying for approval, and operators sometimes upgraded games with improper content, Xinhua reported.

Tiptoeing through a spiritual minefield

2006-12-05T11:46:00.000+02:00

WHEN expectations are abysmally low, almost anything can come as a pleasant surprise. Barring last-minute upsets, that seemed to be the conclusion people on all sides were drawing as Benedict XVI pursued one of the trickiest diplomatic missions ever undertaken by a pope.

You are not wanted! Don't come! Don't cause tension!? screamed a headline in Turkey's noisiest Islamist newspaper, Vakit, on the eve of the papal visit to Turkey this week. In case anybody was vague about the theological differences between the world's two largest monotheistic faiths, participants in an anti-papal protest held up a placard that spelled it out: to Muslims, Jesus Christ is not the son of God, he is a prophet of Islam. Cooler-headed Turks?the great majority?were embarrassed by the stridency of their pious compatriots, but some still resented the pope's visit because it gave hotheads such a perfect opportunity to sound off.

Against this gloomy background, the set-piece encounters between the pope and Turkey's leaders, secular and religious, brought sighs of relief all round. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the mildly Islamist prime minister, showed once again his gift for drawing back from the brink of crisis by agreeing at the last minute to meet the pontiff at Ankara airport. Mr Erdogan claimed afterwards that one of Europe's most prominent Turco-sceptics had been converted into a supporter of his country's European Union membership?at a time when that flagging cause needs all the help it can get (see article). Whether Benedict really has overcome his personal doubts about Turkey's EU membership is open to question; but the new Vatican line is that, if Turkey meets the necessary conditions (including respect for Christian rights) to join the club, that can only be good.

In a gesture of personal humility that Turks found impressive, the pope also called on the country's top religious bureaucrat, Ali Bardakoglu, who looks after Muslim affairs, at his office. It was a somewhat surreal encounter: each side fielded 11 officials, like a football team, while a Turkish actress, best known for her roles in steamy films and her startling changes of hair colour, served as interpreter. But it gave the pope a chance to say what he really believes about relations with Islam: that the two faiths should have an ?authentic dialogue? and get better acquainted, while avoiding the mistake of seeming to paper over their differences.

Behind the diplomatic politesse, however, lurk some hard, unresolved issues over Turkey's relationship both with other faiths and with its potential Western partners. The day after he met the pope, Turkey's president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said that he was blocking several provisions of a law designed both to satisfy a long-running EU demand and to respond to one of the biggest grievances of the country's religious minorities.

As passed by parliament on November 9th, the law would have made it easier for non-Muslim religious foundations, and foundations controlled by foreign interests, to acquire property?or, in cases where it had previously been confiscated by the state, to reclaim it. Over the Turkish republic's 83-year life, property worth hundreds of millions of dollars?schools, hospitals and orphanages, for example?has been appropriated from non-Muslim religious communities, and in particular from the Greek Orthodox church in Istanbul. Attempts to regain it have generally been blocked by arcane procedural and legal manoeuvres.

The president's veto on parts of the bill will hardly be seen as a kind gesture towards Europe, or to local Christians. If the avowedly Islamist Mr Erdogan had blocked the reform, it would have been interpreted as a sign of Muslim antipathy towards Christians. Coming from the president, the gesture speaks of lingering xenophobia among Turkey's secular elite.

As he made his way round Turkey, the pontiff was no doubt mindful not only of the deep differences of opinion among Turkish Muslims, but also of some highly sensitive issues in intra-Christian diplomacy that were the original objective of his trip. He first planned to come to Turkey as a guest of Patriarch Bartholomew I, the 270th archbishop of Constantinople and New Rome. The goal was to pursue closer relations between Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, in which the Istanbul-based prelate ranks as first among equals.

On the face of things, the papal visit is a much-needed boost to the morale of the patriarch, whose local flock has shrunk to only a few thousand, thanks to a steady exodus of Istanbul Greeks that started after state-sponsored pogroms in the 1950s. But extravagant gestures of fraternity between pope and patriarch still upset several other parties. The first of these are Turkish nationalists, inside and outside the state, who are always suspicious that the Orthodox prelate may compromise Turkish sovereignty by trying to establish a ?Vatican state? on the soil of their republic. Also watching warily are devout Orthodox Christians around the world, who stand ready to denounce the patriarch if he appears to backslide on any doctrinal points.

Perhaps the wariest observers are the Russian authorities, both lay and clerical. As the pope has quickly found, his declared wish for rapprochement with Orthodox Christians has opened up an old fault-line in the Orthodox world between the Russians, who see themselves as top Orthodox dogs by virtue of numbers and geopolitical power, and the Istanbul patriarchate, which enjoys an historic ?primacy of honour? among Orthodox sees.

In September, when senior bishops of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox world held their first formal encounter for many years, the Catholics were embarrassed to find themselves witnessing a big Greco-Russian squabble, laced with intricate arguments over the meaning of decisions taken 1,500 years ago. In a world where politics and religion inexorably overlap, such matters affect diplomacy too.

Take the thorny issue over whether the Istanbul bishop may style himself ?ecumenical? or universal patriarch. The Turkish state says no: his followers, including an influential lobby of Greek-Americans, say yes. A fresh spat broke out only this week when the Turkish authorities declared that the patriarchate's security badges for the papal visit were invalid because they employed the E-word. Officials in Ankara admit that they are under pressure from Russia on this issue of Christian nomenclature. The message from Moscow is that Turkey's present policy suits them just fine. Pity the pope as he tiptoes around this many-cornered fight.

Conflicting opinion is what drives scientific advance

2006-12-02T08:49:00.000+02:00

When it comes to the public communication of scientific findings a further step down a well defined road wins easier acceptance than a deviation from the beaten track. Most academic research is therefore simply boring and eccentricity less tolerated. But any form of censorship encourages complacency and discourages innovation.

The Royal Society, Britain?s scientific establishment, has just released a report on public communication of scientific findings. Journalists in search of stories and scientists anxious for publicity and research funding issue early, oversimplified or downright misleading accounts of research. Unsubstantiated claims of a link between immunisation and autism have caused distress to millions of British parents. Korea?s progress in stem cell research seems to have been won at the expense of truth and ethics.

The Society?s answers are self-restraint and peer review. Peer review is the process by which professions review their own work. Articles submitted to journals receive critical assessment from referees experienced in the field. Peer review is a bulwark against cranks, crooks and incompetents. But too much reliance on peer review carries its own dangers. Every profession defines its own concept of excellence in inward-looking ways.

Successful academics learn how to trigger the buttons that win the approval of referees. The physicist, Alan Sokal, demonstrated this by the submission of a spoof article to the cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996. The content was nonsense, but the form and jargon corresponded so closely to reviewers? expectations that the contribution was accepted. Professor Sokal?s purpose was to demonstrate that standards were lower and more subjective in softer subjects than in more scientific ones and, while he was right, the problem identified was more general. All subjects, from architecture to physics, from literary criticism to economics, develop what Thomas Kuhn called paradigms ? assumptions common to all practitioners and assumed to represent universal truth until a new paradigm displaces the old.

A further step down a well defined road wins easier acceptance than a deviation from the beaten track. Most academic research is therefore boring, and more so as scholarship has become more professional, eccentricity less tolerated and peer review multiplied through processes of grant awards and research assessment. The latest idea in Britain is to make these processes routine by shifting from the costly and fallible exercise of subjective judgment to a cheaper and objective system of quantitative metrics. This can only aggravate the problems.

Big advances come through the paradigm shifts and peer review makes this difficult. The line between the crank and the genius is sometimes a fine one and may only be apparent after time has elapsed. Many Nobel Prize winners had difficulty securing early recognition. The world of today favours the competent professional ? as judged by the standards of other competent professionals. In a sense this self-reference is right: the people to decide whether astrology is good astrology are other astrologers. But they are not the people to decide whether astrology itself is any good. Judgment of the rigour and relevance of professional standards and scholarly research can never be left to professionals and scholars alone.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, an elegant suspension bridge in Washington State, carried traffic for four months in 1940. In a high wind, the flat deck acquired a beautiful wave pattern. The oscillations grew larger and larger until the roadway finally disintegrated into Puget Sound.

The trade newspaper, Engineering News-Record, was forced to retract its suggestion that the designer, Leon Moisseiff, might have been responsible. The editors apologised for any inference drawn by ?the casual reader? that ?the modern bridge engineer was remiss?.

But the perspective of ?the casual reader?, though not a substitute for peer review, is as essential as the contribution of the little boy who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes. Any form of censorship, including self-censorship and censorship by fellow professionals, encourages complacency and discourages innovation. The history of modern scholarship is that, more slowly than we would wish, truth and new knowledge emerge only from a cacophony of conflicting opinions.

A bird's eye view

2006-11-27T09:54:00.000+02:00

We birds are at last beginning to feel for the first time happy and encouraged with developments in the United States. Why? Because the results of the Nov. 8 elections, in which the Democratic human Party took control over both Houses, clearly demonstrate that the American humans have at last woken up and were able to say to the Bush man humans that enough is enough.

The results also show that democracy is making a fast recovery in the United States and that the American humans can no longer tolerate restrictions to their individual freedoms. It was also a message of discontent not just with the Bush man's policies over Iraq but with the Republicans' control of Congress, which left the president able to operate without any restraint from the legislative authorities. The first practical result of the elections was the resignation of the Rumsfeld man, something that should have taken place a long time ago, since he represented a misfought war. The Frank Rich man, in an article published in the International Herald Tribune on Nov. 13, describes the outcome of the elections in a very eloquent way. We quote some excerpts: "Of course the thumping was all about Iraq. But let us not forget Katrina. It was the collision of the twin White House calamities in August 2005 that foretold the collapse of the Bush Presidency. Back then, the full measure of the man finally snapped into focus for most Americans, sending his poll numbers into the 30s for the first time. The United States saw that the president who had spurned a grieving wartime mother camping out in the sweltering heat of Crawford was the same guy who had been unable to recognize the depth of the suffering in New Orleans' fetid Superdome. This brand of leadership was not the ?compassionate conservatism? that had been sold in all those photo ops with African-American schoolchildren. This was callous conservatism, if not just plain mean.? Well said, Mr. Rich man, and bravo to the American humans who reacted in such an effective way to safeguard their democracy.

We birds welcomed the hosting in our city on Nov. 13 and 14 of the Alliance of Civilizations, which is an initiative by the Erdogan man and the Zapatero man in improving relations between the West and Islam. We were also happy to see that the Kofi Annan man and the Khatami man were also present at this important meeting. What we, however, could not understand, was the absence of Patriarch Bartolomeos, who, in his wisdom had initiated dialogue between Christianity and Islam from 1992. His experience from this on-going dialogue would have greatly contributed to the meeting of the Alliance of the Civilizations. But this was not the case. Maybe another time!

We have nothing more to say about the ongoing crisis between Turkey and the EU. We would just like to quote the last paragraph of our column of Oct. 9 last year. "Some bird-brained advice is once again necessary for the Turkish human administration. The best way to get your revenge on the way that the EU treated you these last few days is by doing what the EU does not expect you to do. And that is to start implementing everything that you have been told to implement. In that way you will deprive the EU of the pleasure of finding a reason to further delay your accession negotiations. That should be your primary objective. Your second objective should be to start a campaign to charm the public opinion of the EU. We know from the past that you are good at that. It is imperative in the next 10 years of negotiations that you change the negative opinion that the European humans have about Turkey. This will also influence in a positive way the positions of the EU governments. Only by doing that will the humans of Turkey be able to enjoy one day the freedom of the birds."

Ponder our thoughts, dear humans, for your benefit.

Talat: We have no gift for Papadopoulos

2006-11-18T11:14:00.000+02:00

Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat stressed on Wednesday that he will continue efforts for the unification of the island of Cyprus, but will never accept giving Maras (Varosha) "as a gift" to Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos, who rejected the last major peace effort in 2004.

EU Term President Finland has suggested the return of Maras to Greek Cypriots, in exchange for opening the Turkish Cypriot port of Magosa to direct trade with the EU, as part of a deal that aims to break Cyprus deadlock that threatens the future of Turkey's EU talks.

At celebrations yesterday for the 23rd anniversary of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), President Mehmet Ali Talat described his vision of a settlement on the divided island as "a united federal Cyprus" under the roof of the European Union.

The celebrations began at Dr. Fazil Kucuk Bulvari and continued with an aerial display by the Turkish Air Force of "Turkish Stars" in Girne and continued with celebrations and key speeches all around the country. The Turkish government was represented at the celebrations by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

Addressing the crowd during a celebration in Lefkosa, Talat expressed commitment for a settlement and unification on the island, but underlined that for that the Greek Cypriots must accept the political equality of the Turkish Cypriots.

"Turkish Cypriots, by establishing and advancing the TRNC, have made it clear to the world that they want to govern themselves rather than becoming local or secondary extension of an external authority," he said.

Criticizing Greek Cypriot leader Papadopoulos for using Turkey's EU membership negotiations as a means of imposing its "osmosis" policy upon the Turkish Cypriot side, Talat said this Greek Cypriot game is coming to an end. "Soon it will be even clearer that nothing can be attained through such cheap bargains and blackmailing, which are completely incompatible with European values," Talat said.

The Turkish Cypriot president also raised criticism of the EU for what he called "discriminatory" treatment of Turkish Cypriots. Talat said it is unfortunate that the EU is embracing current Greek Cypriot leader Papadopoulos, who made preparations and gave orders in 1963 for the mass killings of Turkish Cypriots. But he underlined that despite that, Turkish Cypriots will continue in their bid for a settlement and EU membership. "Sooner or later, the Turkish Cypriots will take their place in the EU," Talat stressed.

What we (the EU) Say in Cyprus, Goes!

2006-11-13T13:28:00.000+02:00

The EU Commission has finally released its 75-page progress report and 20-page strategy document on Turkey. The report is almost as long as the previous one. While preparing the report, there were obvious efforts to place important obstacles in front of Turkey.

EU Term President and Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja?s recommendation of a Cyprus solution model is now the subject of a new debate.

France had proposed holding a referendum in all countries on Turkey?s accession; however, the proposal was rejected and was not included in the report. Certainly, France?s goal is to stave off Turkey, which is a nightmare for France and a potential economic rival, before it becomes any stronger.

It?s important to examine the evaluations made immediately before and after the report by EU Commission Chairman Jose Manuel Barroso and European Parliament?s Turkey liaison Camiel Eurlings. The words of both as well as Tuomioja?s proposal were aimed at misleading Turkey. EU Commission Chairman Barroso, who assessed the report immediately before it was released, said that if the Cyprus problem continued, Turkish-EU negotiations would not be halted and diplomatic initiatives would be launched.

Barroso also advised Turkey to open its ports to Greek ships and planes by the end of the year. If ports aren?t opened, the issue will be taken up by the Council of Ministers to be held on Dec. 14. The aim was to frighten Turkey in hopes that it might open its ports.

The Injustice to Turkey

In a press conference held after the European Union published its progress report and strategy document, Eurlings said Turkey had to implement the additional protocol to ensure reliability to the European Union, emphasizing that they weren?t asking Turkey to recognize the Greek Republic of Cyprus. He also appealed to the union to remove the embargo on Turkish Cypriots , noting the situation for the Turkish Cypriots was extremely important to resolve the Cyprus problem.

While Eurlings was keen not to use the term ?Turkish Cyprus,? he used the term ?Turkish Cypriots? or ?the Cypriots living in places on the island where the Greek Republic of Cyprus is not sovereign.?

EU authorities had guaranteed they would lift the embargoes applied to Turks in Cyprus if Turkey accepts the Annan Plan. Although 65 percent of Turkish Cypriot voters voted ?yes? to the referendum, the EU authorities failed to keep their promises and said, ?That is a political decision, not a legal one,? as a reason for not removing the embargoes. When Turkey asked why it was carrying all the weight, EU authorities said, ?You are right legally, but we are superior politically,? which in other words meant ?Because we said so.?

As for Finland?s recommendations, EU term president and Finnish Foreign Minister Tuomioja said: ?These recommendations are your last chance on the subject of a Cyprus solution. If you miss this chance, there won?t be another opportunity like this.? But, we saw how unreliable and untrustworthy the words of these people were when new recommendations were made after both sides rejected the proposals. There was a decision made on April 26, 2004, by the EU Council that said the Council was determined to end the isolation of the Cyprus Turkish society and support the economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community by reuniting Cyprus.

The fact remains that the EU council decision, dated April 26, 2004, to remove the embargo on Turkish Cypriots was placed in the 10th protocol of the 2003 Accession Agreement.

EU Continues Faulty Cyprus Policy

This is an EU Council decision; in fact, it?s a decision of the EU Council comprised of ministers and so this decision is the European Union?s institutional obligation. Trusting this EU Council obligation and the 4th article of the Financial Aid Regulations, Turkey signed the final declaration of the EU Council summit on Dec. 17, 2004, which expanded the Ankara Agreement to include 10 new members. This meant Turkey had to open its ports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes. Now the European Union is changing the game. Implementing the April 26, 2004 EU Council decision doesn?t remove the embargoes nor does it take any steps to do so. The European Union hasn?t kept its promise.

The European Union wants Turkey to comply with the Dec. 17 final declaration of the EU Council and the contents of the Accession Framework Paper, dated Oct. 3, 2005, and it is putting pressure on Turkey to open its ports to ships and planes with a Greek flag. Moreover, although the Greeks, while becoming an EU member, signed the 10th protocol and agreed to comply with U.N. Security Council decisions regarding Cyprus by a comprehensive solution and to support efforts of the U.N. General Assembly, they didn?t and they continued to prevent the economic development of Turkish Cyprus.

According to the EU Commission progress report, the recommendation for opening ports before the Dec. 14 summit is not an ultimatum. This recommendation aims for the Commission and, consequently, the European Union to put pressure on Turkey. If there is no progress on the ports issue, then there will be a recommendation at the Dec. 14 summit to freeze the negotiations on chapters related to transportation and the customs union. The summit will most likely be a difficult one with Greek Cypriots making veto threats and Turkey refusing to open it ports to carriers with Greek flags. Although efforts to halt the negotiations may intensify, the European Union will not have the courage to suspend negotiations with Turkey. The accession talks will continue with the postponement of discussions on titles related to ports.

The report evaluates how well Turkey has adopted the EU membership criteria in the political and economic fields, it includes the titles of topics confirmed for discussion, works on compatibility with EU accession and important developments made in the last year. Turkey has fulfilled all of its responsibilities. If it weren?t for the underlying ill-intentions on the committee and the creation of artificial problems with a mind to prevent Turkish membership, Turkey could become a member well before 2020. It was indicated in the report that as a result of signing the additional protocol, Turkey is responsible for enabling ?transportation? and the ?free circulation of goods? for all 10 new EU members, and that the European Union will make an evaluation during the year as to whether or not Turkey made full compliance on this matter. It is not mentioned as to what kind of precautions will be taken in case the evaluation is negative.

This approach shows that no sanctions will be made if Turkey doesn?t open its ports to ships and planes with Greek flags and that accession talks won?t break off for this reason. Another interesting part of the report is the statement to the effect that Turkey has remained bound to a comprehensive solution under the leadership of the United Nations in almost any attempt at a Cyprus solution, regardless of the source.

This description is good proof that Turkey is not in the ?no? position and that it is accepted as a party that wants a Cyprus solution. This new and positive definition in the Turkish report should be used very well. Another positive implication of the report on the Cyprus issue is the emphasis on the fact that Turkey has supported both communities of the island regarding talks on the ?technical committee? level resulting from the Gambari initiative. The mention of the 11-point plan of action on Cyprus presented by Turkey in the EU Commission progress report shows that in spite of Papadopoulos?s immediate rejection of these recommendations, they are still valid alternatives and they comprise a positive point for Turkey.

Professor Ata Atum, East Mediterranean University Faculty Member

Consider the salient truth about international concerns

2006-11-07T13:37:00.000+02:00

Our attitudes to risk are governed, not by their incidence, but by their salience. Subjective assessments emphasise the salience of risks. For politicians, salience is all and that is why we are at war on terror.

Last week Bill Clinton, former US president, brought the great, the good and, above all, the rich to New York to discuss important global problems. But what makes a global problem "important"?

We mostly judge risks by their salience. Alone at home a few weeks ago, I heard a noise and, on investigating, disturbed a burglar who had walked through an unlocked door. I have since installed a new and sophisticated alarm system. The objective risk has not changed but my perception of it has. Salience explains why we go for a check-up when we hear that a friend has cancer or heart disease and why we drive more carefully after passing the site of a road accident. Salient risks are those that everyone is talking about or that we have recently encountered.

The risk of terrorist attack was not salient enough before September 11 2001 and too salient after. But, as you stand in line at airport security, observe that you are more likely to be killed by an object from space than in an aircraft crash. If the asteroid that hit the planet 100 years ago had landed in Trafalgar Square, it would have destroyed London. Because it only flattened a forest in remote Siberia, the risk is not salient. A bigger collision in Mexico 65m years ago led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and most other species. One day a similar event will destroy life on earth as we know it, if North Korean weapons of mass destruction, or a new pandemic, have not got us first.

The asteroid risk was briefly made salient by the movie, Armageddon. For most of human history, there was not much point worrying about space objects because there was nothing we could do. But, as the film showed, we might now be able to avert such a disaster: a nuclear explosion could deflect the path of the object.

How probable is the event? How serious are the consequences? How feasible and how costly is counteraction? These criteria, not salience, should determine the importance of global problems. But they are not always easy to apply. Some scientists believe that a shower of quarks could become a strangelet and pull all other matter into it until the whole earth, you and me included, was compressed into a sphere of 100m diameter. This is a conceivable outcome of experiments in high-energy physics. Other scientists note that no strangelet has ever been observed and doubt that one ever will be. But the trouble with apocalyptic projections is that all, except the last one, will be falsified.

Strangelets so lack salience that they are hard to take seriously: I cannot imagine that a single reader of this newspaper will lie awake tonight worrying about strangelets. But if events can be too rare to be salient enough to merit our attention, they can also be too frequent to be salient enough to receive our attention.

Each year, a million children die from malaria. Those who live in areas where the disease is endemic, and survive, acquire a degree of immunity. They remain vulnerable through their lives to episodes of disease, which sap their energy and productivity. Perhaps a billion or more malarial episodes occur every year.

Almost every study that has asked the three key questions of global issues - how likely, how serious, how preventable - has put the communicable diseases of malaria and HIV/Aids at or close to the top of the list. HIV/Aids acquired salience by spreading through the bathhouses of San Francisco, and has lost salience as the developed world has brought its epidemic under control and this could be achieved in the developing world. Malaria, eliminated from Europe and North America in the last century, has never been salient. But it is largely preventable - sleeping nets treated with insecticide alone dramatically reduce its incidence, and the discovery of an effective vaccine is a wholly realistic prospect.

World leaders emphasise issues that are salient to them and to their voters. But Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the richest men in the world, have instead asked the questions - how likely? how costly? how amenable to action? - and put disease control at the head of their list of global issues. That judgment demonstrates the power of philanthropy over politics, of individual over collective action, of decision over discussion.

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

2006-11-03T09:36:00.000+02:00

* US allies think Washington threat to world peace
* Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom

The ICM poll ranks the US president with some of his bitterest enemies as a cause of global anxiety.

America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.
British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il
· US allies think Washington threat to world peace · Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom
Julian GloverFriday November 3, 2006The Guardian
The ICM poll ranks the US president with some of his bitterest enemies as a cause of global anxiety.
America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.
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The survey has been carried out by the Guardian in Britain and leading newspapers in Israel (Haaretz), Canada (La Presse and Toronto Star) and Mexico (Reforma), using professional local opinion polling in each country.It exposes high levels of distrust. In Britain, 69% of those questioned say they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7% thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.
The finding is mirrored in America's immediate northern and southern neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62% of Canadians and 57% of Mexicans saying the world has become more dangerous because of US policy.
Even in Israel, which has long looked to America to guarantee national security, support for the US has slipped.
Only one in four Israeli voters say that Mr Bush has made the world safer, outweighed by the number who think he has added to the risk of international conflict, 36% to 25%. A further 30% say that at best he has made no difference.
Voters in three of the four countries surveyed also overwhelmingly reject the decision to invade Iraq, with only Israeli voters in favour, 59% to 34% against. Opinion against the war has hardened strongly since a similar survey before the US presidential election in 2004.
In Britain 71% of voters now say the invasion was unjustified, a view shared by 89% of Mexicans and 73% of Canadians. Canada is a Nato member whose troops are in action in Afghanistan. Neither do voters think America has helped advance democracy in developing countries, one of the justifications for deposing Saddam Hussein. Only 11% of Britons and 28% of Israelis think that has happened.
As a result, Mr Bush is ranked with some of his bitterest enemies as a cause of global anxiety. He is outranked by Osama bin Laden in all four countries, but runs the al-Qaida leader close in the eyes of UK voters: 87% think the al-Qaida leader is a great or moderate danger to peace, compared with 75% who think this of Mr Bush.
The US leader and close ally of Tony Blair is seen in Britain as a more dangerous man than the president of Iran (62% think he is a danger), the North Korean leader (69%) and the leader of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah (65%).
Only 10% of British voters think that Mr Bush poses no danger at all. Israeli voters remain much more trusting of him, with 23% thinking he represents a serious danger and 61% thinking he does not.
Contrary to the usual expectation, older voters in Britain are slightly more hostile to the Iraq war than younger ones. Voters under 35 are also more trusting of Mr Bush, with hostility strongest among people aged 35-65.
· ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,010 adults by telephone from October 27-30. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. Polling was by phone in Canada (sample 1,007), Israel (1,078) and Mexico (1,010)

NASA's Mars Orbiter Spies Victoria Crater

2006-10-27T09:36:00.000+03:00

An image of the Victoria Crater, one of the biggest craters on Mars, was released on Friday.
Scientists located several layers of sedimentary rock and think it could be a sign that there was once liquid water on the Red Planed.

Victoria Crater is 200 meters deep and has a diameter of 800 meters, which means it is 5 times larger than other craters observed so far. Scientists from NASA emphasized the images of the crater are a touchstone for exploration studies of Mars, and will contribute to answering questions about Mars? past .

NASA?s Mars Rover Opportunity was sent to Mars in 2004. Opportunity reached the Victoria Crater, which was its biggest target so far, on Sept., 27, 2006. After a long preparation process, Opportunity finally managed to take pictures of Victoria Crater on its 951st day on the planet.

The French Definition of a 'Genocide'

2006-10-16T12:03:00.000+03:00

No one, I suppose would disagree with the French lower house Parliamentary minority Socialist MPs? definition of a ?Genocide? as ?the organized killing of a people to end their collective existence?.

However, the ?lower house minority Socialists? MPs of the La Sinn River overlooking Assembly National (the Parliament), seem to have a short memory to la Sinn River graveyard. Thousands of Algerians were reported to have been thrown alive into La Sinn River, and left to be drawn during the late 20th century (Ahmed Bin Billa, al-Jazeera TV, 2004). Isn?t that a ?Genocide?? which was an ?organized killing of a people to end their collective existence?.

The minority Socialist MPs, whose their country is traditionally, popular for art, literature, theatre, and poetry should remember that, ?whose house is glassy, shouldn?t throw the houses of the others with stones?. Beginning of ?Hijab? (Muslim women head scarf) banning in public places and in schools, to satirizing the Prophet of Mercy for all humanity, Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH) , to lately, considering any denial to the Armenian ?Genocide?, as a crime, French Assembly National, who gave away its ?Statue of Liberty? to the United States of America, appear to have lots of memory lapses.

long time before the notoriously, infamous Armenian alleged ?Genocide? took place in Turkey during 1915, the French brutal, and barbaric colonization committed a numerous of genocides against Algerians, both inside Algeria, and in France itself, since 1832 up to 1962, when the Algerians had eventually, achieved their independence. About 7 million Algerians were killed during French colony in Algeria, while resisting French occupation (President Ahmed Bin Billa, al-Jazeera TV, 2004). Despite requests, and appeals from Algerian President, Butaflieqa recently, made public to France to apologize for its horrendous 'Genocides' in Algeria, France has not yet, responded.

Although, there are many Turks, including influential thinkers, and politicians, will not deny hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in 1915 during a relocation arrangement to other parts of the Ottoman Empire, the issue of a ?Genocide? was reported to have been conceived as highly, controversial. Some argue that, those Armenians who died, were caught into inter-communal warfare. Thus, it was not ?the organized killing of a people to end their collective existence?.

In other words, It was not a ?Genocide?. A few others in Turkey, and beyond however, would argue that, it was conscious, and it was a ?Genocide?. Despite World-wide contentious differentiation on the event, the lower house minority Socialists of French Assembly National apparently, for voting reasons are determined to legalize their mind-set.

Many in France make a case that, sheer politics are behind the minority Socialists initiative. As such, there are no ethics, good merits, or else genuine concerns about the Armenian ?Genocide?. The minority Socialists, by proposing such a bill in order to push for a law criminalizing denial of an Armenian genocide, aim at gaining Armenian votes, during next year presidential elections.
One presume, as do many that, the minority Socialists also, aim at spreading an anti Turkey sentiment, in order to make it impossible for Turkey, as a predominantly, Muslim country to join the EU. Has to be born in mind that, Turkey has already got an appointment from the EU for 2010, to negotiate its membership.

Since there are more or less 6 million Arabs in France, mainly, from Algeria, and other Arab North African countries, would be such an opportunistic moment for the Socialists in France to push for a law that, considers Israeli occupation forces? killing in Gaza, and other Palestinian lands as ?Genocide?. Approximately, 750 Palestinian civilians, including women, and children were killed by the Israeli occupation forces since January 25th, as Hamas, Islamic Resistance Movement democratically, was voted to office. More than 3000 civilians, including women, and children either injured or maimed since then. Additionally, nearly, 4000 civilians, including children, and women were arrested. If these killings, are not a ?Genocide?, what a ?Genocide? could be. Isn?t this an ?organized killing of a people to end their collective existence?.

Instead of crying over a controversial history, without of course endorsing genocides by anyway, against any human race Palestinian daily, ?Genocides? committed by Israeli occupation forces, are crystal clear, which is beyond controversy, and globally, documented by satellite cameras, including French TVs, press, and media. Had the French Socialists been sincere about human suffering, they would have assuredly, considered Israeli ?Genocides? against Palestinians since as early, as 1948, as real ?Genocides?. Plus, this would certainly, bring them at least 3 million votes by Arab French.

Nobel for a writer, not his politics

2006-10-14T09:55:00.000+03:00

Last year - not long after Orhan Pamuk was tried for insulting Turkishness - an Istanbul newspaper ran an article entitled 'Who is Maureen Freely?' Their answer was that I was more than just Orhan's friend and translator - I was a shadowy master agent whose sole purpose in life was to win my client a Nobel Prize.

It was part of a much larger hate campaign in the rightwing press - just one lie amongst thousands. The campaign was so vicious that I was sure that - even if it wanted to honour Turkey's foremost writer - the Nobel Academy, which shies away from controversy and does not wish to take instruction from shadowy master agents, would want to wash its hands of the whole thing

So - though I've often used the N word when writing about Pamuk's work - I was probably the most surprised person in the world this morning. I was just finishing a fiction seminar at the University of Warwick when he rang me with the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and I'm afraid I screamed. He was calm and courteous, as I too tried to be on a series of radio programmes afterwards. But I am somewhat troubled that almost every interview began with the same question. Did I see this prize as political?
No, I don't. Orhan Pamuk has been on the world stage for 15 years now. He is a hugely innovative literary writer whose books owe as much to the great 19th century novelists as they do to the modernist traditions to which he also belongs. His subject is the clash of civilisations, or rather, the strange and subtle interweavings of contradictory cultures in Turkey past and present. In his historical novels - The White Castle and My Name is Red - he presents dark metaphors that illuminate the contradictions of contemporary life. In his contemporary novels, he pierces the silences enforced by state ideology to expose the truth about power and its masters. But like all important writers in Turkey, he has often been asked - and felt obliged - to speak on matters of political principle. He has spoken most consistently and eloquently on free expression.

For many years, his high profile in the west allowed him more freedom than most. That ended in February 2005 when he remarked in passing to a Swiss journalist that though a million Armenians had been killed in the country of his birth, no one talked about it. The firestorm in the Turkish press was so fierce that he briefly left the country. And then there was the lawsuit, which seemed to come at such an awkward time for Turkey. Here it was, trying to join the EU. But here it was, prosecuting yet another writer for his words. It wasn't doing itself any favours, was it? The story has moved on since then - as many as 80 writers, scholars, artists, and activists have been prosecuted for insulting state, the judiciary, or Turkishness itself; there are 45 more cases set to go to trial before the end of the year.

The ultranationalist lawyers who brought the case against Pamuk hope to trample democratic debate. Here they have not (yet) succeeded. The intelligentsia is putting up a good fight. But it's come at a cost, especially for those who are known in the west, and most especially for Orhan. His life story eclipsed the stories in his books.

My hope is that this will change now. The Nobel has gone not to the man and not to his politics but to his words, his characters, and his ideas. Born into a culture that had (recently) clipped its eastern roots, and that was struggling to define itself as western, he has (like all of us who grew up in Istanbul) grappled with double identities all his life. What might have seemed a curse to a young man is the source from which his imagination feeds. He has taken both sides of his clashing heritage and made them whole. Though he is often praised in the west for making Turkey "visible", his greater achievement is to make the west see what it looks like from the outside. This is why he has such devoted readerships on both sides of the divide.
Now that he has won the prize of prizes, will he be allowed to shed his political persona and go back to his desk? It's too early to tell. He is still a controversial figure in Turkey. He will, no doubt, continue to challenge its official history when he thinks it right to do so, just as he will continue to challenge Islamophobia and ultranationalism in the west. But now, at last, his books will come first. Who knows, the day may come when he is honoured even in the country he's put back on the map.

For U.S., a Strategic Jolt After North Korea?s Test

2006-10-10T09:04:00.000+03:00

North Korea may be a starving, friendless, authoritarian nation of 23 million people, but its apparently successful explosion of a small nuclear device in the mountains above the town of Kilju on Monday represents a defiant bid for survival and respect. For Washington and its allies, it illuminates a failure of nearly two decades of atomic diplomacy

North Korea is more than just another nation joining the nuclear club. It has never developed a weapons system it did not ultimately sell on the world market, and it has periodically threatened to sell its nuclear technology. So the end of ambiguity about its nuclear capacity foreshadows a very different era, in which the concern may not be where a nation?s warheads are aimed, but in whose hands its weapons and skill end up.

As Democrats were quick to note on Monday, four weeks before a critical national election, President Bush and his aides never gave as much priority to countering a new era of proliferation as they did to overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Bush and his aides contend that Iraq was the more urgent threat, in a volatile neighborhood. But the North?s reported nuclear test now raises the question of whether it is too late for the president to make good on his promise that he would never let the world?s ?worst dictators? obtain the world?s most dangerous weapons.

?What it tells you is that we started at the wrong end of the ?axis of evil,? ? former Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who has spent his post-Congressional career trying to halt a new age of proliferation, said in an interview. ?We started with the least dangerous of the countries, Iraq, and we knew it at the time. And now we have to deal with that.?

Mr. Bush?s top national security aides declined Monday to be interviewed about whether a different strategy over the past five years might have yielded different results. But Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, has described the administration?s approach to North Korea as the mirror image of its dealings with Iraq. ?You?ll recall that we were criticized daily for being too unilateral? in dealing with Saddam Hussein, Mr. Hadley said. ?So here we are, working with our allies and friends, stressing diplomacy.?

But at the same time, he said the administration had made a conscious decision not to draw ?red lines? in dealing with Kim Jong-il?s government because ?the North Koreans just walk right up to them and then step over them,? just to show they can. Other aides say that, lines or no lines, the North simply decided to race for a bomb ? and finally made it.

North Korea announced its nuclear breakout in early 2003, kicking out international nuclear inspectors and very publicly beginning its drive to turn its stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel rods into a small arsenal of weapons. Focused then on the coming war with Iraq, Mr. Bush and his administration chose to set no limits.

But foreign policy, as Mr. Nunn says, is ?all about priorities,? and until Monday the closest Mr. Bush came to drawing a red line for the North was in May 2003, when he declared that the United States and South Korea ?will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea.?

The Central Intelligence Agency?s estimates in the years since have been that the United States has been tolerating exactly that ? a small arsenal of nuclear fuel sufficient to produce six or more weapons.

Notably, Mr. Bush did not repeat that threat on Monday morning. Instead, he drew a new red line, one that appeared to tacitly acknowledge the North?s possession of weapons. The United States would regard as a ?grave threat,? he said, any transfer by North Korea of nuclear material to other countries or terrorist groups, and would hold Mr. Kim?s government ?fully accountable for the consequences of such actions.?

To critics of Mr. Bush?s counterproliferation policy, this seemed a recognition that the North had successfully defied American, Chinese and Japanese warnings about building weapons and testing them, and was now simply trying to manage the aftermath. North Korea, it appears, is taking a page from Pakistan?s strategic playbook: it exploded its first nuclear device in 1998, endured three years of sanctions, and now has emerged as a ?major non-NATO ally? of the United States.

Mr. Bush?s aides say that if Mr. Kim believes he, too, can expect the world to impose a few sanctions and then lose interest in the issue, he is wrong. ?He is really going to rue the day he made this decision,? Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said of Mr. Kim on Monday. But Mr. Bush?s critics charge that the threat may be empty. As they see it, Mr. Kim watched the Iraq war and drew a simple lesson: that broken countries armed with nuclear weapons do not get invaded, and do not have to worry about regime change.

?Think about the consequences of having declared something ?intolerable? and, last week, ?unacceptable,? and then having North Korea defy the world?s sole superpower and the Chinese and the Japanese,? said Graham Allison, the Harvard professor who has studied nuclear showdowns since the Cuban missile crisis. ?What does that communicate to Iran, and then the rest of the world? Is it possible to communicate to Kim credibly that if he sells a bomb to Osama bin Laden, that?s it??

Mr. Allison was touching on the central dilemma facing Washington as it tries to extract itself from the morass of Iraq. Whether accurately or not, other countries around the world perceive Washington as tied down, unable or unwilling to challenge them while 140,000 troops are trying to tame a sectarian war.

Divining North Korea?s true intentions is always difficult; there is no more closed society on earth. But the broad assumption inside and outside the United States government is that Mr. Kim?s first priority is the survival of his government. And the second is that without a nuclear weapon, he believes his government would have no way of staving off the larger, richer powers around it: China, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

All have fought over control of the Korean Peninsula in decades past, and to Mr. Kim?s mind, presumably, the prospect that the North could lash out is the only reason they have stayed at bay.

Mr. Kim may have calculated, many experts believe, that at this point there is little more that the Bush administration can do to him. The United States has imposed sanctions on his country since the end of the Korean War. The new crackdown on the banks through which the North conducts many of its illicit activities ? counterfeiting, missile sales, trade in small arms ? are being choked off, a step the North Korean leaders presumably see as part of a strategy of bringing them down.

It may be years, or decades, before historians know whether Iraq played into Mr. Kim?s calculations about when to conduct a nuclear test. But clearly, managing simultaneous crises around the world is straining the system in Washington, and posing the Bush administration with more direct challenges than many believe it can handle at one moment.

That returns Mr. Bush to the problem he faced when he came to office, and that his aides have never stopped arguing about: whether the best way to contain North Korea is to further isolate it, or to draw it out of its paranoid shell. The nuclear test may force Washington to pick a strategy.

North Korea says nuclear test successful

2006-10-09T14:41:00.000+03:00

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea faced a barrage of condemnation and calls for retaliation Monday after it announced that it had set off a small atomic weapon underground, a test that thrust the secretive communist state into the elite club of nuclear-armed nations.

The United States, Japan, China and Britain led a chorus of criticism and urged action by the United Nations Security Council in response to the reported test, which fell one day after the anniversary of reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's accession to power nine years ago.

The Security Council had warned North Korea just two days earlier not to go through with any test, and the Pyongyang government's defiance was likely to lead to calls for stronger sanctions against the impoverished and already isolated country.

White House spokesman Tony Snow called for "immediate actions to respond to this unprovoked act" and said that the United States was closely monitoring the situation and "reaffirms its commitment to protect and defend our allies in the region."

South Korea's geological institute estimated that the test's power was equivalent to 550 tons of TNT, far smaller than the two nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in World War II.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it recorded a magnitude-4.2 seismic event in northeastern North Korea. Asian neighbors also said they registered a seismic event, but only Russia said its monitoring services had detected a nuclear explosion.

"It is 100 percent (certain) that it was an underground nuclear explosion," said Lt. Gen. Vladimir Verkhovtsev, head of a Defense Ministry department, according to Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency.

Although North Korea has long claimed it had the capability to produce a bomb, the test was the first manifest proof of its membership in a small club of nuclear-armed nations. A nuclear armed North Korea would dramatically alter the strategic balance of power in the Pacific region and would tend to undermine already fraying global anti-proliferation efforts.

"If the test (is) true, it will severely endanger not only Northeast Asia but also the world stability," Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso warned.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, facing his first major foreign policy test since his recent election, called for a "calm yet stern response."

South Korea said it had put its military on high alert, but said it noticed no unusual activity among North Korea's troops.

China, the North's closest ally and the impoverished nation's main source of food, expressed its "resolute opposition" to the reported test and urged the North to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks. It said the North "defied the universal opposition of international society and flagrantly conducted the nuclear test."

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair said the test was a "completely irresponsible act," and its Foreign Ministry warned of international repercussions.

The White House said a test defied world opinion.

"A North Korean nuclear test would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community and of our call to refrain from actions that would aggravate tensions in Northeast Asia," Snow said.

Russia, which borders North Korea, had urged Pyongyang not to conduct a nuclear test. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov last week voiced concern about the environmental consequences for Russia. The Foreign Ministry warned that a test would add to regional tensions and undermine the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The North has refused for a year to attend six-party international talks aimed at persuading it to disarm. The country pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 after U.S. officials accused it of a secret nuclear program, allegedly violating an earlier nuclear pact between Washington and Pyongyang.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the underground test was performed successfully and there was no dangerous radioactive leakage as a result.

North Korean scientists "successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions," the government-controlled agency said, adding this was "a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great prosperous powerful socialist nation."

"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the ... people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability," KCNA said. "It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

South Korea said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city on the northeast coast. South Korean intelligence officials said the seismic wave had been detected in North Hamkyung province, the agency said.

No increase in radiation levels was detected in Russia's Primorye territory, which borders North Korea, the Russian news agency Interfax quoted regional meteorological service spokesman Sergei Slobodchikov as saying. Vladivostok, a large port city on Russia's Pacific Coast, is about 60 miles from the short border with North Korea.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun convened a meeting of security advisers over the test, Yonhap reported. The Japanese government set up a task force in response, Kyodo news agency said.

A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in July after a series of North Korean missile launches imposed limited sanctions on North Korea and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program - a demand the North immediately rejected.

The resolution bans all U.N. member states from selling material or technology for missiles or weapons of mass destruction to North Korea - and it bans all countries from receiving missiles, banned weapons or technology from Pyongyang.

Speculation over a possible North Korean test arose earlier this year after U.S. and Japanese reports cited suspicious activity at a suspected underground test site.

South Korean stocks plunged Monday following North Korea's announcement of the test. The South Korean won also fell sharply. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or Kospi, fell as low as 1,303.62, or 3.6 percent.

Markets in South Korea, the world's 10th largest economy, have long been considered vulnerable to potential geopolitical risks emanating from the North. The two countries, which fought the 1950-53 Korean War, are divided by the world's most heavily armed border.

The two Koreas, which fought a 1950-53 war that ended in a cease-fire that has yet to be replaced with peace treaty, are divided by the world's most heavily armed border. However, they have made unprecedented strides toward reconciliation since their leaders met at their first-and-only summit in 2000.

The South had planned to ship 4,000 tons of cement to the North on Tuesday as emergency relief following massive flooding there, but decided to delay it, Yonhap reported, quoting an unidentified Unification Ministry official.

South Korea had said the one-time aid shipment was separate from its regular humanitarian aid to the North, which it has halted after Pyongyang's missile launches in July.

Impoverished and isolated North Korea has relied on foreign aid to feed its 23 million people since its state-run farming system collapsed in the 1990s following decades of mismanagement and the loss of Soviet subsidies.

Knowledge Sharing: Forever a Future Prospect?

2006-10-07T10:01:00.000+03:00

Is knowledge sharing a utopia, the international community?s new « buzz word »? We do not think so. A few examples are more telling than a dozen analyses.

In 1965, Singapore was overrun with shantytowns, and its economy was underdeveloped. Since then, the authorities have pursued resolute policies aimed at investing in education, improving skills and productivity and attracting high-added-value industries. The per capita GDP of Singapore has today overtaken that of many countries of the North.

An economy based on the sharing and spread of knowledge is an opportunity for the emerging countries and for the wellbeing of their populations. Thus, despite its poverty, the Indian State of Kerala now boasts a level of human development close to that of the countries of the North: life expectancy has risen to 73 years and rates of schooling are in excess of 90%. Kerala contributes significantly to making India the 8th nation in the world in terms of scientific publications.

In 1971, a few thousand migrants settled in an empty plain 20 km from Lima and created Villa El Salvador. Practising self-reliance, its inhabitants set up education centres and formed associations. A courageous endeavour of participatory community development, relying on women, transformed this shanty area into an organized town. Recognized in 1983 as a municipality, Villa El Salvador established in 1987 its university. Today, 98% of its children attend school and the rate of adult illiteracy (4.5%) is the lowest in the country. The town now has 400,000 inhabitants, including 15,000 students. The municipality provides computer access points for its citizens, who express their opinions on issues under discussion within the community.

Shared knowledge is thus a powerful lever in the fight against poverty. It is also today the key to wealth production. Finland, which suffered a severe economic crisis following the break-up of the Soviet Union, is currently cited as a model: it invests almost 4% of its GDP in research, its education system is highest rated among the industrialized countries by OECD, and the variation in performance between pupils and educational institutions is astonishingly low, demonstrating that success on the scale of knowledge societies can very well be combined with equity.

These are far from being isolated examples. In all parts of the world, different countries are in the process of inventing new styles of development, based on knowledge and intelligence. For a society?s development potential will depend less in future on its natural wealth than on its capacity to create, spread and utilize knowledge. Does this mean that the 21st century will see the rise of societies based on shared knowledge? Since this is a public good that ought to be accessible to all, none should find themselves excluded in a knowledge society. But the sharing of knowledge cannot be reduced to the dividing up of knowledge or the exchange of a scarce resource to which nations, societies and individuals lay competing claim.

In network societies, creativity and the possibilities of exchange or sharing are greatly increased. These societies create an environment particularly favourable to knowledge, innovation, training and research. The new forms of network sociability that are developing on the Internet are horizontal and not hierarchical, encouraging cooperation, as well illustrated by the models of the research ?collaboratory? or « open source » computer software.

The emergence of network societies and the concomitant reduction of transaction costs encourage the rise of new forms of productive organization, founded on exchange and collaboration within a sharing community. This is particularly vital set against the temptation of economic warfare: these new practices hold out the hope that we shall be able to arrive at a fair balance between the protection of intellectual property rights, necessary for innovation, and the promotion of knowledge belonging to the public domain.

The sharing of knowledge cannot however be confined to the creation of new knowledge, the promotion of knowledge belonging to the public domain or the narrowing of the cognitive divide. It implies not only universal access to knowledge, but also the active participation of everyone. It will therefore be the key to the democracies of the future, which should be based on a new type of public space, in which genuine democratic encounters and deliberations involving civil society will make it possible to address social problems conceived in prospective terms. « Hybrid forums » and citizens? conferences prefigure this development in some respects.

The obstacles that stand in the way of knowledge sharing are admittedly numerous. Like the solutions we are putting forward, they are at the heart of the UNESCO World Report Towards Knowledge Societies directed by Jérôme Bindé and published a few months ago. The 21st Century Talk that we have just organized at UNESCO on the topic of knowledge sharing has doubtless helped to identify them more clearly: polarization, the digital divide and, even more serious, the knowledge fracture and gender inequality ? these are the main impediments to the sharing of knowledge. To overcome these obstacles, societies will have to invest massively in lifelong education for all, research, info-development and the growth of « learning societies? and to cultivate greater respect for the diversity of cognitive cultures and for local, traditional and indigenous knowledge. Knowledge sharing will not forever be a future prospect: for it is not the problem but the solution. The sharing of knowledge does not divide knowledge: it causes it to grow and multiply.

Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

THE FORGOTTEN OPTION:TURKISH EURASIANISM

2006-10-03T09:32:00.000+03:00

Turkey, which has been making its future plans according to the prospect of the EU membership for 40 years, is now facing the ambiguity of the ?open-endedness,? that has been offered to, or rather imposed on us at this stage of the accession negotiations. What does the EU plan for Turkey, while the Turkish society seems to be completely focused on the EU affairs and our once untouchable and nonnegotiable red lines have gone pink?

Cyprus, which is about to be lost in the same way that Crete was lost, Aegean Sea, which is subject to the schemes aiming at Turkey?s geostrategic eminence in the region, and Greek designs over Istanbul and incessant Armenian demands that have both received the generous support of the EU, are the signposts on the long, narrow and crooked road and warn against the danger awaiting. The EU for which we have greatly compromised our identity and national honor seeks to play an influential role beyond the north-eastern border of Turkey. Whereas we turn our faces to the West, the western countries try to extend their influence to Central Asia which is the fatherland of Turks. This region, which has been central to theories of world supremacy throughout history, is known as Eurasia. The EU?s newly emerged interest in the area is simply based on the existence of abundant energy resources there, but for us, it is the homeland of Turkish states and the nourisher of Turkishness.

Where is Eurasia?

It is possible to answer this question in 10 different ways. Answers vary according to one?s nationality and historical and political convictions; hence remain relative. Our versions of definitions of Eurasia are listed below.

? It is the vast region that encompasses the entire Europe and Asia from Atlantic to Pacific and Lisbon to Vladivostok.
? It is the region stretching towards the west and east of the Ural Mountains.
? It is the region sheltering the Turkish and Slavic peoples (Turkish, Mongolian, Slavic, Hungarian, and Finnish) for centuries.
? And finally, in its narrowest sense, Eurasia can be defined as the region where the Turkish states, in other words the Turkish world, dwell on.

Eurasianism in the Early Twentieth Century

It was a truism in the nineteenth century that the power who commanded the oceans would be much more advantageous than its rivals. From the early twentieth century on, however, with the advancement in the railroads the territorial powers acquired the same degree of mobility as the maritime powers. Within this context, the power that had the potential to command Eurasia territorially would emerge superior to the maritime powers which had to sail miles and travel costly in order to arrive at the point where the land powers reached with much ease through shortcuts offered by the railroad.

Therefore, one of the commonplaces of the early twentieth century was that the state which controlled the heart of Eurasia could also control the entire Europe and Asia -and even Africa to some extent. Although such commonplace had its part in the eruption of the two World Wars, the subsequent advancement of the naval-air forces, such as the US, rendered an extra-region actor the hegemon of this globalizing world. This fact should be seen as the confirmation of what some American strategists suggest ?which is, the control of the centre lays in the power of the peripheral states. However, we can not claim that this rule saying ?who commands the peripheral states commands Eurasia, who commands Eurasia determines the world?s future? applies perfectly. Nevertheless, today it is apparent that the US acts on a strategy based on subordinating the peripheral states of Eurasia with the purpose of preventing Russia from emerging in the region as a global power.

Eurasian Strategies during the Cold War Period

Even after the dissolution of the USSR, the strategic assessments concerning Eurasia ?no different than those pertaining to the Cold War era- focus on hindering in the region the supremacy of Russia which is today world?s second biggest nuclear power and hence the Russian attempts at becoming once again a world power. For this particular reason, the US demonstrates much interest in the Turkic countries and deploys forces there. It seeks to both stop the spreading of the Russian influence through Eurasia and protect China from Russia. The nuclear assets of China, which is considered as an eminent nuclear power, do not, in fact, exceed the capacity stored in a Trident-type submarine of the US. Therefore, against the common point of view, it is not likely in the future that China will challenge the US?s global power. Furthermore, the scarcity of its energy and uranium resources setbacks the Chinese development. As China proceeds towards the end of its development strategy, its oil demand increases considerably. All in all, it can be argued that the US, in order to pursue further its Greater Middle East Project, counterbalance Russia and safeguard its abundant investments in China, seeks to settle down in Eurasia. Meanwhile, the pretext that China needs American support in the region serves conveniently this design of the US.

?Eurasian Balkans?: Where the empires of the past encountered

Over the past fifty years, the role to be played by Eurasia in the world-supremacy plans have been assessed by taking into consideration the developments on the three fronts, namely Europe, Neareast and Fareast. Recently, into these three fronts are included Turkey-Caucasia and Central Asian Turkish Republics, which are together called by Brezezinski the ?Eurasian Balkans.? This new front, with its unique underground richness and oil resources, has an immense geostrategic value.

Eurasia has a central place not only in the formation of Turkish identity but also in the Russian designs of supremacy. Under the strategic guidance of his consultant Alexander Dugin, the Russian President Vladimir Putin has been forcing Turkey out of any plans concerning the future of Eurasia, which is in fact inherently Turkish. The motive behind such exclusive attitude could possibly be explained by Russia?s urge to be cautious towards the Turkic Republics in the region and their potential to be one day powerful and unified. On this account, Russia has been following the Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Tehran-Tokyo axis in shaping its Eurasian policy. Nevertheless, Putin?s latest visit to Turkey and his offer of cooperation and friendly advice not to be so much caught up with the EU affairs could be understood as a sign that Russia may put an end to its attempts to exclude Turkey from Eurasia. Also, Dugin?s latest visits to Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the speeches that he delivered there signal a change of heart in the Eurasian policies of Russia and thus underpin our argument. Dugin highlights the vast possibilities of cooperation ranging from economic to strategic ?even in Eurasia.

Dugin?s theory of Eurasianism bears much resemblance with the Soviet Imperialism of the past. First and foremost, it is essentially anti-Americanist. The Putin administration, which has been seeking ways to increase even further its influence in the Central Asia through a kind of neo-imperialism, is also active in the region by means of successful organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Commonwealth of Independent States. Thus Russia enhances its regional existence by strong bonds of economy, culture and politics. However, Putin who envisages challenging America?s design of world supremacy through Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Tehran-Tokyo axis in accordance with Dugin?s viewpoint, has chosen to neglect the Turkishness embedded in the characteristics of the region. Implication of this express negligence as a policy in Eurasia will soon weaken Russia in the region where the Turkish elements are predominant and will eventually facilitate the entrance of the US into Eurasia as an extra-regional but omnipotent actor. Still, Putin?s visit to Turkey indicates that a change in this attitude is on the horizon.

The Theories based on the Turkish-Slavic Unification

There is another theory based on a Turkish-Slav Unification proposed by Bagramof, which is more realistic than Dugin?s theory of Eurasianism. This theory suggests the restoration of the rights of Turkish Muslim minorities and Altınordu in the region.

Within this approach, as orientalist Alexander Kadirbayev emphasized, the ideal of stronger Eurasia lays in the unification of Turkish and Slavic peoples. According to Kadirbayev, ?Eurasianism is grounded on the steppe and forest, in other words on the unification of the Turkish and Slavic peoples. Expansionism, crossing borders and foundation of mighty states are all results of the steppe culture. This is how the Turkish character was formed. The consciousness of coming from Turan and partaking in Turkish Union has prevented the assimilation of the Turks.? In compliance with the maxim saying ?what makes the Eurasian continent is not the geographical union but the cultural one,? extra-regional actors such as the US and Germany, which is encouraged by Russia to be active in this region, are incompatible with this nature of the region. Therefore, designs built on the existence of the outsiders are not realistic. As Kadirbayev held, the Soviet imperialism rose on the harmonious co-existence of the Turkish and Slavic cultures. The most important determinant of the Eurasian culture is, however, the Turan (Turkish) element. Still, the third continent situated between Europe (West) and Asia (East), namely Eurasia, stands on the harmony of its Turkish-Muslim and Russian components. The first is represented by Turkey, whereas the latter by Russia. Both countries built empires in the region and had a say in the shaping of Eurasia?s future.

US?s Quest for Supremacy in Eurasia

Against this background, it would not be wrong to suggest that the American endeavors such as the Greater Middle East Project and North African Project are indeed the tools of an American Eurasianism. Today, consequent to a shift in its rationale, the US seems to ground its strategies in the notion of ?land power? and thus aims to extend its support, through land forces deployed in Eurasia, to the Anglo-Saxon naval civilization, which is in fact greatly under American control. The invasion of Afghanistan, acquisition of military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, obtaining of military permit for passage to Central Asian Republics could be perceived as the unfolding of the Eurasianism as Brezezinski prescribed. Next steps in this American version of Eurasianism will probably be Iran and Syria. Despite Russian resistance, American supremacy in Caucasus, which has started in Georgia, could continue growing.

The confirmation of the Eurasianist theories -in terms of territorial superiority and power- could be seen in the fact that the civilizations, which advanced to greatness in the region, built long lasted empires. Roman, Great Alexander?s Macedon, Genghis Khan?s Mongolian, Persian, Russian, Turkish Seljukid and Ottoman Empires can all be shown as an example to this. Therefore who commanded this heartland commanded not only Eurasia but also the entire world and thus became a super power.

Fully aware of this historical fact, the US aims to keep the peripheral states of Eurasia under its influence and prevent Russia from acquiring global power once again. Within this context, by manipulating the peripheral states such as Korea and the Philippines in the Fareast and Germany and Poland in Europe, the US strives to hinder Russia?s dominance over Eurasia.

Extended Eurasianism - New Eurasianism

Given the varying perceptions of Eurasianism and the diversity of its peoples, though after considerable hardship, it is likely that a new concept of cooperation depending on multipolarism will emerge. Today, it could be possible for Turkey, Iran, the Turkic Republics, Ukraine, Russia, China and even Japan to unite around a certain Eurasianism defined in terms of politics and economics. However, as a realistic Eurasianism requires geographical and cultural unity and the above mentioned countries lack such unity, especially with respect to their cultural identities, their version of Eurasianism does not seem to be a viable option.

Another view, which is similar to the one recently acknowledged in Russia as ?Neo Eurasianism? claims that ?At the heart of Eurasianism could only be Turks.? As this view goes, ?Russia could partake in Eurasianist designs only under the condition that it recognizes the Turkish-Muslim reality and acts accordingly. This principle does not divide Russia, but unifies it instead.? The Russian intellectuals, who argue for this ideal, desire religion to be important, while they at the same time pursue a secular Eurasianism.

If Iran comes to a secular line, it will be a realistic approach to include it into this Eurasianism and it is important to mention that Iran is a country where, in fact, the peoples of Turkish origin founded empires and states until 1924. Although the Eurasianist tendency that exists among Turks and Slavs do not exist among the Persians, the presence of the Turkish element in that country?s demographic profile could lead to such a development.

However, such Eurasianism encounters fierce opposition from the mainstream political groups in Russia and the pro-Atlantic and -European Union groups in Turkey. Additionally, in Russia the views similar to those of Dugin in their anti-imperialist approach and to those of Putin in their quest for making Russia a global power may overshadow this Eurasianist argument.

Nevertheless, in the pursuit of Eurasianism in the region Turkey should be cautious of the manipulative attempts of both the US and Russia, as Eurasianism requires cooperation and in the disguise of cooperation there may come subordination.

A realistic Eurasianism should not be dominated by one power, cause religious conflicts and antagonize the peoples of the region. Besides, not being against any state, alliance and ideology will increase the chances of this Eurasianism to be successful. This ideology can succeed on its own terms. Meanwhile, it will also be realistic to form a Turkish-Eurasianist integration as well.

If Neo-Eurasianist doctrine presupposes a Turkish-Slavic Union, by allying with Turkish Eurasianists, Russians could remain influential in the east of the Ural Mountains where the Turkish peoples are predominant. The world?s one of the greatest energy resources in this region encompassing the Caspian region, Tataristan and Siberia indicate that economic cooperation within Eurasianism, which could lead to the emergence of modern welfare states, is a very profitable prospect. Because Russia is not recently very successful in building solid alliances on its own and feels the potential threat of the American oil companies that are active in the region, it should seriously take into consideration the Eurasianist option requiring a Turkish-Slavic Union. In the near future, Russia might experience a second dissolution. In order to prevent this, it should cease seeking eminence through the hallow Eurasianism of the Tsarist era.

Turkish Interpretation of Eurasianism

If Russians choose to neglect completely the prospects of cooperation with Turkish, then Turks should not hesitate to concentrate on Turkish Eurasianism and help it flourish in the Turkish world.

Whereas Slavs are the majority in the west of the Ural Mountains, they seem to be outnumbered by the Turks and semi-Slavic and Mongolian peoples in the east. This situation, hinting a perfect geographic and cultural integrity in Turan, offers a fine starting-point for Turkish Eurasianism.

Of course, certain hardships today hinder the further enhancement of Turkish Eurasianism. From Dugin?s point of view particularly, Turkey, which has been on the opposing front of Russia, gave up on its imperial pursuits subsequent to its transformation to a nation-state. It has now an overtly pro-Atlantic stance. According to this viewpoint, Turkey and Russia, two rival powers, will remain in constant clash in the region and Turkey could build relationships with the Turkic states only in the degree that Russia allows. Furthermore, Russian statesmen living in the nostalgia of the Soviet days will always stand in the way of a real cooperation with Turkey. Yet, another obstacle to the Turkish Eurasianism is evidently the US.

At the outset, American version of Eurasianism and, as its extension, the Greater Middle East Project aimed at the limitless access to the natural resources of the Central Asia by the help of a friendly Turkey and pacified Iran. All was, in fact, in compliance with Brezezinski?s Eurasianism. Nevertheless, the US presently requires no help to enter the region, as it stands powerful at the heartland of Eurasia thorough its military bases in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan as well as its military presence in Iraq. On this account, it is questionable to what extent the US will need a potentially rival Turkey in the region or whether it will permit Turkey to be active in Eurasia.

In line with the current trends of Eurasianism and consequent to the US-Russian alliance, the US has enabled Russia to dominate the Turkish geostrategic zone which was once safeguarded by the US to serve the Turkish interests. This fact reveals that it is imperative for Turkey to dwell on an Eurasianism designed solely for the Turkish world.

Once pursued, such Eurasianism would provide Turkey with many considerable benefits. Turkey could, above all, bridge between the Central Asian Republics and EU and skillfully manage an energy network spread all through both continents. In comparison with the EU, Turkey is vastly more advantageous an actor in the region given its geographical, ethnical and cultural proximity to the Central Asian states. It would not be wrong to suggest that at the summit of December 17, 2004 the EU did not completely rule out the possibility of Turkey?s accession in spite of the fact that the materialization of this possibility will make Turkey the biggest member state, because Turkish Eurasianism is likely to result in a very profitable union from which the EU would not want to be excluded.

In the future, Turkey should, on one hand, preserve its national borders and unitary structure and, on the other hand, summon the Turks, Persians, Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis, Kyrgyzs, Kazaks and Turcomans under a geographical unity. It is Turkey?s historical mission to grow from a regional to a semi-global power by means of first economic cooperation and then political integration.

Turkey?s most helpful tools in its quest for greatness are its geostrategic advantages in the areas where oil pipelines are being constructed as well as its military power and human resources fortified by technological training. Its commitment to democracy is also another asset that would bring along the leadership that Turkey aspires to.

Turkish Eurasianism envisages advancement towards a full integration between Turkey and Azerbaijan. ?One nation, two states? is a motto shared by both countries. However, not hiding their discontent with the prospect of such rapprochement, Russia and Iran seek ways to prevent any integration between these two major Turkish states of the region. Their support to Armenia and opposition to Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline should be understood within this context. Russia, which aims to subordinate Azerbaijan, and Iran, which pursues very cautious policies towards 30 million Azerbaijani Turks within its borders, both desire to pacify Azerbaijan by the help of Armenia and obstruct the communication and cooperation within the Turkish world.

Resistance against the EU?s interference with Turkish Eurasianism

Another step to be taken within Turkish Eurasianism is to reinvigorate the Economical Cooperation Organization (ECO). This organization has the potential to be the motor that will inactivate an enhanced industrial, commercial and cultural integrity amongst Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Turkish Republics of Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, our commitment to the EU acquis does not allow enhancing further the current integration with these countries. When Turkey entered the Customs Union, the EU promised full membership in return. Subsequent to Turkey?s entrance to the Customs Union, most of our small and medium scale enterprises could not compete and bankrupted in the end. Our importation from the EU member states has constantly increased over the past 11 years and finally reached to the amount of 28 billion dollars this year. Our current trade deficit amounts to 5,8 billion dollars. Among the countries to which the EU exports most, Turkey ranks sixth. It is now time to say no to the Customs Union, which has virtually made our country an open market for the EU, curtailed the progress of our relationship with Turkish world and simply enslaved us. If the open-ended negotiations with the EU mean to leave Turkey in a vast ambiguity and uncertainty for a period of 10 to 15 years, then we should freeze commitments to the Customs Union until a final date for accession has been set. We therefore demand the right to trade freely again with the neighboring and brethren countries in our region. It is vital and urgent for Turkey to put an end to the unfair and asymmetric relation with the EU and take a stand against its impositions and assertions which should in fact remind us of the historical phenomena ?the Capitulations!

UZBEKISTAN AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENTS

2006-09-28T11:50:00.000+03:00

Uzbekistan, country from which Anatolian Turks had their roots, had difficult problems when it stepped on the way towards independence in 1990. There is no doubt Uzbeks needed, before all else, to handle one leading problem, which is the fulfillment of the free market conditions, together with another, which was the transition from the Communist system into a more liberal and decentralized model, and therefore implement a great many institutional sine qua non of Western world.

When I visited Uzbekistan in 1993, it was most probable to see the concrete consequences of the system experiencing the problems characteristic to the beginning stages of her transformation process. However, it was also in those years that Uzbekistan was beginning to rapidly replace the artificially-democratic system that was limited by the Communist heritage, with essential and modern democratic institutions and work on the standardization in order to correspond to the modern world.
In that new modern era, Uzbekistan was obliged to compensate the socio-economic losses and distress of the population ? who were used to live below world standards and dependent on state support with little work as civil servant ? which would arise from the implementation of the new system. In order to reach that end, it was crucial to initiate democratic changes in the political arena, while on the other hand install new social institutions, in parallel with fulfilling the requirements of liberal economy. The year 1993 that I witnessed was experiencing the problems of this transition and opening process.
When I repaid a visit to Uzbekistan in 2006, I found myself in a country that proved to satisfy all standard requirements of a modern society. Plenty of modern hotels were built, thousands of factories and facilities operating in services sector were established and a modern finance sector together with its institutions was created. Furthermore, it was much more impressive to monitor those reforms and the initiatory steps that are introduced within the framework of fundamental legal principles on site.
However, considering this last development, I observed significant institutions that are to be taken seriously and did not exist even in Western countries, which from time to time had biased and unjust criticisms for Uzbekistan as well as Turkey. A genuine ?democracy?, which was solely based on popular participation and was like no other I experienced in the rest of the world was implemented. Besides, the new societal system is organized so as to prioritize democracy together with market economy in order to achieve a truly democratic society.
A Retrospective Democratic Approach
Scientists and historians found key elements of democracy in the historical political traditions of the Turkic societies that existed from the beginnings of history while searching for ways to improve democratization in Uzbekistan during the transition from the Communist regime to the new regime. Fundamentally, the democratic conception had always existed in the essence of those Turkic empires that spread throughout the world from Central Asia to the West, in the smallest administrative unit, which was called ?mahalla.? Throughout the history, strong Turkic states were built upon this conception. Provided that the small local units with comprehensive individual participation from below were strong, powerful Turkic states had emerged based upon the dynamism and passion stemming from such popular political participation.
Having considered this element, Uzbekistan president, far-sighted statesman Mr. Islam Kerimov gathered the prominent and respectful elders ?Aksakallar? (White-Beardeds) in order to consult them on the defects of Uzbek society. The resulting ideas made way to the establishment of ?Mahalle waqf? system and Uzbek government immediately began working on the system throughout Uzbekistan. The law on the establishment of ?Mahalle waqf? was enacted in 12/09/1992. In this way a truly democratic system lead by the ?Aksakallar? that was ordained to meet the all the basic needs of society was introduced. Such a system of cooperative institution did not exist under the Soviet era; because the ?Mahalla Waqf? system, which is built upon the traditions and customs of Uzbek people, while attaching importance to the conventional ethics, was perceived as a threat to the philosophy of the communist regime which opposed alternative cooperative social organizations. ?Mahalla? provided the proper conditions for the training and raise of youth for future, constituting the basis of social organization as it was based on traditional ?aile? (family) association. On the other hand communist system gave priority to dialectic materialist patterns for the training of the youth and the individual, rather than referring to their traditions. Ironically, Soviet Union prepared its own culmination by renouncing the individual mentality, motivation and the traditions and customs that empowered this mentality.
Mahalla Waqf and Aksakals
?Mahalla waqf? began operating for the moral, pedagogical and educational development of people, in the relatively small mahallas that were composed of approximately 5000-7000 individuals who closely know each other. Throughout with a new administrative approach, ?Mahalla Waqf? works out to solve the problems concerning education, social security, environment, health, employment etc. bearing in mind the basic presumption that ?mahalla is a big family.? Therefore, ?mahalle,? rather than the state, is positioned to watch out the individuals. Within the new waqf system, ?aksakal,? who is chosen via elections, serves for the sake of mahalla by appointing his secretary and advisors responsible from the religious, moral and traditional education.
The ?aksakal? agency, which is the third elected agency in Uzbekistan after the president and parliamentarians, is an administrative regime motivated by the parole ?mahalla is a family? that existed since Emir Timur. The agency is the realization of the idea that ?aile?, and ?mahalla? as its product, constitute the nucleus of society and the state. The training programs and courses, which procure productive and inventive development of the youth and adults in line with the motto ?economic development begins from the mahalla,? constitute the most precious treasure for a society that hopes for a better future. Considering the basic premise of education and that the ?mahalla is the cradle for education?, the pupils in crèche, primary, secondary schools and university students are trained for the future by the teachers of the education commissions of mahalla waqf, bethinking the basic traditional and customary principles. Thus, schools, although being state institutions, are controlled in the ?mahalla.?
Social Function
?Mahalla Waqf?, which has important social functions, firmly institutionalized the ab aeterno social solidarity of the Turkic world by the establishment of the new system. ?Mahalla waqf? supports the aids for families, elders, needy and ailing people. Moreover, waqf may even help the entrepreneurs/businessmen to establish businesses when necessary.
Observing a system that resembles the Anatolian Turkish ?Ahi? organization still functioning in Uzbekistan may also help us understand the core of the Turkic social traditions and social life.
The financial resources provided by the state in order to help the needy people can also be used most efficiently and optimally, since mahalla would be well aware of those who require relief.
Another important eminence of social solidarity within the mahalla structure can be observed in the importance given to the women and their problems. Particularly, doctors, lawyers and other professional members of the ?Women?s Commission,? which works in order to help women participate in the social life, contacts girls and young women in order to guide them to adopt social life. Subsequently, their specific demands are noted and addressed to the Aksakal for their adequate fulfillment.
The election of ?Mahalla Waqf? (a truly democratic institutional approach of local organization) administration for 2.5 years is explicitly addressed in the Constitution of Uzbekistan. A particular number of delegates that are chosen among the streets of a mahalla substantiate the first chain of the realization of the common will through democracy by participating into a ?kurultay? (assembly) of the delegates. Mahalla waqf, counting 474 in Tashkent and 9941 throughout Uzbekistan, provides an exemplary basis for the appropriate coordination of information between the state, the government and the local divisions. In that respect, it presents a pilot model that should be followed by modern societies.
Other Civil Societal Institutions in Uzbekistan
In addition to mahalla waqf that represents the ideal type of participatory administrative approach, it is observable that Uzbekistan is beginning to accomplish an orderly and systematic social system in terms of establishing an essential civil society with firm bases.
Organizations, such as the ?Institute for Civil Society Studies,? which works in order to contribute for the development of civil societal organizations, increase the level of public participation to government and society for further democratization and liberalization, together with ?Kemalet Youth Movement? (Kemalet meaning maturity) that works for the endorsement of promising contribution of youth to society, appear to be noteworthy institutions pioneering the civil societal progress in Uzbekistan.
?Institute for Civil Society Studies? making striving efforts for the restructuring and enhancement of political parties by working hand in hand with the mahalla waqf, contributes to democratic development of Uzbekistan. Additionally, efforts concerning the development of independence of media institutions are issues worth mentioning in that respect.
?Kemalet Youth Movement,? which was founded in 2001, prepares youth aged 14-28 for future by affiliating them to the movement as members. The movement having 4.5 million members and bureaus in every province of Uzbekistan operates through agencies in schools, universities, colleges and military institutions.
This brilliant movement, aiming to unite youth, protect their interests, increase their competence in social life, solve their problems, inform them of their socio-political rights, guide them through entrepreneurship, facilitate their sports abilities and most importantly prepare them for life, has valuable efforts in addition to publication of 3 gazettes and 5 magazines, which is to be considered as an exemplary endeavor for those societies having problems concerning the future condition of their youth.
Uzbekistan, as one of the most stable societies of the world in terms of internal security, facilitates ideal urbanization projects. Also being free from foreign debt and in addition to her successful efforts for the institutionalization of democratization, it stands in an inspiring position even to arouse jealousy for the Western societies. This is a great achievement thanks to the successful efforts for the protection of independence of Uzbekistan through the implementation of democratization and secularization reforms by the respectful president of Uzbekistan Mr. Islam Kerimov. His Excellency, being well aware that foreign powers? attempt to interfere with the internal affairs of independent countries, implement imperialist policies in order to repress through ?weaken and control? principle, successfully established a commendable principle of independence that we, Anatolian Turks envy and yearn for, by keeping away those foreign powers away from Uzbekistan. Our wish is the initiation of new policies for cooperation between two powerful countries in order for unitary, solidarity and development, which would remind us of the old Turkish saying ?What does one hand do? But when two hands clap makes a sound.? Moreover, it is both crucial and advantageous that cooperation, economic and political solidarity, between Turkey and Uzbekistan, which the Western states always feared of, is enhanced and improved further. We have to draw lessons especially from the delinquency of the previous coalition governments in Turkey and push for serious reformation of the foreign policy agenda of the current government.

Latest GPS Bird Ready For Launch From Cape Canaveral

2006-09-27T09:56:00.000+03:00

Latest GPS Bird Ready For Launch From Cape Canaveral

Artist's conception of Lockheed Martin's GPS Block IIR satellite.
by Staff Writers
Cape Canaveral Fl (SPX) Sep 22, 2006

The second modernized Global Positioning System (GPS) Block IIR satellite built by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Air Force is set for launch aboard a Delta II rocket on Sept. 25, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
Known as GPS IIR-M, the modernized spacecraft are the most technologically advanced GPS satellites ever developed and are designed to provide significantly improved navigation performance for U.S. military and civilian users worldwide.

Lockheed Martin Navigation Systems is under contract to modernize eight IIR satellites for its customer, the Global Positioning Systems Wing, Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.

Designated GPS IIR-15(M), this satellite will join the first modernized IIR spacecraft declared operational last year and 12 other operational Block IIR satellites currently on-orbit within the overall 29-spacecraft constellation. The Air Force is dedicating the mission to honor American POW/MIAs past and present.

The GPS IIR-M series offers a variety of enhanced features for GPS users, such as a modernized antenna panel that provides increased signal power to receivers on the ground, two new military signals for improved accuracy, enhanced encryption and anti-jamming capabilities for the military, and a second civil signal that will provide users with an open access signal on a different frequency.

The Global Positioning System enables properly equipped users to determine precise time and velocity and worldwide latitude, longitude and altitude to within a few meters. Air Force Space Command's 2nd Space Operations Squadron (2SOPS), based at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., manages and operates the GPS constellation for both civil and military users.

GPS IIR-M production takes place at Lockheed Martin facilities in Valley Forge, Pa. The modernized navigation payload is provided by ITT Industries in Clifton, N.J.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 135,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2005 sales of $37.2 billion.

Japanese Fret That Quality Is in Decline

2006-09-21T09:03:00.000+03:00

TOKYO, Sept. 20 ? Perhaps only in Japan could a television series like ?Project X? have become one of the most popular TV shows. No, it isn?t a science fiction thriller. It?s about product quality.

More specifically, it?s about a bunch of corporate engineers who invented the hand-held calculators and ink-jet printers that helped turn this nation into an industrial powerhouse.

So it is little wonder that a recent surge in recalls of defective products has set off national hand-wringing and soul-searching here, in radio talk shows, on the front pages of newspapers and in the hushed corridors of government ministries.

Even in local noodle shops, the conversation turns to the bruised pride and fears that Japan may be losing its edge at a time when South Korea and China are breathing down its neck.

?Craftsmanship was the best face that Japan had to show the world,? said Hideo Ishino, a 44-year-old lathe operator at an auto parts factory in Kawasaki, an industrial city next to Tokyo. ?Aren?t the Koreans making fun of us now??

?It took us years to build up this reputation,? Kazumasa Mitani, 32, a co-worker, chimed in. ?Now we see how fast we can lose it.?

This, after all, is a country that has been obsessed with perfection. Tokyo?s sprawling subway and train networks run like clockwork, accurate to the minute. Television factories assign workers with rags to wipe down every new set, lest a Japanese consumer find a single fingerprint and return it. In supermarkets, many apples and melons are individually wrapped in protective plastic foam.

In the last two months, the national angst increased after large-scale recalls of defective products made by Toyota and Sony, the country?s two proudest corporate names. In the United States, product recalls occur so frequently that most are barely noticed. But here, they have created something of a crisis in a country where manufacturing quality is part of the national identity.

The fingers have no main culprit to point to. Some say young Japanese are too lazy. Others say American-style management is to blame.

The spate of bad news has not stopped. Just this week, Sony suffered another blow when Toshiba announced that it was recalling 340,000 Sony-made laptop batteries, after last month?s recalls of 5.9 million batteries. And Toyota, which has experienced a soaring number of recalls in recent years, said Wednesday that it would hire 8,000 more engineers to strengthen quality.

Some here admit that Americans may find the fuss perplexing. But Japan is the country that elevated the American quality guru W. Edwards Deming to virtual sainthood and conquered global markets with its eminently reliable cars, cameras and computers. For a time, American and European executives even flocked here to learn Japanese quality-control concepts like ?kaizen,? meaning ?improvement.?

World-leading craftsmanship became so central to the nation?s self-image that many Japanese seem to have trouble imagining their country without it. The recalls are discussed here in the same breath as Japan?s rising rates of crime and juvenile delinquency and other signs that the country?s tightly woven social fabric may be starting to fray.

In the news media, Sony?s and Toyota?s quality problems have frequently topped coverage of wars in Iraq and Lebanon. And Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the leading economic daily, began a front-page investigative series this month called ?Can Japan Protect Quality??

?Toyota and Sony have been a wake-up call that something is amiss in Japan,? said Takamitsu Sawa, an economics professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. ?Japan seems to have lost something important on the way to becoming a developed country, and many Japanese want to get that back.?

One of those is Toshihiro Nikai, Japan?s trade minister, who twice last month took unusually blunt steps in this nation that normally recoils from confrontation. He sent letters to executives from Sony ordering them to report on quality-control improvements after back-to-back recalls by Apple and Dell of faulty Sony-made laptop batteries. Sony promised to comply and diligently sent employees to receive the letters by hand. It was the first time such orders had ever been issued to Sony.

?This is very rare,? said Atsuo Hirai, assistant chief at the trade ministry?s information product safety section. Rarer still was the fact that a few weeks earlier, the transport ministry issued similar orders to Toyota.

Hiroshi Okuda, the retired chairman of Toyota and elder statesman of Japan?s business world, called on his countrymen to do more about what he saw as the declining competitiveness of Japanese manufacturing.

?Japan lacks a sufficient sense of crisis,? he warned last month.

The sense of crisis has moved even into the classroom.

New York Times

If Italy thinks the unthinkable about the eurozone

2006-09-19T17:09:00.000+03:00

What if a government decided to leave the European Monetary Union and abandon the Euro? A realistic question, and yet nobody dares to ask.

The agreements that established the euro contain no provisions to allow exit. However, if some government - let us suppose the Italian one - decided to leave, there is nothing Europe could or would do to stop it. But what exactly would a government set on such a course - or forced into it - do?

The objective would be to establish a currency - the new lira - which would substitute for the euro in domestic transactions but sell at a discount to the euro in international transactions. A bus fare of one euro would become a bus fare of one new lira but the external value of the new lira might fall to 75 euro cents in financial markets.

There are no precedents in advanced economies for such a policy. Currency unions have broken up before, but they have usually been de facto rather than legal currency unions - as between Britain and Ireland. Or the motives for the break-up have been political rather than economic. When Czechoslovakia split apart the aim was to preserve, rather than to alter, the terms of exchange between the two new states.

The laws that brought the euro into being said that contracts made in lire were to be interpreted as contracts made in euros at a prescribed conversion rate. But you cannot simply pass a law that contracts made in euros can in future be discharged in new lire. The plan would have to distinguish Italian contracts from others. But how? The Italian state would pay employees and pensioners in new lira. It might impose a temporary freeze on domestic prices and wages, whose lira amount could not exceed their old euro values. This is the familiar apparatus of crisis devaluation. But what of financial and commercial contracts made in euros before A-day but not yet completed?

The simple answer is that an agreement in euros stays in euros. But this is not politically feasible. Italians would not accept that their mortgages and credit-card debts, denominated in euros, would cost them one-third more to repay: and it would be absurd if the bank deposits of Italian residents were revalued by a similar amount.

The relevant principle of international law seems to be that debts are denominated in the currency of the place where they are to be paid. But in the modern world, that question often has no clear answer. The residence of parties to the contract also matters. This seems to give generally sensible answers when both are Italian, but in many cases one party is Italian and the other is not. What of multinational companies? Then there is an issue of legal jurisdiction. For example, many financial contracts are made under English law even if the transaction has nothing to do with England. An English court would want to uphold a valid Italian law, but it cannot be assumed it could or would, especially if that law seemed to favour Italians at the expense of other nationalities.

Businesses with activities in both Italy and other countries would find that some assets and liabilities had been converted to new lira while others remained in euros, and there would be large mismatches between the two. The likely losers would be multinational companies with Italian assets and dollar balance sheets: the likely gainers might be Italian retail financial institutions, which collect deposits in Italy and place them in other countries. The outcome would be a period of chaos in markets and a decade of work for lawyers.

Some people will conclude that these problems make a break-up of the euro impossible. This would be a profound error. History - not least the establishment of European monetary union itself - shows that, given political determination, practical problems will be overcome. Civil servants, lawyers and bankers are there to ensure that a client's wishes are met even if misconceived and if the Bank of Italy does not have a plan in its safe, its officers have been failing in their plain duty.

Any international bank or business should contemplate these issues. But the consequences of such contemplation are grave: in financial markets, actions to protect against a contingency make that contingency more likely. That is why a debate on the fragmentation of the eurozone is a debate that no one dares have.

New Thinking Is Needed on the Home Front and Abroad

2006-09-08T09:45:00.000+03:00

Despite Some Notable Achievements, New Thinking Is Needed on the Home Front and Abroad

By John Lehman
Thursday, August 31, 2006

Are we winning the war? The first question to ask is, what war? The Bush administration continues to muddle a national understanding of the conflict we are in by calling it the "war on terror." This political correctness presumably seeks to avoid hurting the feelings of the Saudis and other Muslims, but it comes at high cost. This not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes.

We are at war with jihadists motivated by a violent ideology based on an extremist interpretation of the Islamic faith. This enemy is decentralized and geographically dispersed around the world. Its organizations range from a fully functioning state such as Iran to small groups of individuals in American cities.

We are fighting this war on three distinct fronts: the home front, the operational front and the strategic-political front. Let us look first at the home front. The Bush administration deserves much credit for the fact that, despite determined efforts to carry them out, there have been no successful Islamist attacks within the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. This is a significant achievement, but there are growing dangers and continuing vulnerabilities.

One of the most deep-seated of these problems is the U.S. government's tendency to treat this war as a law enforcement issue. Following a recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, Congress sought to remedy this problem by creating a national security service within the FBI to focus on preventive intelligence rather than forensic evidence. This has proved to be a complete failure. As late as June of this year, Mark Mershon of the FBI testified that the bureau will not monitor or surveil any Islamist unless there is a "criminal predicate." Thus the large Islamist support infrastructure that the commission identified here in the United States is free to operate until its members actually commit a crime.

Our attempt to reform the FBI has failed. What is needed now is a separate domestic intelligence service without police powers, like the British MI-5.

The Sept. 11 commission catalogued in detail how our intelligence establishment simply does not function. We made priority recommendations to rebuild the 15 bloated and failed intelligence bureaucracies by creating a strong national intelligence director to smash bureaucratic layers, to tear down the walls preventing intelligence-sharing among agencies, and to rewrite personnel policy with the goal of bringing in new blood not just from the career bureaucracy but from the private sector as well. This approach was completely rejected by the Bush administration, which decided instead to leave this sprawling mess untouched and to create yet another bureaucracy of more than 1,000 people in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It was the exact opposite of what we had recommended.

The greatest terrorist threat on the home front is, of course, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Islamists. Here the president has moved to establish a national counter-proliferation center to share and act on intelligence, and he has recently initiated a cooperation agreement with Russia and our allies to work together in preventing nuclear materials from getting into the hands of the Islamists and to undertake joint crisis management if such an attack takes place. These are real accomplishments.

Turning to the operational front, our objectives are to destroy the capability of Islamist organizations to attack us and to deny them geographic sanctuaries in which they can recruit, train and operate.

The post-Sept. 11 threat demanded preemptive attack against Islamist bases, and this was done without delay in the invasion of Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government, its ally and supporter. It was a brilliantly executed operation in which all our armed forces and CIA operatives combined in a ruthlessly efficient victory. In the succeeding years, however, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been able to regroup, rebuild and re-attack because they enjoy a secure sanctuary largely free from attack within the border areas of Pakistan.

The next military operation of the war was, of course, the invasion of Iraq. Here again the combined military operations of the United States and Britain were brilliantly successful in defeating Iraqi forces and removing Saddam Hussein and his regime. But in the aftermath of that victory, grave blunders were made. There was a total misunderstanding of the requirements for successful occupation.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was proved right in his keeping the initial invasion force small and agile, but desperately wrong in disbanding all Iraqi security forces and civil service with no plan to fill the resulting vacuum. Certainly it is hard now to understand the logic of that decision.

The military occupation in Iraq is consuming practically the entire defense budget and stretching the Army to its operational limits. This is understood quite clearly by both our friends and our enemies, and as a result, our ability to deter enemies around the world is disintegrating.

This brings us to the third front, the strategic-political. The jihadist regime in Iran feels no reservation about flaunting its policy to go nuclear, and it unleashed Hezbollah, its client terrorist organization, to attack Israel. In Somalia a jihadist group has seized control of the government. In Pakistan, Islamists are becoming more powerful, and attacks within India are increasing. Governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan are under increasing Islamist pressure. In the Pacific, North Korea now feels free to rattle its missile sabers, firing seven on America's Independence Day. China is rapidly building its 600-ship navy to fill the military vacuum that we are creating in the Pacific as our fleet shrinks well below critical mass. Not one of these states believes that we can undertake any credible additional military operations while we are bogged down in Iraq.

The indoctrination and recruiting of jihadists from Indonesia, South Asia and the Middle East are carried out through religious establishments that are supported overwhelmingly by the Saudi and Iranian governments. Even in the United States, some 80 percent of Islamic mosques and schools are closely aligned with the Wahhabist sect and heavily dependent on Saudi funding. Five years after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to materially affect this root source of jihadism. The movement continues to grow, fueled by an ever-increasing flow of petrodollars from the Persian Gulf.

There is no evidence that the administration has ever raised this matter with the Saudi government as a high-level issue, and -- just as damaging -- it has never acknowledged it as an issue to the American people. Thus Rumsfeld's question -- are we killing, capturing or deterring jihadists faster than they are being produced? -- must be answered with an emphatic no.

In reviewing progress on the three fronts of this war, even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude that we are winning or that we can win without some significant changes of policy.

The writer was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and later served as a member of the Sept. 11 commission. This is a condensed version of an article that appears in the September issue of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine.

Washington Post

Bush Says Iraq War Is Part of a Larger Fight

2006-09-02T08:38:00.000+03:00

President Bush began a new drive today to rally the American people behind him on the Iraq war and national security, declaring that the United States must stay the course in Iraq because it is a battleground in an epic struggle between democracy and tyranny.

Mr. Bush told the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City that the terrorists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, have much in common with the suicide bombers of Baghdad and the Hezbollah militants who rain rockets on Israel.

Whatever their ethnic or religious differences, Mr. Bush said, they are united in their wish ?to turn back the advance of freedom, and impose a dark vision of tyranny and terror across the world.?

Mr. Bush scoffed at his critics? charges that the American-led campaign in Iraq is a distraction from the real struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists. ?That would come as news to Osama bin Laden,? he said, asserting that terrorists from other countries in the Middle East are making their way to Iraq to try to smother the emerging democracy.

?And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam,? Mr. Bush said.

The president?s 40-minute address, coming on the heels of similarly aggressive speeches on Tuesday by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the legionnaires and Vice President Dick Cheney to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, underscored the White House?s determination to make the Iraq war a fundamental issue in the November elections as Republicans try to keep control of Congress and Democrats try to capitalize on growing impatience with the war.

?In the coming days, I?ll deliver a series of speeches describing the nature of our enemy in the war on terror, the insights we?ve gained about their aims and ambitions, the successes and setbacks we?ve experienced, and our strategy to prevail in this long war,? Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush also chided Iran and Syria for their support of Hezbollah, and he said that Iran must not be allowed to fulfill its nuclear ambitions. He pledged that the United States would continue to seek a diplomatic solution to bridge the deep differences with Iran, ?but there must be consequences for Iran?s defiance.?

Yet Mr. Bush acknowledged that the United States must assume some blame for the smoldering resentments in the region. ?For a half-century, America?s primary goal in the Middle East was stability,? he said, recalling the cold war era. ?This was understandable at the time.? But Washington?s support of anti-communist dictators was accompanied by growing despair and radicalism, he said, alluding to the seizure of Americans at the United States Embassy in Iran after the pro-American but dictatorial Shah of Iran was overthrown.

Doubtless familiar with polls showing increasing numbers of Americans drawing a distinction between the Iraq war and a larger battle against terrorism, Mr. Bush invoked the approaching anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to rebut that view.

That September morning brought to the United States ?a war we didn?t ask for, but a war we must wage, and a war we will win,? Mr. Bush said. And if the United States tires of fighting in the streets of Baghdad, he said, ?we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities.?

?So the United States will not leave until victory is achieved,? Mr. Bush said, warning that more sacrifice lies ahead and that the struggle will be a long one.

Seeking to disarm critics who say that the administration has bungled the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush said he and his commanders are united in their resolve for victory yet flexible enough to adapt tactics to changing conditions. But he said the war, in Iraq and against terrorism generally, will not be won by military might alone.

?Every element of national power? is being marshaled in ?the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,? Mr. Bush said.

Democrats were quick to denounce the president?s speech. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, said the president?s ?failed policies? have made the United States less safe in the past five years. ?Democrats will lead the American people with tough and smart policies that will make us safer by beginning the redeployment of troops from Iraq, refocusing our efforts on the war on terror, and protecting Americans from terrorism here at home,? Mr. Reid said.

And Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts called the speech ?a cynical attempt to help his Republican enablers survive the November elections at a time when he should be spending all of his time working to chart a new course in Iraq.?

Mr. Bush, unlike Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, did not use the word ?appease? today. As for those who doubt the wisdom of the war in Iraq, he said, ?Many of these folks are sincere and patriotic. They cannot be more wrong.?

Mr. Bush did not use the term ?Islamic fascists? today, as he had recently. But he did employ similar language. ?As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before,? he said. ?They?re successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century, and history shows what the outcome will be.?

Ultimately, he said, the outcome will be ?victory for the cause of freedom and liberty.?

The president again described America?s purpose in Iraq as at once idealistic and deeply pragmatic. Victory there will guarantee the Iraqi people freedom, and the country will be a beacon for other freedom-loving peoples in the Middle East, Mr. Bush said. And a free country does not become ?an incubator for terrorist movements,? he went on.

Mr. Bush was applauded frequently. He had not only a friendly audience but a friendly setting: he carried Utah over Senator John Kerry by 71 to 29 percent in 2004, for his biggest margin of victory in any state.

The battles in Iraq will one day rank alongside those at Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal as mileposts on the path to liberty, Mr. Bush said. ?We know that the direction of history leads toward freedom.?

Is Russia an EU alternative for Turkey?

2006-08-26T09:07:00.000+03:00

Discussions on Turkey's alternatives to European Union membership have so far widely seen as unrealistic, redundant or marginal efforts. In the past couple of years several Turkish political and military figures, and intellectuals, have suggested giving up the EU membership process and introducing a deeper rapprochement with Russia, China and even Iran towards a regional union. However they merely emerged as emotional responses to what was perceived as the EU's unfair and hostile policies towards Turkey and failed to come up with a convincing detailed alternative strategy.

Despite such a background, recent developments in Turkish foreign policy re-fuel these discussions and necessitate a closer look particularly at Turkish-Russian relations. Two concrete trends deserve particular attention here: First of all, the great loss of confidence among Turkish decision-makers as well as the public on the future of the EU accession talks, largely due to the Cyprus stalemate and new hurdles introduced to the membership process. Secondly, parallel to that we are witnessing much more close political and security dialogue, and deepening of economic ties between Ankara and Moscow.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin five times last year, and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer is paying an official visit to Moscow this week. Not to mention dozens of other regular visits between high-level officials of the two countries. Under these conditions, some Turkish analysts started to argue that Turkey should immediately make up its mind, give up an open-ended EU process and work towards other alternatives, mainly deepening relations with the Russia.

However, according to Russian Ambassador to Turkey Petr Vladimirovic Stegniy, for today Turkey's EU process is not something Moscow views as harmful for development of Turkish-Russian relations.

"In principle we look our cooperation with the EU and your cooperation with the EU as complementary," Stegniy told the TNA in an interview to be published this week. The Russian ambassador says Moscow is not aspiring to become an EU member for obvious reasons, but they have a positive view of Turkey's EU process.

"This is because first of all Turkey wants it," he said. "Secondly, we have a more predictable neighbor who is playing with European standards. And if we launch an adaptation process in time, we can avoid any possible implication to our bilateral relations."

This is Moscow's "politically correct" look at the current Turkish-EU relations, if Turkey will continue its desire for EU membership process. However, it is obvious already from now that Turkey's EU process will enter into a much more difficult period in the coming months, mainly due to the Cyprus problem and also increasing Turkey-skepticism in countries like Austria and France. On a larger scale, Europe is going through deeper economic and political problems and an identity question, which further complicates Turkey's EU process.

On the other hand, Russia is showing more assertive signs in terms of the economy, stronger involvement in regional and global problems and also desire for a closer cooperation with Turkey. Although we had in the past mere rhetoric on the opportunities for closer ties of Turkey and Russia, today we have more practical concrete cooperation mainly in economics and trade, but not limited to that, and also increasingly including politics and security.

Under these conditions, one could say that the glass is half empty and half full in both Turkey's difficult EU process and its promising relations with the Russia. They are still developing and will be shaped by significant decisions in the coming months and developments in the coming years.

It would be wrong to derive a simple and quick conclusion for the time being that the Russia is becoming an alternative to the EU for Turkey. But one thing is clear: If the EU loses Turkey, Russia is waiting to become Turkey's main partner.

A better way to restore faith in official statistics

2006-08-23T09:03:00.000+03:00

Independence for national statistics requires more than frequent repetition of the word independent.

British official statistics have never fully recovered from the 1980 Rayner report. Derek Rayner suggested that the purpose of government information was to serve the needs of government. His experience was drawn from Marks and Spencer, the retail company where he had been managing director, and the model in his mind was a management information system. But ministers are not managers and their needs are often for propaganda rather than facts. Accurate public information is a prerequisite of democracy.

Government statisticians are honest people and do not make numbers up. But the increasingly acute problems of official statistics are all familiar from private sector accounting.

Whenever accountants and statisticians establish rules, private companies and government departments manage their affairs in line with their letter rather than their spirit. The most egregious example is devices that take long-term liabilities off the balance sheet. Those used in the British government?s private finance initiatives have essentially the same structure as devices used creatively at Enron.

Statistics may be misused in contexts other than those intended. The value of health services increases as incomes rise and it can be argued that this increases the value of health output even if outcomes and procedures are unchanged. This statistical adjustment provides no basis whatever for claims that the National Health Service is more efficient. But the assertion grabs a headline, and it is only much later that pedantic journalists and academics can discover what is actually going on.

Such misrepresentations are now common. Decentralisation of responsibility for the production of official statistics, a product of the Rayner years, has created a two-tier system. Statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics, which operates to internationally agreed criteria, are of higher quality than those produced by departments. Loss of confidence in official statistics is common to the public at large and among professional users, who recognise specific instances of abuse.

These professional users gave a cautious welcome to the government?s announcement last year of independence for the ONS. But the consultative paper that followed suggests that this announcement itself was puffery not fact. The proposal could not even in principle address the main issue ? the declining quality of departmental statistics ? unless responsibility for these figures was given to the ONS, an option firmly rejected. The document also rejects all specific suggestions for greater independence made by bodies such as the Statistics Commission and the Royal Statistical Society: separating statistical information from political statements, reducing access by ministers to new data before their release, giving parliament a defined role in the appointment of the National Statistician.

We are expected to derive confidence from the recategorisation of the ONS, a government department responsible to the Treasury, as a non-ministerial department subject to the oversight of a ministerial department, not specified but expected to be the Treasury.

The proposed strengthening of the board of the ONS might improve its management but the effect on independence depends on whom the government appoints. There are few grounds for optimism. The most substantive proposal in the white paper is the abolition of the Statistics Commission, which reviews all government statistics, and has made itself unpopular with government by proving itself robustly independent.

If the government were serious about independence for national statistics, then there is a readily available model in the National Audit Office, which has complementary responsibilities. The head of the office is appointed jointly by parliament and government and reports directly to an assertively bipartisan parliamentary committee.

The equation of independence for statistics with incessant repetition of the phrase ?independence for statistics? is faintly Orwellian. When a man tells you frequently how honest he is, keep hold of your wallet.

US Jews open their wallets for Israel

2006-08-17T10:20:00.000+03:00

Hizbullah rockets may have stopped for now - but the American Jewish response to the crisis has not.

When American Jews think about Israel's war with Hizbullah, they recall numbers - 1948, 1967, 1973 - that mark previous wars of survival for the Jewish state. They also respond in numbers - dollars, that is.

"Philanthropically, American Jews feel such a sense of connectedness to Israel," said Darrell Friedman, a consultant to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and former president of Baltimore's Jewish federation.

When Jews feel their homeland is under siege, their philanthropic instincts kick into high gear.
"It's our tradition," Friedman said. "Jews will take care of Jews."

That's evidenced by the innumerable emergency campaigns under way and by the mere existence of the North American Jewish federation system, an unparalleled philanthropic network among American ethnic groups.

On August 7, the United Jewish Communities federation umbrella launched a massive campaign to ease the humanitarian crisis in Israel, with the goal of raising hundreds of millions of dollars. So far it has raised $173 million.

Much of those funds are being channeled through programs being run by the UJC's main overseas partners, the JDC, which provides humanitarian relief in Israel and abroad, and the Jewish Agency for Israel, which manages immigration and absorption in Israel and Zionist education worldwide.

The UJC campaign is the Jewish community's largest fund-raising response, but the options for giving right now are broad. The crisis has given rise to new organizational partnerships, has brought certain groups to prominence and has elicited a mix of approaches to fund raising.

Efforts have focused on emergency services like first aid, upgrading bomb shelters, sending children from the northern region to summer camps in the center of the country and feeding and housing Israelis who have fled their homes.
But the needs are still developing and are sure to grow after the war, as Israelis begin rebuilding their cities and their lives.

The tenuous cease-fire reached Monday does not change that fact - and it's an open question how long the cease-fire will last.

The Israel Emergency Campaign was "established with a long-term view," UJC spokesman Glenn Rosenkrantz said. "So many needs exist, including economic revival, infrastructure and facility rebuilding, support for victims of terror and post-traumatic stress counseling for Israelis being among them."

Even as the UJC announced initial plans to raise $300m., its board determined that another $200m. would be necessary.

"It's a moving target," said Howard Rieger, UJC's president and CEO.

As the needs of the month-long war became apparent, private and public philanthropies began working together to respond.

The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies' after-school program for disadvantaged Israeli youth ran a special operation in bomb shelters with support from the Jewish Agency and the JDC.
Like many other foundations, the Bronfman philanthropies used supplemental funds for the crisis in Israel to avoid detracting from other programs.

"There's no question that we've seen people reallocating, but I think what's been more striking is the number of people that we've seen not wanting to reallocate," said Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders Network, whose 1,200 members include some of the biggest Jewish names in philanthropy around the world.

Most foundations already have set their budgets and commitments, so the principals are taking money from their personal wealth, he said.

Either right or wrong

2006-08-14T13:40:00.000+03:00

Either right or wrong

Oppose British policy on its merits - not because it makes us a target

Roy Hattersley
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian

I have been an opponent of the American occupation of Iraq ever since I realised that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction only existed in Tony Blair's imagination. And I am equally opposed both to Israel's disproportionate response to Hizbullah's rocket attacks and to the prime minister's support for the assault upon Lebanon. What is more, I have no doubt that tacit acceptance of the slaughter in Beirut and Baghdad makes this country a target for al-Qaida terrorists and provides the friendly hinterland of sympathisers in which all urban guerrillas need to take refuge.

That being said, I still regret that the letter sent on Friday to the prime minister by leaders of the Islamic community implied that the increased threat that Britain's foreign policy guarantees is in itself a reason for changing the government's position. The reason policy should be changed is the simple fact that the policy is wrong. To demand a shift because it will reduce the risk of suicide bombing is to diminish the case for altering course from a matter of principle to a question of self interest.
If Israel were waging a just war against Lebanon, and the prospect in Iraq was progress towards the liberal democracy that George Bush glibly promises, the dangers would have to be accepted with good grace. Unless, that is, we believe that Britain can withdraw from the rest of the world, secure in what WH Auden called our "tight little right little island". If we are to follow Robin Cook's lead towards an ethical foreign policy, Britain must be more engaged in international affairs, not less. Our foreign policy must be measured against moral criteria, not the risks of more explosions on the underground, horrific though that prospect is.

There are already too many siren voices arguing that the tragedy in Lebanon is "nothing to do with us". Commentators who ought to know better are urging Britain to let the Israelis and Lebanese "get on with it" as if they were louts outside a bar, engaged in a brawl that all sensible people would hurry past. Nato intervention actually halted Balkan genocide after the break-up of the Yugoslav federation.

When it is right to go in we should accept the consequences. Arguing that we should pull out to save our skins is a diversion from the central issue. It also enables supporters of the wrong policy to strike heroic postures - bear any burden, accept any hardship, face any foe. So we should when our cause is just. In the case of Iraq and Lebanon our cause is beyond justification. That is the only issue and the only argument.

There is a second reason that the letter is a matter for regret. It will be interpreted by the mendacious and malicious as proof positive that Muslims in general have at least a sneaking sympathy for people who hope to blow up airliners in mid-flight. That is, of course, palpable nonsense. But the alienation of young Muslims is a subject that has to be discussed with care. No informed person doubts that it is happening. It began long before they were offended by Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses almost 20 years ago. But it usually results in no more than rejection of the society that has shown them, and their religion, so little respect. The Muslims I know, and used to represent in parliament, often feel undervalued. But their attitude to suicide bombing is no different from that of the nominal Christians who live next door.

When the signatories to Friday's letter meet the prime minister they should not spend much time on the increased threat that our foreign policy attracts. They ought to discuss the merits and the morals of his attitude towards Beirut and Baghdad. Does he still think that the creation of a democracy in Iraq is more likely than civil war, and how does he justify an intervention that results in more murders each day than during Saddam Hussein's regime? And why is Israel given carte blanche to occupy whichever parts of its neighbours' territory it chooses? The answers are bound to reveal that Britain is on the wrong side of the argument. That is the important thing to be said about our policy towards Iraq and Lebanon.

Max Boot: Radical Ideas for Iraq

2006-08-09T15:08:00.000+03:00

PRESIDENT BUSH admitted in late July that the security situation in Baghdad was "terrible" and announced that he was sending more troops to quell the violence. Because this is what I advocated in a May 24 column, I should be happy with the president's decision. But, alas, as with so many American initiatives in Iraq, it's too little, too late.

The security situation in Baghdad has been in free fall since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22. In retrospect, that attack appears to be a turning point when the chief problem in Iraq went from being a Sunni-dominated insurgency to a civil war in which Shiite and Sunni militias are equally culpable. The result has been a horrifying surge in violence, with about 100 Iraqis dying every day, the bulk of them in Baghdad.

To restore order in the capital, I suggested adding at least 35,000 U.S. troops ? in line with Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's comment in 2004 that he needed two divisions to control Baghdad. But that's not what Bush is sending. To bolster the 9,000 U.S. troops already in the capital, he is sending another brigade from northern Iraq, for a total of 13,000 U.S. troops, or less than one division. There will be an equal number of Iraqi troops ? along with 35,000 Iraqi police officers, who are so sectarian and corrupt that they are more part of the problem than the solution.

If Bush thinks that a force this size can secure a city of more than 6 million people, he's not listening to the best professional military advice. An additional problem is that moving troops around Iraq, instead of sending extra units, may improve the situation in one spot but worsen the environment elsewhere. As a "senior American military official" in Iraq told McClatchy News Service, "You can't do clear-and-hold with the force structure we have."

If the present strategy doesn't work, what's the alternative? The most radical course would be a total U.S. withdrawal. The likely result would be an all-out civil war in which Iraqi casualties could easily soar to 1,000 a day and the price of oil could go above $100 a barrel. Proposals to carve up Iraq into three separate states ? Sunni, Shiite and Kurd ? would not ameliorate the violence because major cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk are full of different religious and ethnic groups that would fight for control.

THINGS MIGHT ultimately work out if the current, moderate Shiite leadership were to prevail. But the more likely result would be the empowerment of radicals on both sides, with someone like Muqtada Sadr taking over in Baghdad and a rump, Taliban-style Sunni state being carved out of western Iraq. U.S. prestige would be deeply wounded, and Islamist terrorists would be encouraged to keep attacking us outside Iraq.

No wonder almost all Iraqi political factions are opposed to a U.S. pullout. They know what horrors would ensue.

But there's another course short of withdrawal: reducing U.S. forces from today's level of 130,000 to under 50,000 and changing their focus from conducting combat operations to assisting Iraqi forces. The money saved from downsizing the U.S. presence could be used to better train and equip more Iraqi units. A smaller U.S. commitment also would be more sustainable over the long term. This is the option favored within the U.S. Special Forces community, in which the dominant view is that most American soldiers in Iraq, with their scant knowledge of the local language and customs, are more of a hindrance than a help to the counterinsurgency effort.

Make no mistake: This is a high-risk strategy. The drawdown of U.S. troops could catalyze the Iraqis into getting their own house in order, or it could lead to a more rapid and violent disintegration of the rickety structure that now exists.

Which path should we take? My preference remains deploying more soldiers, not fewer. A couple of divisions in Baghdad, if skillfully led, might be able to replicate the success that Col. H.R. McMaster's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment had in pacifying the western city of Tall Afar, where the troops-to-civilians ratio was 10 times higher than in Baghdad today. But at this point, I am also open to a substantial reduction in troop numbers because the current strategy just isn't working.

Bush needs to do something radical to shake up a deteriorating status quo if we are to have any hope of averting the worst American military defeat since Vietnam.

LA Times

Turkish Grand Prix ? 25th-27th August 2006

2006-08-05T08:56:00.000+03:00

The Circuit

The brand new, state-of-the-art International Circuit of Kurtkoy, located at Pendik, 80km (50 miles) east of Istanbul hosted the first ever Turkish Grand Prix in August 2005. The event was deemed such a success that the Circuit will again play host to world's most glamorous race in 2006.

How to Get There

There are regular direct scheduled flights from both London Heathrow and Manchester to Istanbul?s Atatürk Airport with Turkish Airlines and British Airways. A twice daily Easyjet service between London Luton and Sabiha Gokcen Airport on the City's Asian side is due to commence on 29th June 2006. Fares start from £30.99 one-way including taxes.

It is also possible to travel via European capital cities with the relevant national airline, e.g via Paris with Air France. For further information, please refer to the How to Travel page.
The circuit is situated on the Asian side of the City, 6km from the junction of Kurtkoy and to the north of the TEM Motorway, the connecting route between Istanbul and Ankara.

Transport services from the City Centre to the Circuit will be available.

Tickets and Tour Operators

Tickets are on sale through Biletix, the official agent of race organisers MSO Istanbul.
Other operators offering ticket only and package deals include:
Airtrack Motor Sport
Page& Moy
Motor Racing International
Turkeygrandprix.com
IAH Holidays

Where to Stay
As the industrial and cultural capital of Turkey, Istanbul is home to some ten million people. The City?s unique atmosphere and rich history have served to attract an increasing number of tourists. As a result, there is ample accommodation throughout the City to suit all budgets ? from five star opulence and historic boutique hotels to intimate guest houses and pansiyons.
Please visit our Hotel Guide for further information.

Further Information

Turkey Hotel Guide features a comprehensive database of hotels in and around Istanbul.
Istanbul Otodrom is the official project website of the Formula 1 Istanbul Racing Circuit and contains up-to-the-minute information on the progress of track construction.
Istanbul.com is a useful source of information for visitors to the City.

US-Turkey Nuclear Cooperation: What Does It Mean for Turkey?

2006-08-01T09:20:00.000+03:00

The Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement between the United States and Turkey, signed by the two sides on July 26, 2000, has recently been ratified by the Turkish government. The agreement rightly and by definition prohibits Turkey from exploiting the cooperation for any purposes which would directly or indirectly help her develop military nuclear capabilities, which is something that both parties would seemingly agree upon.

However, beyond limiting Turkey?s prospective nuclear capabilities to civilian purposes, the agreement seems to aim at bringing even Turkey?s civilian nuclear projects under US control. As such, for the United States, the US-Turkish Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement is a diplomatic triumph whereas, for Turkey, it seems to be nothing more than self-shackling, and a voided attempt at developing even civilian nuclear capabilities.
A Critical Analysis of the Agreement: What it means for Turkey
The US-Turkey Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement is essentially an affirmation of both countries? support for the objectives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As such, the agreement prohibits Turkey from using any nuclear capability it might develop for military purposes and directly or indirectly assisting any other country to develop military nuclear capabilities. However, while it should be equally binding on the United States too, apparently it will not be so.
The Bush Administration has recently passed a resolution in Congress which will enable it to sell nuclear technology, material and equipment to India for the construction of 22 new nuclear reactors, eight of which will be exempt from the IAEA inspection and are likely to be used for military purposes. Therefore, the nuclear civilian cooperation agreement and the so-called affirmation of support for the IAEA objectives constitute simply a pretext to enable the US to increase its influence on Turkey?s prospective nuclear projects and to grant itself the legitimacy to interfere.
Moreover, the benefits of the agreement seem to be rather rhetorical than substantial. The agreement suggests that the parties can collaborate in research and development toward civilian purposes, design educational and staff exchange programs, and co-organize workshops and conferences. Yet, it prohibits the transfer of critical nuclear technology between the parties, or in more practical terms, prohibits the transfer of the critical nuclear technology from the United States to Turkey. Similarly, the agreement imposes a limit to the amount of nuclear material that Turkey can obtain from the US. That is, Turkey cannot obtain the necessary quantity of nuclear material to run its nuclear reactors efficiently, but rather only as much as the amount determined in the agreement.
In addition, the agreement consists of conditions regarding the storage, re-transfer, re-processing and enrichment of the nuclear materials that are likely to complicate or even stall future nuclear cooperation between the US and Turkey. First, the plutonium, uranium 233 and/or enriched uranium produced from the nuclear materials transferred or to be transferred, or through the use of these nuclear materials can be stored in only where both parties agree upon.
The biggest challenge to satisfying this condition would be to bring not only the US and Turkish government, but also the Turkish public opinion into equilibrium. Second, Turkey will not be able to sell third parties any material and/or equipment which it produces by using the nuclear material and/or equipment transferred via this agreement, without American approval. Third, the nuclear materials produced through either direct or indirect use of the nuclear material transferred via this agreement will not be re-processed unless the both parties agree. Finally, the uranium transferred or produced via the material or equipment that has been transferred will not be enriched unless both the US and Turkey agree.
Even though the statements in the agreement frequently repeat the phrase ?unless both parties agree,? since there are only two involved parties, it practically means ?unless the United States agrees or allows Turkey to?? That is, Turkey may follow any policy regarding the storage, re-transfer, re-processing and enrichment of the transferred nuclear material only if the United States allows her to do so.
The wording of the agreement is particularly important given past experience of US-Turkish relations. The agreement states that the United States will try to provide the nuclear fuel on time, which is necessary for Turkey?s prospective nuclear reactors to run efficiently, economically, securely, and continuously. In other words, the failure to provide the necessary fuel to the reactors on time or the possible disruptions in its supply will cause the very nuclear reactors to run inefficiently, uneconomically, insecurely, and disruptively. No need to mention that the discontinuity of the nuclear fuel supply will simply turn the nuclear reactors into useless constructions dangerous for both human health and the natural environment.
The critical word in this section of the agreement is that the US will try to deliver on this promise of nuclear fuel supply. Interestingly enough, the former-Chief of General Staff I. Hakki Karadayi opposed the AKP government?s envisioned support to the United States by reminding that Dick Cheney, when US Secretary of Defense, promised that the United States would try to compensate for Turkey?s economic losses because of the First Gulf War, during the Ozal government. Karadayi noted that the promised compensation never came through.
For the Turks, One Thing to Cheer About
At the least, there is still one thing for Turkey to cheer about with this agreement. As far as the information revealed to the media suggests, the agreement does not prohibit Turkey from developing similar civilian nuclear partnerships with other countries, and does not confine Turkey to purchasing the necessary nuclear technology, fuel, material and equipment only from the United States. Therefore, Turkey may still seek other suppliers who are willing to be more accommodating in their interactions with Turkey.
Such suppliers could possibly be France, Canada, or closer to home, Russia and Israel. Developing such diversified supply channels would also comply with the United States? practice, in that it has already cemented civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with 47 countries, and is now about to sign one with Russia.
Indeed, the Bush Administration has recently embarked on negotiations with Russia, which could eventually lead to a nuclear civilian cooperation agreement between the two countries. The idea of the US-Russian nuclear cooperation initiative has received harsh criticism from both Republican and Democratic congressmen, most notably from Arizona?s Republican Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who views the initiative as a reward for bad behavior on the part of Moscow and as assisting the restoration of autocracy in Russia.
However, administration officials have stressed the beneficial aspects of the deal. Nicholas Burns, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, suggests that working with Russia on a civilian nuclear cooperation is in the American national interest since Russia has proven itself a key player in negotiations with Iran. Similarly, with the recently renewed US-Indian nuclear partnership, the Bush administration claims to have aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The only problem with the initiative seems to be that it is likely to help India develop nuclear weapons instead.
Actual practice has shown that the so-called ?civil nuclear cooperation agreements? do not necessarily curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons, despite their stated intent to do so. Rather, the parties to such agreement view them simply as a means for pursuing their national interests. Depending on how you define them, civil nuclear agreements may well yield to developing military nuclear capabilities as well. The only thing that involved parties must be careful about is how the other side perceives the agreement and accordingly words its conditions.

balkanalysis.com

Rage, Rockets & Rhetoric

2006-07-25T10:33:00.000+03:00

"These are not Hezbollah buildings!" says this resident of southern Beirut ? which is a stronghold of Hezbollah support ? surveying the damage in his neighborhood following Israeli air raids, July 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

(CBS/AP) Israeli forces - now in day 14 of their war with Hezbollah - moved deeper into Lebanon Monday as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made her first diplomatic foray since the conflict began, encountering some resistance. As she laid out the U.S. position during an unannounced visit to Beirut Monday, Israeli troops seized a hilltop in a Hezbollah stronghold, capturing two guerrillas in heavy fighting.

The U.S. completed its evacuation of 12,000 Americans and said it would switch its focus to bringing in humanitarian aid. Rice is arguing for a cease fire simultaneous with the deployment of international and Lebanese troops into southern Lebanon, to prevent new Hezbollah attacks on Israel. CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports Lebanese officials describe Monday's meetings as tense, with Rice repeating the same conditions for a cease fire that Israel has laid out.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a prominent Shiite Muslim who has been negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, rejected the idea and said a cease fire should be immediate, leaving the other issues for much later. Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora took a similar stance and complained to Rice about the destruction wreaked by U.S. ally Israel. Israel, the Lebanese leader told Rice, "is taking Lebanon backward 50 years and the result will be Lebanon's destruction." A day after criticizing Israel for "disproportionate" strikes against civilians, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland accused Hezbollah of "cowardly blending" among Lebanese civilians.

"Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending... among women and children," Egeland said. "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men." Israel appeared to be easing bombardment in populated areas and roads in Lebanon that has killed hundreds, displaced as many as 750,000 and dismembered the transportation network. Instead, it appeared to be focusing its firepower on Hezbollah at the front. Beirut saw no strikes all day, in apparent deference to Rice's visit.

In other recent developments:
Hospital and security officials say seven people were killed and another person was wounded in an Israeli missile strike early Tuesday on a house in Nabatiyeh, in south Lebanon.
President Bush on Monday ordered helicopters and ships to Lebanon to provide humanitarian aid. In announcing the assistance program, White House press secretary Tony Snow said there is no reason to believe an immediate cease fire would stop violence in the Mideast and said instead that the world should confront the destabilizing force of Hezbollah and its practice of using the Lebanese people as "human shields."

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wants a meeting Wednesday in Rome to negotiate a deal including a cease fire, deployment of an international force and the release of two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah. Annan's goal is "to keep the U.N. involved in the mediation efforts, even if the international military force is likely to be a NATO or other non-U.N. Force," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk. "Relief aid and humanitarian assistance will most likely have to be distributed by U.N. agencies."

Hezbollah's representative in Iran warned Monday that his militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel. "We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe," Hossein Safiadeen told a conference that included the Tehran-based representative of the Palestinian group Hamas and the ambassadors from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. "You will see a new Middle East - in the way of Hezbollah and Islam, not in the way of Rice and Israel."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday called for an international military force in southern Lebanon to be part of a cease fire deal which has yet to be negotiated.
A group of 300 Americans and 100 other Europeans are believed trapped in villages south of Tyre, according to Erik Rattat, a German official involved in the evacuation of foreigners from Lebanon. Some 11,700 Americans have fled Lebanon.

Israel shelled a town in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, killing five Palestinians and wounding at least nine people, according to hospital officials. Israel said its attacks were aimed at two groups of Hamas militants firing rockets at southern Israel and that it regretted any civilian casualties.

An Israeli helicopter crashed in northern Israel near the Lebanese border after hitting an electrical wire while making an emergency landing, causing two casualties and starting a large brushfire atop a hill.

(CBS/AP) CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports Hezbollah's headquarters ? its offices and apartments and even its streets ? are all mostly just rubble now. But the infrastructure Hezbollah relies on isn't made of concrete and steel. Hezbollah's foundation is religious zeal and popular support, Roth reports. It is a surrogate government that runs clinics and schools and mosques ? and is a part of the establishment with 14 seats in parliament.

Israel's overall death toll stands at 39, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 22 soldiers killed in the fighting. Sixty-eight soldiers have been wounded, and 255 civilians were injured by rocket fire, officials said. On the Lebanese side, security officials said 384 people had been killed, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah guerrillas. Israel continued pounding the visible infrastructure of Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday.

CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan reports from Tyre that the Lebanese didn't need a reminder of the danger but the Israelis gave them one anyway: High overhead, two explosions and leaflets filled the sky. The message fluttering down was as simple as it was cold. "This is just the beginning," it said. At the front, Israeli ground forces waged a fierce battle Monday with guerrillas dug in at the closest large town to the border, Bint Jbail, known as "the capital of the resistance" for its vehement support of Hezbollah during Israel's 1982-2000 occupation of the south. Four Israeli soldiers were killed ? two in fighting and two in a helicopter crash ? and 20 were wounded, military officials said.

The army said it captured two Hezbollah guerrillas, the first time it has taken any into custody during the fighting. "When the enemy surrenders, we take them prisoner. The two prisoners are located in Israel and will be held here with the aim of interrogating them," said Brig. Gen. Alon Friedman. Backed by an intense artillery barrage, troops seized a hilltop inside the town, but the rest of Bint Jbail remained in the hands of up to 200 Hezbollah guerrillas, military officials said. Israeli military officials say several thousand troops are moving in and out of southern Lebanon, but there are less than that number in there at any one time.

A day earlier, a Red Cross doctor visited Bint Jbail and reported an unknown number of families hunkered down in schools and mosques for protection, though much of the population of about 30,000 had fled. Bint Jbail holds a legendary reputation with Hezbollah, because it was one of three large towns inside Israel's buffer zone and backing for the guerrillas remained strong throughout the occupation. Signs in the town tout its nickname.

When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah held a large celebration in Bint Jbail, proclaiming that the guerrillas now stood on Israel's border. The move into Bint Jbail, about 2.5 miles from the border, represents the spear point of Israel's advance, moving forward from Maroun al-Ras, a frontier village captured in more heavy fighting over the weekend. At the same time, Israeli forces were working to destroy every Hezbollah post within a half mile of the 40-mile Israeli-Lebanese border, Israeli Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said. The Israeli bombardment hit the southern cities of Tyre and Nabatiyeh.

An Israeli shell crashed into a house near the Lebanese town of Marjayoun late Monday, wounding two children, witnesses said. Persistent bombardment of southern Beirut has made three hospitals there unusable because staff and supply can't reach them, forcing the evacuation of more than 50 patients. Hospitals in Tyre in Nabatiyeh are forced to take only emergency cases to preserve supplies. "Our situation is tragic. Hospitals across Lebanon are suffering medicine and fuel shortages," Lebanese Health Minister Jawad Khalife told The Associated Press. The Red Cross sent convoys to Tyre and Marjayoun bearing blankets, generators for hospitals, hygienic supplies and other materials. Egeland called on Israel to open the port of Tyre to let in aid ships and guarantee safe passage for relief convoys. An entry point at Tyre would get material directly into the south without a dangerous convoy drive.

Two ships docked at Beirut and convoys entered from Syria, bearing blankets, food, medicine. Two convoys of trucks took material to the worst-hit areas in the south along dangerous and broken roads. Amer Daoudi, Emergency Coordinator for the World Food Program operations in Lebanon, said it is vital to move fast to get aid to the people who need it most. "We need to reach these people fast. It is bad enough that their lives have been shattered without them having to go hungry as well."

www.cbsnews.com

The world needs more foxes and fewer hedgehogs

2006-07-22T11:00:00.000+03:00

Why are the predictions of well known experts worse than those of people who linger in obscurity? Isaiah Berlin's distinction between the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, and the fox, who knows many little things, provides a clue to the answer.

Isaiah Berlin, historian of ideas, made a distinction between the intelligence of the hedgehog ? which knows one big thing ? and the intelligence of the fox ? which knows many little things. Hedgehogs fit what they learn into a world view. Foxes improvise explanations case by case. The world needs both but today it needs fewer hedgehogs and more foxes. Berlin?s terms are used to describe styles of reasoning by the American psychologist Philip Tetlock, who has spent 20 years asking pundits to predict who will win elections, what countries will acquire nuclear weapons or enter the European Union and how the first Gulf war would end. He has tested 30,000 predictions from 300 experts against outcomes. Mr Tetlock finds that his respondents are not very good. They do better than a chimp who answers at random, but not much, and worse than simple forecasting rules based on extrapolation. But some pundits are better than others. A little knowledge is helpful. Dilettantes ? people with the information you will acquire from diligent reading of this newspaper ? do much better than undergraduates who based their judgment on a one-page summary of the issues. But experts have little advantage over dilettantes. The reputation of the experts is a guide to which are worth following. But not in the way you might expect. Bad forecasters are consulted more frequently than good ones. The more famous the expert, the worse his prognostications. Mr Tetlock explains this intriguing result through the distinction between hedgehogs and foxes. He uses psychological tests to categorise his respondents. People who agree that ?it is annoying to listen to someone who cannot seem to make up his or her mind? and ?the most common error in decision-making is to abandon good ideas too quickly? are hedgehogs. People who say ?when considering most conflicts, I can usually see how both sides could be right? and ?I prefer interacting with people whose opinions are very different from my own? are foxes. Mr Tetlock?s analysis is about political judgment but equally relevant to economic and commercial assessments. Foxes are better at prediction than hedgehogs because they derive information from many sources, adjust their views in line with events and see a range of perspectives on each situation. Hedgehogs have one clear view, seek evidence that confirms that view and have ready explanations for apparent failures of foresight. But these hedgehog characteristics are exactly those that politicians, journalists and business leaders demand of advisers and commentators. Harry Truman famously sought a one-armed economist, who would never say: ?On the one hand, then on the other.? Broadcast media look for snappy soundbites. Corporate executives demand ?the elevator pitch? for new ideas. Fund managers want specific forecasts. Business audiences do not want to hear that the world is a complex and uncertain place. But, unfortunately, it is. Leaders need many hedgehog qualities ? the cry that the probability of victory is 0.6 is not inspiring. But the analytic skills needed for good judgments are those of foxes. Effective management teams include both hedgehogs and foxes, which is why the modern tendency to appoint hedgehogs and allow them to surround themselves by like-minded hedgehogs is so dangerous. It is not difficult to see how George W. Bush would score on Mr Tetlock?s personality tests. Political hedgehogs invade Iraq, business hedgehogs go to China and financial hedgehogs hype the new economy. While a few political geniuses may successfully display the skills of both hedgehog and fox, these attributes are normally incompatible. The cult of the heroic CEO, which invites us to believe all characteristics required for great leadership and good judgment can be found in a few exceptional individuals, flies in the face of psychological research as well as long experience. Philip Tetlock?s new book Expert Political Judgment is published by Princeton University Press; John Kay?s new book The Hare & the Tortoise by the Erasmus Press

Think tank report: KKTC cannot be blamed for Cyprus division

2006-07-18T08:45:00.000+03:00

A think tank known for its studies on the European Union asked Finland, which holds the current term presidency of the EU, to help lift sanctions imposed on the Turkish Cypriots.

?Turkey is making a reasonable request to the EU to remove the present embargo on traffic through northern Cypriot sea harbors and airports,? the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) said in a report drafted to be presented to Finland.

Referring to remarks by EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who warned Turkey's negotiations are heading for a ?train wreck? unless Turkey fulfills its EU obligations, the report said: ?These are in themselves reasonable conditions to put to the candidate state. However, Turkey is also making a reasonable request? by asking the 25-nation bloc to ease the isolation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC).

Turkey is under pressure from the EU to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot traffic under a customs union protocol but Ankara refuses to do so unless sanctions imposed on the KKTC are lifted. The European Commission proposed removing the embargo on the KKTC after a U.N. reunification plan was overwhelmingly rejected by the Greek Cypriots. The majority of Turkish Cypriots voted for the peace plan.

?The citizens of northern Cyprus are (or can be) passport-holding citizens of the Republic of Cyprus and therefore also citizens of the EU. As a result the EU has its obligations to the citizens of northern Cyprus, first of all their right to enjoy all freedoms that are at the heart of the EU's legal order,? the report said.

?Northern Cyprus cannot be blamed for the continued division of the island,? it stressed.
Stating that the Turkish Cypriots were being punished despite their approval of the U.N. plan, the report suggested alternatives including renegotiating an amended version of the U.N. plan and the EU opening up of bilateral channels of assistance to the KKTC.

Turkish Daily news

In the city, any day can be a killing day

2006-07-17T09:43:00.000+03:00

When it comes to homicide in Philadelphia this year, one day of the week is pretty much like any other.

There's no weekend blip.

That is, perhaps, the most remarkable fact to be gleaned from a review of the city's 185 slayings in the first half of 2006. That review shows that, as was the case last year, the typical victim of homicide in Philadelphia is a young black male. And he has been typically killed by a handgun.
What is a little different is the day-of-the-week pattern.
According to data provided by the Philadelphia Police Department, the largest number of homicides, 32, occurred on Friday. The second-highest number of killings, 31, took place on Tuesday.

And the five other days of the week, including Saturday and Sunday, were essentially indistinguishable, all with totals ranging from 22 to 26.

In one sense, this is a statistical anomaly; through the first six months of last year, Saturday and Sunday were the most common days for killing in Philadelphia.

But professor Roger Lane of Haverford College, an expert on murder in America, says the current pattern, or lack thereof, has some significance from a historical perspective.
Decades ago, killings tended to happen on the weekend, after paydays, when people had the time and money to get drunk and/or focus on personal or domestic disputes. No more.
"To people who aren't legitimately employed, one night of the week isn't much different from another," Lane said. "I think what we're seeing in Philadelphia reflects the high level of poverty and unemployment among younger, black males who, in large part, are both the perpetrators and the victims of these crimes."

The idea that urban homicide is largely a weekend phenomenon has lived on - with a cheap handgun still known as a Saturday Night Special - even though the reality on the ground has long since changed.

Regardless of which day of the week a killing is committed, the police data paint this picture of homicide in Philadelphia:
Handguns were used in 82 percent of the city's killings in the first half of 2006; shotguns and rifles accounted for 4 percent more. Last year, the local percentages were slightly lower, about 77 percent for handguns, 80 percent for all manner of guns.
Nationally, handguns are used in about 51 percent of homicides, with other firearms accounting for nearly 15 percent.

"What we worry about is the ease with which people can get weapons in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania," Mayor Street said in a recent interview, "and the fact that they're virtually all over the place."

The legislature has shown little interest in revising the state's gun laws. Earlier this month, Attorney General Thomas Corbett and State Sen. Vincent Fumo (D., Phila.) announced the formation of a task force to curb the sale and possession of illegal firearms in the city.
About 80 percent of all victims this year in Philadelphia have been African American, which is about the norm here. Roughly 89 percent of the victims have been male, also about the same as in 2005.

Nationally, about 78 percent of homicide victims are male; slightly less than half are black.
The cities with the highest homicide rates in America, studies show, have large, poor black populations with high unemployment. Cities with homicide rates higher than Philadelphia's in 2005 included Baltimore, Birmingham, Detroit, Kansas City, Richmond, St. Louis and Washington.

Nearly half of the homicides in Philadelphia this year have occurred between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Last month, Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson announced the formation of the Strategic Intervention Tactical Enforcement Mobile Unit, an elite 46-officer anticrime team to patrol the city's most dangerous areas during those hours.
The youngest adults, age 18 to 24, make up the largest group of victims, accounting for 38 percent of the total.

Locally, the percentage of victims represented by this age group has risen over the years. As recently as 1994, 18- to 24-year-olds accounted for 24 percent of the victims. Last year, the figure was 32 percent.

Nationally, there were slightly more victims in the 25-to-39 age group than in the 18-to-24 group in 2004, the last year for which breakdowns are available.
Philadelphia's 380 homicides in 2005 were its most since 1997. The homicide rate per capita was the highest of the nation's 10 largest cities.

By Larry Eichel
Inquirer Staff Writer

A Clash of Authority

2006-07-14T08:48:00.000+03:00

Gaza, and now Lebanon.

Once again, events are proving the cardinal rule of the Middle East: that even when it seems that things have gone completely to hell, they can always get worse. This morning, Hizbullah launched a rocket barrage on northern Israel followed by a cross-border raid in which three Israeli soldiers died and two more were captured. The IDF responded with artillery and air strikes and, most ominously, a ground incursion, resulting in four more Israeli soldiers, at least two Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hizbullah fighters being killed. Israeli troops are ow on Lebanese soil for the first time in six years.

It's hard to overestimate how potentially bad this could get. Ha'aretz analyst Amos Harel describes the crisis as the most complicated since 2002, but a better comparison might be 1982. The current situation could, if it continues to spin out of control, turn into a regional war. The last Israeli invasion of Lebanon was also aimed at eliminating a threat from a non-state militia that controlled the south, and that ended up as a 20-year nightmare.
The escalation along the Lebanese border is obviously in conjunction with the fighting in Gaza, but the two have differences as well as common dimensions. My thoughts on the Gaza crisis have thus far been very mixed, and I find it hard to reflexively condemn either side. Leaving aside the question of who has authority to fight for the Palestinians (about which more later), the raid that resulted in Gilad Shalit's capture was a legitimate military attack, aimed at a beseiging army unit. The objectives of the Israeli response, which was aimed at liberating the captured soldier and suppressing Qassam fire onto Israeli territory, were likewise legitimate. Both parties have committed serious violations of the rule of proportionality, particularly Israel's destruction of the Gaza power plant and its interference with the delivery of humanitarian supplies, but they both have a reason to fight, and it's impossible to put sole blame for the crisis on either side.
I have no such trouble assigning blame for the escalation in Lebanon. Hizbullah, quite simply, committed an unprovoked act of war, and despite Nasrallah's rhetoric about solidarity with the Palestinians and liberation of Lebanese prisoners, the raid was fairly obviously aimed at maintaining political relevance. Hizbullah was once a genuine resistance group that fought Israeli occupation, but that occupation has been over since 2000, and lately it's been more in the business of provoking Israel than resisting it. The identity of the aggressor in Gaza is ambiguous, but on the Lebanese frontier it isn't.
At this point, though, placing blame is less important than figuring out how to put on the brakes - and that's where the authority problem of which I spoke earlier really comes back to bite. The refrain of the Israeli right that Israel "has no partner" isn't true, but sometimes too many partners can be worse than none at all. One of the greatest problems in resolving both the current crises is the fact that Israel's opponents are non-state factions that aren't answerable to any central authority. Israel can reach an agreement with one faction, but that doesn't prevent a rival militia or a splinter group from disavowing the accord a day later. That in fact seems to be precisely how the Gaza crisis started; to all appearances, the raid on Shalit's unit was carried out on orders of Hamas' expatriate leadership without consulting Haniyeh, and was timed to pre-empt Haniyeh's agreement with Abbas over the prisoners' document. Likewise, Hizbullah carries out its own foreign policy and reserves, to the exclusion of the Lebanese government, the right to define and fight for Lebanese interests. There is no single person or entity that can negotiate a firm end to hostilities on either front.
To be sure, Israel is partly to blame for the authority gap. The fragmentation in Gaza was caused in large part by the destruction of the infrastructure and security forces during the second intifada. Hizbullah owes its existence as a quasi-autonomous militia to the fact that the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon created a power vacuum in which it could develop as such. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority clearly choked on Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, with neither Fatah or Hamas making more than a token effort to establish a monopoly of force, and Hizbullah's current quasi-state status owes much more to the weakness of the Lebanese state than to any defensive necessity. Whatever Israel's responsibility for the original fragmentation of authority, its continuation is convenient for the Palestinian factions and Hizbullah, allowing them to carry on the conflict while maintaining deniability and keeping it in a legal gray area of non-war.
Both fronts also involve other players. Mubarak's claim that Israel and Hamas had reached a deal but were thwarted by outside agencies is a case in point. Assuming that Mubarak is telling the truth - and despite his diminished credibility, I'm inclined to believe him in light of last week's tentative Hamas leaks that a deal was in the offing - then the fragmentation of authority goes even further: not only aren't the Hamas military wing or Hizbullah answerable to their respective national governments, but they answer to other agendas that have nothing to do with their nominal constituents. This is, on top of everything else, an Iranian and/or Syrian proxy conflict, which adds a new dimension to the authority problem and makes the process of untangling it even more complicated.
With that said some authority gaps are easier to bridge than others. There's at least a possibility that things can be worked out on the Lebanese front. Hizbullah is an establishment faction with experienced foreign interlocutors, a place in the Lebanese cabinet and a quasi-state in Nabatiyeh to protect. It also has a disciplined chain of command and has largely established a monopoly of force in the areas it controls, so there's a chance that speedy and intensive international mediation might restore stability.
To that end, Olmert's characterization of the Hizbullah raid as an act of war by Lebanon is both foolish and irresponsible. This wasn't an act of war by Lebanon. This was an act of war by Hizbullah, that likely caught the Lebanese state as much by surprise as Shalit's capture caught Abbas and Haniyeh. The object of the game right now is not to involve the Lebanese state in the conflict - a move that could not only devastate southern Lebanon but potentially bring in the Syrians - and to end the conflict before it becomes a clash between nations.
Gaza, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be nearly as amenable to a brokered settlement. The outlines of a package deal in which Israel withdraws from Gaza and releases prisoners in exchange for the return of Shalit and an end to rocket fire have been suggested by both sides, and still represents the most viable way out of the crisis. As Mubarak found out, though, the PNA's nominal leadership and even the Hamas politburo don't have the effective authority to make and enforce such an agreement, and the militias are much more dependent on outside support and have too much of an interest in continued hostilities. Until the authority problem is solved, a negotiated settlement or even the balance of deterrence that usually exists along the Lebanese frontier seems unlikely, which means all too probably that we're in for another iteration of pointless violence. I wish I could write something more hopeful, but as things stand now, I don't see much cause for optimism.
UPDATE (13 July, 3:15 p.m. EDT): It's getting worse. As of this writing, 52 Lebanese civilians have been killed and more than 100 injured in Israeli air strikes. Hizbullah has launched a major rocket barrage at northern Israeli cities, killing at least two and injuring 120. Israel has hit the Beirut international airport and imposed an air and naval blockade, ostensibly to keep the captured soldiers from being moved out of the country, and Lebanese observers are reporting leaflets being dropped on Shi'ite neighborhoods in south Beirut as a possible prelude to a raid.
At this point, the only thing that can be said is that everyone's in the wrong. Hizbullah is to be condemned for starting this and for bombarding civilian targets, but the Israeli response hasn't been very discriminate either, and much of it has been directed at the wrong target. The Lebanese people are the bystanders, not the enemy. Israel is lashing out rather than responding intelligently, and is adding unnecessarily to the death toll. Right now I'm angry at everyone - Hizbullah, Israel, Syria, Iran, Hamas, the international mediators who are twiddling their thumbs, and everyone else who's playing with human life like it's some kind of children's toy.
The only sign of hope in all this is coming from the Lebanese cabinet which, after an initial cop-out, is preparing a ceasefire proposal that calls for the captured soldiers to be released and sweetens the deal with an ambiguous hint that the national army might taken control of the border. If the government can impose this on Hizbullah before things spiral too far out of control (which it's apparently hoping to do by seeking a Security Council endorsement), then there might be a way out of this, and it might lead to other substantive negotiations in the future. Whether Hizbullah can be controlled, though, is a very open question, and the window of time before events hit the point of no return is closing.

The Battle for Truman's Ghost

2006-07-14T08:39:00.000+03:00

Everyone wants to claim the mantle of "Give'm Hell" Harry, the architect of our victory in the Cold War. Liberals. Conservatives. The President.As I mentioned below, I have something of a personal interest in this battle. And I have some opinions about who deserves to wear the Truman mantle.The place to begin this discussion is with the President's commencement address at West Point to the Class of 2006. Although talk of Truman was in the air, the President brought it to center stage with his commencement address.

He told the Class of 2006 that:
By the actions he took, the institutions he built, the alliances he forged and the doctrines he set down, President Truman laid the foundations for America's victory in the Cold War...Today, at the start of a new century, we are again engaged in a war unlike any our nation has fought before -- and like Americans in Truman's day, we are laying the foundations for victory.Interestingly, Bush didn't take the analogy between himself and Truman much further. His next paragraph entails an extended analogy between the Communism of then and the terrorism of now, but that is a point Democrats tend to agree with.

With regard to himself and Trumn, Bush allowed much of his message to remain implicit.Implicit but crystal clear to those who know their recent history. Truman also committed the United States to a bloody and indecisive war that made him a pariah in the White House by the time he left office. For decades, historians reviled Truman while Democrats preferred to identify themselves with FDR.Although Bush never reminds his audience how reviled Truman was, Bush does take care to point out that Truman predicted his own vindication:
As President Truman put it towards the end of his presidency, "When history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we set the course that can win it."The question then, is should George Bush derive such confidence from the belated vindication of the haberdasher from Missouri? Peter Beinart says no, in a column entitled Hijacking Harry Truman.

According to Peter, the problem with Bush's address as West Point isn't that he said, but what he didn't say:
Truman did not believe merely in promoting democracy and peace; he believed that doing so required powerful international institutions, which could invest American power with the credibility that the Soviets lacked.In the years immediately after World War II, the United States encased itself in a web of such bodies -- from the United Nations and NATO to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization). And Truman was frank in recognizing that such institutions gave weaker countries an influence over American actions.For the moment, Peter will have to forgive me for relying on his column as the authoritative source of his opinons, since I still have not read his book, even though it is sitting on my coffee table as I write this. But I will get to it soon.Anyhow, I think it is fair to say that Beinart represents multilateralism as an integral part of the Truman legacy. In short, Truman traded power for legitimacy.But is that really what Truman did? Although NATO is a multilateral institution it really doesn't belong in the same category as the United Nations. NATO was a military alliance of like-minded anti-Communist states, almost all of them democratic. The primary value of NATO was not that it legitimized American power, but that it reassured those in Europe who believed that America might retreat into isolationism once again.As for the United Nations, it doesn't really belong in the same category as the United Nations either. When it was born in San Francisco in 1945, China and the Soviet Union were American allies. The institution itself was as much an extension of the wartime alliance (to which FDR referred as "the United Nations") as it was an effort to trade power for legitimacy.Of course, the alliance did not last for long. In that regard, Noemie Emery argues in the Weekly Standard that Truman recognized the inevitable dysfunction of a United Nations with the Soviet Union on its Security Council. Thus, when preparing to go war in Korea,

Truman did not consider the approval of the Security Council to be necessary. Emery writes that:
[Truman] did get its consent, only because the Soviet Union blundered by boycotting the Council. But as Max Boot reminds us, "Truman had already committed air and naval forces to combat before the vote," later writing to Acheson that without the U.N., "We would have had to go into Korea alone."Although I've spent some time studying Truman's foreign policy, I cannot personally vouch for Emery's interpretation of this episode, although she is certainly correct that the Soviets boycotted the relevant vote.Nonetheless, the more relevant point may be that Truman's aspiring heirs on the Democratic side of the aisle never seem to recognize that the Truman of Korea is not the good multilateralist they want to canonize.

For example, the index at the back of Peter Beinart's book doesn't even have an entry for Korea (south, north or otherwise).I would also like to suggest to my friends in the Truman National Security Project that they begin to grapple with this aspect of Truman's legacy, since it is a subject that comes up very rarely, if at all, during the Project's meetings (at least that I've attended.)Emery drives this point home mercilessly:

Do not expect the subject of Asia to come up all that often in these [Democrats'] hymns to the liberal hawks.Above all, do not expect Korea to be brought up at all. Korea, in fact, is Iraq on steroids, a compendium of every complaint that the liberals bring against Bush and his administration: a war of choice that began with an error, that became in effect the mother of quagmires, that cost billions of dollars, killed tens of thousands, and dragged on years longer than anyone looked for, to an inconclusive and troublesome end.

It began with a mistake...What, one wonders, would today's liberal hawks have made of him and Korea, given their penchant for neat, well-planned wars that end quickly, and their standard of zero mistakes?...If they quail at the expense of Iraq, what would they have said to the expense of Korea? If they quail at casualties of under 3,000, what would they have said to the more than 37,000 dead? Would they have been among the 23 percent who stayed loyal to Harry? Or would there have been second thoughts, mea culpas, and abject, not to say groveling, apologies to the antiwar left?I'm guessing that Beinart and others would argue that Korea was directly relevant to our national security, whereas Iraq wasn't.

Anyhow, as you can tell from the passage above, Emery is a fierce partisan whose primary concern is the political stakes of today rather than a comprehensive understanding of what Truman stood for back then. Liberal hawks will find plenty objectionable about her article, but I think that she is very much correct about liberal hawks evading the Truman of Korea.So then, do I have a firm stance on who deserves to appoint themselves as Truman's heir? No, unfortunately I don't. I think that I would really have to develop a much better understanding of how Truman thought about international institutions and about alliances before passing judgment.But for the moment, I think the ball is in the liberals' court, since they have to explain Korea.

Turkey, US unveil new strategy for partnership

2006-07-06T17:18:00.000+03:00

The United States backs Turkey's diplomatic efforts in Syria to help resolve an escalating crisis in the Middle East over the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants, with Rice saying the efforts are helpful

Turkey and the United States yesterday unveiled a document outlining priorities in the Turkish-U.S. partnership, which deteriorated after Turkish refusal to cooperate militarily in the Iraq war. The common strategic vision paper was announced here by visiting Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Gül told a press conference after talks with Rice that the document would further strengthen relations between the two countries, describing it as a road map for Turkey and the United States in both bilateral and international matters.
We have renewed our relations on the basis of mutual trust, Gül said.

The document was to be formally released in full later in the day.Gül and Rice also discussed the situation in Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, Cyprus and the issue of the presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq. Rice reiterated the U.S. position that the PKK was a terrorist organization and insisted that the PKK cannot be allowed to have a base of operations in Iraq. The secretary of state also said that Turkey's closed-door diplomacy in Syria for contributing to the resolution of a crisis in the Middle East that broke out after abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants was very helpful.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent his special envoy, Ahmet Davutoğlu, to Damascus for talks with President Bashar Assad in an attempt to contribute to a solution to the crisis. Gül earlier implied in Washington that the United States and Israel had wanted the Syria visit.

Turkish Daily News

Pupils + internet = nightmare for Sir

2006-06-28T11:23:00.000+03:00

A site allowing children to rate their teachers may sound harmless but it could ruin careers, writes Craig Barton

I first heard about the website during a maths lesson with my Year 10s. While I was trying to teach about the beauty of quadratic equations, it was clear that the roomful of adolescents in front of me had other things on their mind.

The topic of their whispered conversations was the website http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.ratemyteachers.co.uk, and even the conscientious students had downed tools to find out more. On my return to the staff room, it immediately became clear that I was not the only one to have been told about the site that Monday morning. Conversations about Year 8 reports and the latest episode of Lost had been replaced by talk of internet law.

A group of teachers was already huddled around our archaic computer trying to log on as fast as the school network would allow. I decided to wait until I was home to take a look, and my eyes couldn't quite believe what they were seeing.

The website, which began life in America last year, provides a database of schools across the UK. Once you have located yours, a click of the mouse brings up a list of everyone currently teaching at the school. First names and each teacher's subject area are also given.

Next to each name is an average rating out of five and a face to reflect the score, ranging from a yellow smiley one complete with a cool pair of sunglasses down to the blue, teary face bestowed on those who score one out of five. The number of people who have "rated" each member of staff is shown, and an additional mouse click breaks down the ratings into three categories: clarity, helpfulness and easiness. All that's missing is the name of the reviewer.

Like many other websites, this one makes its money from the adverts that appear on its pages, but there is also supposed to be something inherently virtuous about it. The banner at the top of each page contains the phrase "honest, essential critique".

To many, apparently, the idea of a forum where students (and indeed parents, for there is a section for them also) can share their honest views about the people who teach them, free from any possible retribution, is a good one. But is this what the students use the site for and, even if it is, is that fair on the teachers?

With regard to the first question, the evidence is mixed. Some students do seem to be using the website for the purpose intended by offering support and appreciation for their teachers or criticising specific areas of their teaching in what could be construed as a constructive manner. Perhaps some teachers should read out of the textbook less or spend more time praising the well behaved children instead of always shouting at the naughty ones.
However, it is clear that some students are simply using the website to abuse teachers in a way they would never dare to at school. While the website states on its rules page that comments must not include vulgar or profane words or name calling, it is clear that some comments are slipping through the net.

For example, one of our teachers was labelled "a fascist" in a rather succinct and unconstructive two-word review.

Schools across the country appear to be sharing similar experiences. A teacher from a secondary school in the Nottingham area is in receipt of the following feedback: "He is a BOARING maths teacher. the only good thing is: if he catches u talking, nod at him like he is ure mate and he looks away. Groovy, eh???"

In a school in London, we are told: "Mr X is a joke. I hate him." In Greater Manchester, things get a little more sinister: "Wahey!!! Part-time teacher!!!! He locks ppl in cupboards and makes dem cry home to their mummyss and daddys."
Perhaps most worrying is the following comment made in the parents' section about a teacher in a school in Lancashire: "My poor daughter came home squealing for many a day because of this woman. Evil."

The website also includes a "hall of shame", which is a list of all the schools that have banned pupils from accessing the site during school hours. There is also a warning that should any teacher pose as a student in an attempt to redress the balance, the site "WILL post a note on the school's page when you are discovered". So teachers have been warned.
The second question is clearly a more controversial one. Is it right or fair for the kind of personal comments about individual teachers that are usually confined to the playground to be made available to what is potentially a worldwide audience?

You could argue that teachers should have thick enough skins to be able to handle such criticisms, whether justified or not, but that misses the point. The website could very well be used by parents trying to decide which school to send their children to, or employers looking for a way of screening applicants for a job.

A negative rating and a nasty comment by a student who has been put in detention for failing to do his homework could have far-reaching and rather serious consequences.
I am told that, legally, the website is doing nothing wrong, but surely some serious moral questions have to be asked. I know of no other profession whose members are subject to such scrutiny, and the effect it is already having on staff morale is both profound and demoralising.
I know that I am biased, but teaching is a hard enough job without this hanging over our heads.
Craig Barton teaches at a comprehensive on Merseyside. His novel, "The Cambridge Diaries: A Tale of Friendship, Love and Economics", is published by Janus.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Short Overview: Progress in Iraq

2006-06-26T09:39:00.000+03:00

In '03 we deposed Saddam with a lightening blitzkreig. We kept moving in a sandstorm. We made the greatest one day advance of any army in history (160 miles). A testament to American mobile logistics.Saddam skips town and his fasicst thug generals are rounded up and invited to stay in some special hotels left over when the previous occupants were invited to return to their usual pursuits by Saddam before he left town.

Then we fumbled for a year or so fighting the insurgents on our own, getting to know the place, the players, the local customs, and trying to figure out what to do next. All the while ordering long lead items like power stations and electrical substatioins. And finding Saddam living in a sewer. After having a duel with his two sons (late and unlamented) who died in a hail of gunfire in a bathroom. Some kind of family fetish I expect.Then some guy figures, it is starting to get calm enough for elections, and can we design a system for a country of 25 million and install it in time to hold fair elections? Can we get candidates to run? And so there were elections. Three of them in a year. And six months after the last, we have a sovereign government. Who can't wait to get rid of us, after they have a few political problems forcefully ironed out.

All the while we are recruiting and training an army and police force. A year and a half later and the army is performing moderately well and the police force needs some serious attention. All but four provinces are pacified and the Sunnis are scared to death that we will leave them to the tender mercies of the folks they have been oppressing for the last 30 years and bombing for the last 2 1/2. The Kurds in the north are doing well (they have been under American protection for a decade and a half) and the Marsh Arabs are doing better now that the marshes are being restored. Baghdad and its environs are a problem. As are attacks on the oil infrastructure.

The long lead items are getting installed and plans are being made for a troop draw down when the Iraqi Army gains some more manpower and experience. They are having no trouble getting recruits despite bombs going off in the recruiting line.So I see continued progress with some areas that need attention.We've come a long way baby.Way too early to give up.

Technorati:Iraq, Iraq War, Progress, Iraqi Economy, Iraqi Elections, Marsh Arabs

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/

North Korea Flexes Its Muscles

2006-06-21T10:06:00.000+03:00

After years of inconclusive meetings on North Korea's nuclear program, Pyongyang appears to be readying a bold move. North Korea is reportedly moving closer to testing a long-range ballistic missile (NYT). As signs of preparation?including fueling of intercontinental ballistic missiles?seemed to point to a possible launch, Pyongyang told its citizens to wait by their radios for news (globalsecurity.org). The move would end an eight-year pause in such tests and comes despite strong Japanese and U.S. warnings (VOA).

Condoleezza Rice warned North Korea that any such test would be considered "a provocative act" (AP). China and Russia are also urging Pyongyang to return to negotiations, which led last fall to a declaration committing to the "verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." South Korea has also joined the chorus warning Pyongyang against a missile test (LAT). But the traditionally close relationship between Seoul and Washington is growing chillier over their differing views on how to treat North Korea (Newsweek). South Korea favors engagement and eventual reunification, while the U.S. stresses disarmament.
Some suggest concern over the potential missile test may be misplaced. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists offers a detailed look at North Korea's nuclear capabilities in 2005, noting that while it is widely known Pyongyang has a nuclear program, Kim Jung-Il's regime has never conducted a nuclear test or conclusively demonstrated it has operational nuclear warheads. Contributors to the blog Defensetech.org note U.S. and other intelligence sources cannot confirm that missiles are actually being fueled. And Brookings visiting scholar Alexander Vorontsov analyzes Kim's "military-first" policy, saying it may be oriented more at maintaining domestic order than threatening neighbors. Such a policy could be seen in a positive light, Vorontsov writes, when compared with South Korea's transformation, which began with military rule.
Other countries seem to be losing patience with Kim. On June 16, Japan's parliament passed a law calling for tough sanctions against Pyongyang if it doesn't improve its human-rights record (Asia Times). Japan could prevent North Korean ships from docking at Japanese ports and block cash transfers to North Korea without explicit UN authority.
One exception to the global trend is China: Daniel Sneider of the San Jose Mercury News writes Pyongyang still has a strong ally in Beijing, whose growing closeness to Kim's regime is causing concern in both Seoul and Washington. China is also a key trading partner for North Korea, which is expanding its markets in an ongoing capitalist experiment described in this Backgrounder.
Asia scholar David Kang argues in the Washington Post that, to make progress, the United States should broaden its focus on North Korea from the nuclear issue to the wider theme of north-south unification. Graham Allison tells CFR.org's Bernard Gwertzman that the Bush administration's North Korea policy of "threaten and neglect" has been "an abject failure." James Goodby of the Brookings Institution suggests encouraging a "peace regime" involving people-to-people contact and state-to-state relationships that promote cooperation. A compilation by Stanford's Asian-Pacific Research Center, North Korea: 2005 and Beyond, features several authors who write that economic progress, commerce, and integration may be the strongest forces for change on the Korean peninsula. And Randall Ireson, who leads the Quaker agriculture development program in North Korea, offers a blueprint for how to bring North Korean agriculture to the point that it could once again feed its people.

http://www.cfr.org

Ankara preparing to ask for over $30 mln in compensation from Athens

2006-06-17T09:17:00.000+03:00

Ankara preparing to ask for over $30 mln in compensation from Athens over last month's collision of Turkish and Greek F-16 fighter jets over Aegean which left Greek pilot dead. Turkey to back claim with video recording and fact that region isN2t part of Greek flight information region

New details in final report show Ankara and Athens turned from edge of crisis after collision: Turkey sent armed F-16 jets to region just after accident, Greece recalled fighter jets to prevent escalation of tension

Ankara is preparing to seek compensation from Athens over last month's collision of Turkish and Greek F-16 fighter jets over the Aegean Sea which left a Greek pilot dead.

Turkey stated that the Greek fighter jet crashed into the Turkish one from below while coming up behind it and is therefore seeking more than $30 million in damages. The legal process concerning the claim will begin after NATO finalizes its investigation into the deadly dogfight which resulted in the collision.

Ankara is backing its claim with video images taken by another Turkish fighter jet which witnessed the collision and the fact that the region is not part of Greece's flight information region.

New details of collision in final report

The final report on the collision of the Turkish and Greek fighter jets has also brought to light new details about the incident.

According to the report, Turkey sent armed F-16 jets to the area just after the accident while Greece recalled its fighter jets from the area to prevent escalation of tension in the region. The report concluded that the fact that Turkey sent armed fighter jets to the area is an indicator that the two countries were close to a crisis just after the collision.

The report also states that the Turkish pilot, who survived, didn't activate the ejector seat himself but that it happened automatically after the accident. During search and rescue operations to find the pilots, the report states that tension was high. When a Turkish-flagged ship rescued the Turkish pilot, the report said that Turkish and Greek search and rescue teams went to the ship. While a Turkish Army officer was amusing the Greek team, a Turkish helicopter took the pilot from the ship and took him back to Turkey, according to the report. There was reportedly also a dispute between the Turkish army officer and Greek team.

ABHaber

Investors cope with new economic risks

2006-06-16T08:26:00.000+03:00

The threat of rising inflation and interest rates has fueled sell-offs in US and global stock markets.

Despite a generally strong world economy, stock-market declines here and abroad this week are confirming a new investor mood that's focused less on hoped-for highs and more on the downside risks.
Many stock indexes remain up for the year to date, but in the past month they have shifted sharply downward, led by the emerging nations that had been posting the strongest gains.

From May 8 through this Monday, for example, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has fallen 13.8 percent, the Russell 2000 index of small US stocks is down 8.7 percent, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index of large US stocks have shed 4.5 percent of their value. Similarly, a broad index of major foreign stocks, from Europe to Japan, is down about 5 percent.

Wednesday morning, after sell-offs in China and Japan earlier in the day, traders pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average back and forth across the psychologically important 11,000 mark.

Topping the list of risks is the threat to the overall pace of global economic growth, as the US Federal Reserve and other central banks raise interest rates to combat inflation. Some fear that rising interest rates could cause a recession. Many see that scenario as unlikely, but still fret that slowing growth could dampen corporate profits.

"The sell-off in risky asset markets has been global," Richard Berner, an economist at investment powerhouse Morgan Stanley in New York, wrote to clients late last month. "Until recently, many investors were hoping for the Goldilocks scenario of just enough growth to sustain earnings, credit quality, and brisk demand for commodities, but not enough to stir inflation and more Fed tightening."

The current climate, by contrast, has brought a range of potential risks to the forefront. Dangers include the possibility of a sharper-than-expected downturn in the US housing market, a continued slide in the value of the US dollar, an interest-rate overshoot by inflation-wary central banks, and some unforeseen financial crisis in the murky but massive realm of hedge funds.

This doesn't mean that a market meltdown is coming. But it's been enough to ramp up volatility on trading floors from New York to Bombay.

In essence, the global economy has entered a phase where its momentum is harder to read. Many forecasts call for world gross domestic product to continue growing at a healthy clip of about 4 percent this year. But recent signs in the world's largest economy are troubling. US inflation is edging up, even as job creation - a key driver of future growth - faltered in May, according to a report last Friday.

Mr. Berner, for his part, suggests that concerns about a US economic slowdown are overblown. He predicts a resumption of solid growth during the summer.

"Until that resilience restores confidence in the outlook, however, investors may continue to reduce risk in their portfolios," he said in his May 24 commentary. He calls this move the "risk-reduction trade."

Translation: Sellers could dominate financial markets for a while, especially in riskier regions and sectors. Cash looks increasingly attractive to some investors, given concerns that rising interest rates could hurt both stocks and bonds.

Shares in Japan and Thailand fell to six-month lows Wednesday, while South Korea's market dropped 2.7 percent, for example. China's Shanghai composite index of stocks posted its largest one-day drop in more than four years, meanwhile, although analysts attributed the 5.5 percent sell-off mainly to traders who wanted to build cash to buy new stocks that will begin trading soon.

The new focus on market dangers was captured, in an oblique way, in Business Week's latest cover headline: "Mr. Risk goes to Washington" was the magazine's take on President Bush's choice of Henry Paulson, the chief executive of investment house Goldman Sachs, to run the Treasury Department.

The thesis is that Mr. Paulson brings a refined understanding of risk and rewards to that important job - but also that the times demand such skills. He will have to cope with worldwide concerns about the dollar - will it fall too far or not far enough? - and about whether the governments of industrialized nations can afford to pay health and pension benefits without fueling inflation.

Those concerns, and not just the shorter-term uncertainty about central bank policies, are part of what's rattling investors these days.

Some analysts suggest the dollar needs to fall gradually against the currencies of US trade partners to shift patterns of commerce into better balance.

But with the US as the world's leading consumer nation, others - including exporters from Beijing to Berlin - worry that any "weak dollar" policy could destabilize the world economy. And a weaker dollar, they argue, won't by itself correct America's gargantuan trade deficit with the rest of the world.

By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Kazakhstan to join Azerbaijan-Turkey pipeline project in June

2006-06-14T11:03:00.000+03:00

ASTANA, June 8 (RIA Novosti) - Kazakhstan is ready to sign an agreement on shipping crude across the Caspian Sea to a pipeline from Azerbaijan to a Turkey, the president of the energy-rich country said Thursday.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking at an investment summit in the commercial capital of the Central Asian country, Almaty, said: "This month we will sign an agreement with the Azerbaijani government on linking Kazakhstan to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline."

The 1,100-mile BTC pipeline enables Azerbaijan to supply crude from its oil fields off the Caspian coast to Western markets via the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

The Kazakh president said, "The agreement will be signed during the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia in Almaty."

Under the agreement 25 million metric tons (183 mln bbl) of crude a year will be transported from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan. During the first stage, 7.5 mln tons (55 mln bbl) will be shipped from the Aktau port across the Caspian Sea each year, to Azerbaijan's capital Baku.

The volume of investment will be decided after the agreement is signed between the two countries' governments.

By the end of 2006, the BTC project will be pumping around 300,000 bbl/d of crude to the Mediterranean. The pipeline is expected to meet its throughput capacity of 1 mln bbl/d by 2008. Eventually, half of the pipeline's supplies will come from Azerbaijan and the other half from Kazakhstan.

The main shareholders in the BTC project are London-based oil major BP (30.1%) and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (25%).

Turkey Signs Up For Asia-Pacific Space Program

2006-06-14T10:30:00.000+03:00

Turkey signed a charter for a planned international space program Thursday, making it the ninth member of the organization, which has its headquarters in Beijing.

On behalf of the Turkish Government, Oktay Ozuye, Turkish ambassador to China, signed the convention on the proposed Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO), which is designed to promote the peaceful use of space technology in the Asia-Pacific region.

Turkey is ready to work with other friendly countries in the region for the peaceful use of space technology, said the ambassador.

He hopes that the Turkish Parliament will ratify the convention when it is in session in winter this year.

Among those at the function were diplomats from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru and Thailand and space officials from China. The eight countries signed the document last October in Beijing.

Sun Laiyan, director general of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said China welcomes the move by Turkey to sign the convention.

Luo Ge, secretary general of the Secretariat of the Interim Council of the APSCO, said that the use of space technology could be vital in predicting natural disasters, such as the devastating earthquake in Indonesia, and coordinating relief and rehabilitation work for people in areas hit by the disasters.

"I hope that the other nations in our region will also join this ambitious cooperative program for the socio-economic benefit of the Asia-Pacific Region in general, and the APSCO member States in particular," he said.

A multi-purpose small satellite project involving some members of APSCO is now being built and will probably be launched next year, he noted, which will be used mainly for environmental protection and other Earth observations and scientific research.

China, Thailand and Pakistan initiated a proposal in 1992 on the formation of a multinational organization in a bid to promote cooperation in space technology and applications in the Asia-Pacific region.

In August 2003, officials from those countries agreed in Bangkok that the APSCO headquarters would be located in China.

China, working in cooperation with departments of the United Nations and other international organizations, has offered short-term training programs for 260 trainees from countries in the Asia and Pacific region, mostly developing ones, during the past five years.

In March, China announced its decision to provide weather information equipment to the seven countries that signed the convention so they could receive its satellite weather information free of charge.

The weather information coming from Fengyun Meteorological Satellites has been used in weather forecasting, natural adversities prevention, environmental monitoring, and data transmission and scientific research.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

Ancient stone tablets found in Turkey

2006-06-12T17:04:00.000+03:00

Ancient stone tablets and seals unearthed during archaeological excavations at the Surtepe tumulus, in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa (Turkey), could shed light on other ancient structures discovered in the area. A team of experts headed by project director Jesus Gil Fuensanta of Spain who have been working in the area as part of the Tilbes salvage project, discovered a monumental building - believed to belong to the Persian-Achaemenid period - at the Surtepe mound during excavations in 2005. Surtepe is a large site covering 50 hectares and is believed to have been an area of settlement even during the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages (fourth and third millennia BCE).

Fuensanta explained in a statement that the Persian building "was found in a place formerly uncovered by villagers. It had an official use until the early fourth century BCE. Up to three meters of its massive mud-brick walls were preserved, and it has traces of a paved court. During the 2005 excavations, different rooms of the building were also excavated. On the inside, which was partly burnt, were typical Achaemenid pots and fragments and administrative artifacts."

Among the finds in the site are a royal glass seal in the Achaemenid style that had been disfigured by fire and depicts a fertility scene with a leader praying, said Fuensanta. Another impression on a jar shows a typical iconograph of royal worship. According to Herbert Sauren, a German specialist in ancient Semitic languages, one of the seals has official Aramaic (the administrative language of the Achaemenids) writing and refers to the capacity of a vessel.

Fuensanta believes that an enigmatic finding from the same archaeological season, a stone tablet with an inscription, could be associated with the Persian building. According to a preliminary study by Sauren the inscription on the find was made in Semitic, in use around the middle of first millennium BCE. After Sauren's translation and interpretation, it was discovered that the stone document was issued by the leader of this city (Surtepe, the ancient name of which is not yet clear) to thank a deity for his assumption of power. Separately, assistant team leader Eduardo Crivelli noticed that the few animal bones found at the site mostly belonged to horses, the statement said. The horse was a regular theme in Persian iconography of the period, it added.

The results of the studies have been presented at the 28th International Congress on Excavations, Surveys and Research in Turkey.

http://www.stonepages.com/news

France will not block opening of first chapter of EU talks with Turkey

2006-06-09T10:43:00.000+03:00

France showed flexibility in approving quick opening and closing of the first chapter of Turkey's accession talks scheduled for next Monday, diplomats said yesterday. But the Greek Cypriots continued their insistence to include demands from Ankara on the Cyprus problem.

Days before the planned EU-Turkey Association Council meeting and Intergovernmental Conference next Monday, EU members continued discussions on a common position paper for the "science and research" chapter, the first of 35 chapters of accession talks that are expected to continue at least 10 years.

France had long opposed closure of the science and research chapter in the same day, claiming that there should be benchmarks, the EU term describing reference conditions, defined for the closure of this chapter. French diplomats earlier raised several issues, including enhancing autonomy of science and research bodies, developing the administrative capacities and examination of compatibility of international agreements in this field to EU law, and sought for them to be defined as closure benchmarks.

But the majority of EU members did hot give support to the French suggestion. That was based mainly on European Commission's earlier report following examination of Turkey's legislation and implementation on this chapter. The Commission did not suggest any closure benchmark.

France argues that the problem is a question of methodology, and according to the agreed "negotiations framework" with Turkey, EU has to define closure benchmarks in each of the 35 chapters. But according to observers, this is more of an attempt to complicate Turkey's EU accession talks, and is for "domestic consumption" in France.

EU enlargement and Turkey's possible membership is a sensitive issue in France and public polls show that the majority of French people oppose it. French politicians are extremely cautious about not being seen as pro-Turkey's EU process, particularly in the runup to next year's presidential elections.

EU diplomats said yesterday that France recently showed flexibility in quick opening and closing of the science and research chapter, but also wanted to emphasize that this is due to relatively little legislation in this particular area but on regular chapters, closure benchmarks will have to be defined.

"We will be flexible and not going to oppose opening and closure of the science and research chapter on Monday," a French diplomat told yesterday.

The permanent representatives of EU 25 will meet today in Brussels and discuss a common position paper on the "science and research" chapter. EU diplomats are also expected to discuss opening the second chapter of "education and culture," but the insistence by several countries, including France, to include political criteria here makes it difficult for the EU 25 to conclude a common position paper on that.

According to diplomats, another important discussion among EU members on the common position paper on science and research chapter is Cyprus. The Greek Cypriot administration in earlier talks among the EU 25 demanded inclusion of demands on Cyprus from Turkey, but almost all members are against this, EU diplomats said.

ABHaber

Conflicting opinion is what drives scientific advance

2006-06-08T08:58:00.000+03:00

When it comes to the public communication of scientific findings a further step down a well defined road wins easier acceptance than a deviation from the beaten track. Most academic research is therefore simply boring and eccentricity less tolerated. But any form of censorship encourages complacency and discourages innovation.

The Royal Society, Britain's scientific establishment, has just released a report on public communication of scientific findings. Journalists in search of stories and scientists anxious for publicity and research funding issue early, oversimplified or downright misleading accounts of research. Unsubstantiated claims of a link between immunisation and autism have caused distress to millions of British parents. Korea's progress in stem cell research seems to have been won at the expense of truth and ethics.

The Society's answers are self-restraint and peer review. Peer review is the process by which professions review their own work. Articles submitted to journals receive critical assessment from referees experienced in the field. Peer review is a bulwark against cranks, crooks and incompetents. But too much reliance on peer review carries its own dangers. Every profession defines its own concept of excellence in inward-looking ways.

Successful academics learn how to trigger the buttons that win the approval of referees. The physicist, Alan Sokal, demonstrated this by the submission of a spoof article to the cultural studies journal Social Text in 1996. The content was nonsense, but the form and jargon corresponded so closely to reviewers? expectations that the contribution was accepted. Professor Sokal?s purpose was to demonstrate that standards were lower and more subjective in softer subjects than in more scientific ones and, while he was right, the problem identified was more general. All subjects, from architecture to physics, from literary criticism to economics, develop what Thomas Kuhn called paradigms ? assumptions common to all practitioners and assumed to represent universal truth until a new paradigm displaces the old.

A further step down a well defined road wins easier acceptance than a deviation from the beaten track. Most academic research is therefore boring, and more so as scholarship has become more professional, eccentricity less tolerated and peer review multiplied through processes of grant awards and research assessment. The latest idea in Britain is to make these processes routine by shifting from the costly and fallible exercise of subjective judgment to a cheaper and objective system of quantitative metrics. This can only aggravate the problems.

Big advances come through the paradigm shifts and peer review makes this difficult. The line between the crank and the genius is sometimes a fine one and may only be apparent after time has elapsed. Many Nobel Prize winners had difficulty securing early recognition. The world of today favours the competent professional ? as judged by the standards of other competent professionals. In a sense this self-reference is right: the people to decide whether astrology is good astrology are other astrologers. But they are not the people to decide whether astrology itself is any good. Judgment of the rigour and relevance of professional standards and scholarly research can never be left to professionals and scholars alone.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, an elegant suspension bridge in Washington State, carried traffic for four months in 1940. In a high wind, the flat deck acquired a beautiful wave pattern. The oscillations grew larger and larger until the roadway finally disintegrated into Puget Sound.

The trade newspaper, Engineering News-Record, was forced to retract its suggestion that the designer, Leon Moisseiff, might have been responsible. The editors apologised for any inference drawn by ?the casual reader? that ?the modern bridge engineer was remiss?.

But the perspective of ?the casual reader?, though not a substitute for peer review, is as essential as the contribution of the little boy who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes. Any form of censorship, including self-censorship and censorship by fellow professionals, encourages complacency and discourages innovation. The history of modern scholarship is that, more slowly than we would wish, truth and new knowledge emerge only from a cacophony of conflicting opinions.

www.johnkay.com

Serbia declares separate statehood

2006-06-05T16:07:00.000+03:00

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- Serbia's parliament on Monday proclaimed the Balkan republic a sovereign state, following tiny Montenegro's decision to split from a joint union and dissolve what was left of Yugoslavia.

The 126 lawmakers unanimously acknowledged that their state is the heir to the union of Serbia-Montenegro -- the last shred of what was once a six-member Yugoslav federation. Serbia's parliament has 250 deputies, but the opposition boycotted the vote, held during a special session.

"Serbia, as the legal heir to the state union, must formally take over, or inherit, what it has created," said parliament speaker Predrag Markovic.

The assembly instructed all state institutions to complete the process for Serbia's statehood within the next 45 days, including assuming the duties and responsibilities previously in the hands of the federal administration.

Some deputies praised Serbia re-establishing its statehood after 88 years in the Balkan union, but others mourned the loss of a joint state with Montenegro.

"We will restore Serbia's glory," said Miloljub Albijanic, from the ruling G17 Plus party. "Long live independent Serbia."

But nationalist leader Tomislav Nikolic felt less proud.

"This is a sad day in the history of Serbia," he said. "Something is happening in Serbia against Serbia's will."

Montenegro's declaration of independence late Saturday, after it decided to split from Serbia in a May 21 referendum, set in motion the process of dividing the joint state's armed forces, diplomatic missions, common assets and responsibilities.

On Sunday, the last president of Serbia-Montenegro, Svetozar Marovic, stepped down, as his government dissolved itself and the federal parliament announced it would not meet again.

The Montenegrin head of the Serbia-Montenegro army was replaced by a top Serbian officer, and other changes were to follow.

The Belgrade-based Defense Ministry said it would formally bring down the Serbia-Montenegro flag at military headquarters within days, and replace it with the Serbian flag. The old flag will be placed in a museum, the ministry said.

Montenegro's president, Filip Vujanovic, announced the creation of the Montenegrin army within days.

Serbia and Montenegro were the only two former Yugoslav republics that stayed together after the violent disintegration of the Balkan federation in the 1990s.

Although the two nations share a common language and culture, as well as close historic ties, their relations cooled over recent years, with Montenegro edging toward independence.

In May, Montenegro's voters chose by a slim margin to split from the 88-year-old union with Serbia.

In the early 1990s, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia also split from the Serb-led federation, triggering a series of bloody wars. Serbia's southern, ethnic Albanian-dominated province of Kosovo also hopes to gain independence at ongoing U.N.-brokered talks.

"Everybody has left us," 33-year-old Serb engineer Dusan Petrovic said Monday. "It's time we rid ourselves of all illusions."

Serbia and Montenegro still need to divide dozens of embassies and residences. Serbia, as the union's legal successor, inherits membership in the United Nations and other international organizations.

On Sunday, Montenegro said it has asked all of its Balkan neighbors, European Union states and permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to officially recognize it and establish diplomatic relations with its government.

CNN

Expanding the innovation horizon: Introduction to the 2006 CEO Study

2006-06-02T15:11:00.000+03:00

The 2006 CEO Study takes a comprehensive, global look at a topic that is increasingly important to CEOs and government leaders worldwide: innovation. We knew from the study that CEOs were relying on innovation to drive profitable growth. But beyond innovation's bottom-line importance, we believe that business and public sector leaders are acutely aware of the phenomenal challenges society faces in the coming decades?and our mutual dependence on innovation to solve these issues.

We spoke at length with 765 CEOs, business executives and public sector leaders from around the world to learn more about their thoughts on innovation. They were remarkably frank, sharing with us their motivations, plans and even their weaknesses. We learned that two out of every three CEOs expect fundamental changes for their organizations over the next two years. Surprisingly, CEOs do not seem daunted by this challenge. Instead, they see opportunity?opportunity to be seized through innovation. And what they told us may compel leaders to reevaluate their preconceptions about innovation.

* Business model innovation matters?Competitive pressures have pushed business model innovation much higher on CEOs' priority lists than expected. But its importance does not negate the need to focus on products, services and markets, as well as operational innovation.
* External collaboration is indispensable?CEOs stressed the overwhelming importance of collaborative innovation, particularly beyond company walls. Business partners and customers were cited as top sources of innovative ideas, while research and development (R&Dfell much lower on the list. However, CEOs also admitted that their organizations are not collaborating nearly enough.
* Innovation requires orchestration from the top?CEOs acknowledged that they have a primary responsibility for fostering innovation. But to effectively orchestrate it, CEOs need to create a more team-based environment, reward individual innovators and better integrate business and technology.

In our conversations, we found a persistent, worldwide, sector- and size-spanning push toward a more expansive view of innovation. A greater mix of innovation types, more external involvement and extensive demands on CEOs to bring it all to fruition. Based on these CEOs' collective insights, we offer several considerations that can help organizations sharpen their own innovation agendas.

* Think broadly, act personally and manage the innovation mix?Create and manage a broad mix of innovation that emphasizes business model change.
* Make your business model deeply different?Find ways to substantially change how you add value in your current industry or in another.
* Ignite innovation through business and technology integration?Use technology as an innovation catalyst by combining it with business and market insights.
* Defy collaboration limits?Collaborate on a massive, geography-defying scale to open a world of possibilities.
* Force an outside look...every time?Push the organization to work with outsiders more, making it first systematic and, then, part of your culture.

By contributing their own ideas and perspectives, each CEO participant has played an integral, collaborative role in producing this study. And, for that, we are extremely indebted. In turn, we offer the insights from this study to CEOs worldwide in the ongoing spirit of collaborative innovation.

IBM

New Russian threat over energy?

2006-05-31T17:40:00.000+03:00

While Russia's President Putin was busy trying to reduce European worries over his country's reliability as an energy supplier, the Russian minister for natural resources has threatened to take more state control of three important foreign energy investment projects.

The Russian National Resources Ministry announced on 25 May that he would like to review the production sharing agreements with Western energy companies over theSakhalin-1 and -2 projects.These investment projects for oil and gas extraction in Eastern Russia are led by Exxon Mobil,Shell and Total.

The threat to review the investment agreements for these projects would send a new warning that the Russian government is using its huge energy resources to regain its strategic global power position. It confirms the growing tendency of energy nationalisations at a time where demand-supply problems are already leading to high oil prices on the world market.

The announcement by the Natural Resources minister came on the same day as the EU-Russia summit where Russian President Putin was trying to convince European leaders that his country remains a reliable energy partner. On the other hand, the Russian leader also demanded more reciprocal steps from Europe when Russian companies are trying to access foreign markets.

Since the EU-Russia conflict over gas supplies to the Ukraine and Eastern European countries at the beginning of 2006, the EU is increasingly worried about its dependency on its Eastern neighbour for gas.

-Euractiv

Anti-WMD exercise kicks off from Antalya

2006-05-27T10:51:00.000+03:00

Turkish officials have repeatedly reiterated that the exercise is not aimed at any specific country, such as Iran

ANKARA - AP with TDN

As part of mock drills, warships and military helicopters in the Turkish Mediterranean chased a cargo ship on Friday that mock intelligence said could be transporting weapons of mass destruction.

The large military exercise was to practice intercepting weapons materials before they reach certain countries, such as Iran.

As part of the exercise, intelligence reports said the ship, which took off from the port of Antalya without permission, was carrying "smuggled materials." It was assumed they were weapons materials on their way to a hostile country.

Within minutes, warships from the United States, Turkey, France and Portugal raced toward the cargo ship, ready to engage it, as helicopters from a nearby base hovered overhead.

Observers were hosted on a Turkish naval frigate -- the TCG Barbaros -- for the exercise, which is said to be the largest so far of the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, a program started in 2003 by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Turkish officials have repeatedly said the exercise, which also involves scenarios of searching vehicles carrying suspected weapons materials to an airport and a land customs gate, is not aimed at any specific country.

But despite assurances, eyes remain on Iran.

Analysts say the exercise will not only help increase preparedness for stopping illegal shipments that Iran could use in a weapons program, but the show of multinational forces cooperating in Turkey will send the message that most of the world is united against Iran possessing those weapons.

"Iran already has most of what it needs for a nuclear weapon, but it continues to try to procure foreign components that would allow it to reach that capability faster and better," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has credited PSI with several successes already in intercepting shipments of missile and nuclear technology headed to Iran, but she did not elaborate on details.

Officials from 34 countries observed or participated in Friday's exercise either from a naval ship or by computer, and militaries are expected to cooperate to track, board, search and disable the hostile ship.

There have been more than a dozen previous PSI exercises held in other countries, though Turkey says this one will be the largest yet.

When South Korea agreed to participate in an earlier PSI exercise, North Korea, also believed to have a clandestine nuclear weapons program, called it a "war crime" and threatened all-out nuclear war.

Turkish Daily News

Iran test-fires long-range missile

2006-05-27T10:45:00.000+03:00

by Associated Press

Iran conducted a test launch Tuesday night of the Shihab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile, which is capable of reaching Israel and US targets in the region, Israel Radio reported. The test came hours before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with US President George W Bush in Washington to discuss the Iranian threat.
Military officials said it was not clear if this most recent test indicated an advance in the capabilities of the Shihab 3. They said the test was likely timed to coincide with the Washington summit and with comments made by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah during celebrations in Beirut marking the 6th anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

"What deters the enemy from launching an aggression is the resistance's continuous readiness to respond," Nasrallah told scores of supporters. "Northern Israel today is within the range of the resistance's rockets. The ports, bases, factories and everything is within that range."
The Shihab test was only "partly successful," according to news reports. The nature of the difficulties was not clear. The Iranians have been working to extend the Shihab 3's current maximum range of 1,300 kilometers. A year ago, they successfully tested a solid fuel motor for the missile.

In December, Israel's defense against an Iranian ballistic missile strike, the Arrow 2 missile system, succeeded in intercepting an incoming rocket simulating an Iranian Shihab 3 at an altitude higher than in the previous 13 exercises.
Maj. Elyakim, commander of the Arrow missile battery at Palmahim, told The Jerusalem Post last month that the missile crews were always on high alert, but that they were recently instructed to "raise their level of awareness" because of developments on the Iranian front.
The Arrow missile, he said, could intercept and destroy any Iranian missile fired at Israel, including ones carrying non-conventional warheads. Experts believe that if Iran is attacked by Israel or the US, Teheran would respond by firing long-range ballistic missiles at Israel

Jeruselam Post

Turks and Armenians

2006-05-24T13:32:00.000+03:00

To the Editor(NewYork Times):

It is our position that unlike the Holocaust, the Armenian allegations of genocide have never been historically or legally substantiated (editorial, May 16). Genocide is a crime defined by international law. As such, it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, not by, as you suggest, a "preponderance of serious scholarship."

To expect Turkey to acquiesce to such a severe accusation with regard to its own history while its allies keep regurgitating this sensitive issue for political ends is simply not rational, nor is it fair.

History should be left to historians, and with that understanding, Turkey proposed the establishment of a joint historical commission with Armenia to research this issue last year, to no avail so far. If the evidence is really there, why not accept this offer?

It is only through such a common dialogue that a process of reconciliation can begin. This may ultimately lead to closure for Armenians and Turks alike.

Nabi Sensoy
Ambassador of Turkey
Washington, May 17, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/opinion/l24turk.html

Why 'Jews for Jesus' is evil

2006-05-23T20:52:00.000+03:00

By Bradley Burston

We were driving in the Galilee, waiting for a red light to change, when they came up to the car. Their smiles were engagingly open as they wished us a fine trip. Then they offered us the flyer.

Jews for Jesus. Who says that evil can't be imported, and delivered, free of charge, direct to your car door?

Don't get me wrong. The members of Jews for Jesus are pure souls. They are among the most wholesome, guileless, truly well-meaning, fundamentally lovely people you will ever meet.

More's the pity, therefore, that there's a special place in hell just for them.

I would like to begin by saying that I have nothing personal against these people. But that would be a lie.

The reason is that, grinning all the way, they want to take something personal from me. My history, my belief system, my ancestry. The flyers say they are concerned for my soul, and I believe them with all my heart. It's precisely my soul they're after, all right, mine and as many others as possible.

They're out to harvest Jewish souls in the name of Christ. And they're out to do it right here.

Make no mistake, I believe that these Christians must have every freedom to worship Jesus as their lord and messiah, perform every ritual, celebrate every holiday that they see fit. If they want to do Born-again Kiddush and Last Supper Kneidelach and Savior Shalosh S'eudes - gezunterheit.

And if missionary activity is a commandment in their view, I wish them every success - just one thing:

Leave the Jews alone.

The world is a target-rich environment for the missionary, the Protestant Christian world in particular. There's no end of lapsed Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Anabaptists, whom you're free to try to cajole into Christ.

You don't need us. Jesus doesn't need us. Leave us alone.

It's a safe bet that the Jews for Jesus who may be reading this are rolling their eyes by now, classifying me as Unbeliever Type G-639-L and writing me off.

But bear with me for one brief moment, if only to read the next sentence, which has specifically to do with you, as well as with your Jewish prey, thousands of years of Jewish history, and evil:

Proselytizing is persecution.

Granted, it's not the same as burning us at the stake for Christ's sake, firebombing our homes for Christ's sake, staging apres-church pogroms for Christ's sake, ostracizing and terrorizing and beating our children for having killed Christ, lynching Jewish adults for church-distributed blood libels, torturing Jews to force them to convert, converting entire Jewish communities on point of death, deporting entire Jewish communities on point of death for having resisted conversion, or, after eliminating the conversion option, annihilating entire Jewish communities with the complicitous blind eye of the Holy See.

But there's more than one way to wipe out a people, and poison, like gas, comes in many forms. Sometimes it looks like a leaflet. Sometimes it looks like the Internet. Sometimes it looks like a smile.

It should have occurred to you by now that Jews in the post-Holocaust era have a mission, no less than you. We have some saving to do of our own. In ways which are as individual as each Jew in the world, it has been left to us to save Jewry itself - its faith, its culture, its values, its memory, its history - from extinction.

Look around. There aren't that many of us left. There are 2 billion Christians in the world, and nearly a billion and a quarter Muslims.

There are barely 14 million Jews left alive on this planet. In 1933, that number was 15.3 million. Leave us alone.

The true evil of Jews for Jesus, is the movement's readiness to take advantages of the weaknesses of Judaism in our day, in order to further weaken it. Judaism's agonizing inability to reach its estranged youth is the stuff of Jew for Jesus dreams, the fantasy that, in the end, they will succeed in converting us.

Sorry, I'm not supposed to use that word. Under the Jews for Jesus creed - which appears aimed at confusing its own adherents at least as much as it seeks to "turn" us non-believers - Jews for Jesus members do not convert you, they just get you to believe that Jesus Christ is the lord, and that only through Jesus can one be saved.

The faithful may well be much too busy with salvation to concern themselves with extinction. There's clearly plenty for them to do, judging by some of their Websites, where I happened upon this useful piece of instruction from the founder of Jews for Jesus, Martin (Moishe) Rosen:

"Hey, if you don't know any Jewish people, you can look in the phone book for surnames that are always Jewish: Cohen, Katz, Levy, Rosen (and anything that begins with Rosen, like Rosenberg, Rosenbloom or Rosenfeld)."

And now, here in Israel, in a venture as predictable as it is indecent, they've set themselves a new target, Russian Jewish immigrants, descendants of the Jews Hitler didn't get the chance to kill.

May they fail.

There are those who will say, and I applaud them, that we should engage and embrace members of Jews for Jesus, showing openness to them rather than the cold shoulder that drives them further away. I applaud those who say this and act accordingly, but I don't have it in me.

It really comes down to this: It's hard enough to be Jewish as it is. It's tough to be Jewish if you're secular, and it's no less difficult if you're religious. It's tough to be Jewish in the Diaspora if you live among non-Jews. It's tough to live there if you live among lots of Jews. And it's tough as nails to be Jewish in Israel, atheist, knitted kippa, Haredi, or fusion JUBU.

If you're a Jew for Jesus and you're still reading this, you may well be thinking: This guy sounds riled. He needs a friend in Jesus.

You're thinking wrong. This guy needs you to keep your salvation to yourself.

Believe whatever you want. Practice whatever you preach.

Just stay the hell away from us.

Haaretz

National Maturity and Putin's State-of-the-Nation Address

2006-05-22T13:47:00.000+03:00

National Maturity and Putin's State-of-the-Nation Address

he recent state-of-the-nation speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined several major accomplishments and obstacles that have been either achieved or overcome since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. His speech delineated specific problems emblematic of a state that is maturing into a new form, however close or distant some critics may think Russia is to a neo-Soviet Union. Fifteen years from 1991, Russia today is slowly growing into its newly-found statehood. The goals and wishes outlined by Putin point not just to the present day reality of the Russian Federation, but to the next five years that will begin to shape the country, the former Soviet space and the larger Eurasian and global geopolitical climate.

Looking back at history -- and delineating certain trends that have been true of past regimes, states and national developments -- it is possible to point out that a state can take decades to mature into its full political, economic and military potential. There are plenty of examples when states take longer or shorter periods of time to reach this maturity. There is no doubt that the Kremlin sees itself as a rising power. The United States, together with the world at large, either grudgingly or openly accepts this fact. Presently, Russia is 15 years past the fall of the Soviet Union. It can boast of a sizeable foreign currency reserve, thanks to the rising cost of energy and increasing global demand, and a general order throughout the country that prevailed once Putin assumed power. Still, major elements are still taking shape that will allow Russia to fully grow into its new role.

New Generation, New Opportunities, New Approach

The most important element needed for Russia to be transformed is generational change. Those born in the early to mid-1980s are only now beginning to emerge fully into Russia's political, economic and military establishment. This generation has no real memory of the Soviet Union, and can consciously comprehend only the enormous changes that have taken place since 1991 -- the pitfalls of the Russian-style market economy, the collapse of the social net, the civil and secessionist wars at Russia's periphery -- and at the same time educational and economic opportunities that have opened to this young population.

Tenths of thousands of young men and women have been educated in the West, either in the United States or Western Europe, from 1991 until today. While many chose to stay in the West and work, others have returned, bringing their own blend of Western ideals to the ready mix of Russian economic and social principles. Many in power today are in their mid to late 40s, a younger generation that is gradually replacing those in their 60s at key government posts; these functionaries retain a good institutional memory of the Soviet Union and its domestic and international policies. Their decision-making, therefore, is a blend of what they consider an inevitable trend away from rigid Soviet structures -- exemplified by the spread of liberal democratic and market economic ideals in the former Soviet sphere -- and their own memory and perhaps wish for the ideals of the Soviet Union.

This is embodied by the constant struggle at the top echelons of power between those keen on recreating a strong central and controlling role for Russia in the post-Soviet space, and those who seek to change Russia along principles that closely resemble Western values. While many critics and analysts consider the latter category all but done for, the fate of Russia can yet be shaped by those who will begin to ascend in power within five or six years.

The younger generation has much in common with other youth around the world now in their early 20s. In North America, Western and Eastern Europe, in China, India and other countries of Southeast Asia, this new generation has begun to mature in the age of the Internet, wider access and familiarity with high-technology exemplified by computer and personal electronics, the spread of democratic principles and values, general familiarity with the market economy and its global presence and greater educational choices.

In Russia, this new generation wins international computer and IT competitions and takes one of the leading roles in the new high-tech economy. In China, according to a recent story in U.S. News and World Report, hundreds of millions of "Chuppies" -- Chinese young urban professionals -- are having a huge effect on global consumption and trade practices. In India, this young, English-speaking population has forged one of the most powerful high-tech economies in the world. In the United States, this new generation has helped build the Internet and today's high-tech industry, while living with the prevalence of democratic, capitalist, market-oriented ideals over command-economies and closed political regimes.

That is why Putin concentrated on specific pillars that he hopes will underpin the rise and maturity of Russia in the next several decades: the family and the military. While lamenting the negative population growth trends in the country, he offered financial incentives to families to have more than one child. Young families where both spouses are in their early 20s is commonplace in the Russian Federation, and many reasons they choose to have only one child -- or no child at all -- are financial and economic. This young generation -- the future of Russia if all trends prevalent today continue for the next several decades -- is only now maturing when it comes to various opportunities that have opened up to them since 1991. In the next five years, this generation will begin to reap the benefits -- or pitfalls -- of recent economic and social policies put in action by Putin, and will become more confident in their own economic, social and political standing.

Likewise, in the next five years the Russian military will begin to draft young men who have no connection or memory of Soviet military practices. Much of the current hazing and deadly abuse in the Russian military ranks is leftover from the Soviet days, when, in the 1970s, the military began to disintegrate and break down from within together with the rest of the country. Today's men drafted into the army are commanded and administered by those with full memory of Soviet military practices.

While many of these leaders will still be in power around 2010-2011, the military will have to adapt and change to the next generation of men who grew up in an era of greater choice, opportunity (however limited) and a renewed sense of personal respect. These young men will also have grown up in an era when no overriding political ideology guided every aspect of life, including military service. Because no such ideology exists, Russian military planners will have to switch to a professional military consisting of people guided by pragmatic choices and the sense of individual empowerment. This is the general sense of the U.S. military that Russians are trying to emulate, and Putin is keenly aware that a strong professional military not ruled by a rigid political philosophy is key to his state's future successes in the international arena.

Examples of Maturity of New States and New State Ideals

The general rule of 20 years allocated for a state's maturity is just one of the time periods that can be traced throughout history. Some states mature faster and others slower. Russia's own history is replete with such examples. The most notable one is the accession of the young energetic, Western-oriented Czar Peter the Great to the Russian throne in the late 1680s. He used physical force and intimidation -- as well as persuasion -- to turn his country from a sleeping giant into a major world power. The introduction of Western ideas of economy, military and statehood -- combined with the maturing of the generation of Russians capable of implementing these ideals -- resulted in Russian military victories over major powers of the day and the emergence in the 1700s of the Russian Empire that would last three centuries as one of the world's most preeminent powers.

Likewise, in 1917, following the revolution, Russia was in the midst of political, military and economic turmoil, soon to disintegrate into the five-year-long civil war. By the late 1930s, however, on the eve of the Second World War, the weak Russian Empire morphed into the Soviet Union, a major world power. By that time, an entire generation grew up with the ideals and beliefs of communism and socialism, and was implanting these ideals across the country.

By the same token, in the Russian Empire of the 1890s, new concepts and principles of Marxism, revolution and social change took hold among its young generation of students and the middle class. Within 20 years, this generation matured enough to implement these principles and to overthrow the Czarist regime, setting in motion a chain of events that culminated in the 1917 revolution and the subsequent disintegration of the country. In the mid 1970s, the ideals of human rights, social justice and personal freedom began to permeate the Soviet population following the signing of the Helsinki Declaration. These ideas brewed in secret among young academics, politicians, artists and writers, and by the early 1990s they had sufficient strength and numbers to facilitate the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Other powers also took around 20 years to reach a point where they could be considered mature powers. In 1871, the German Empire staked its claim to European greatness by unifying different German principalities and militarily humbling France, a preeminent power of the day. By the 1890s, it became clear that Germany was a major global contender, throwing a major challenge to Great Britain, the world's remaining superpower.

By the same token, a humbled Germany of 1918 was transformed into a superpower capable of taking on the world in 1939, as it became Nazi Germany with its powerful and disciplined military and economy. Communist China started off on the path of major economic change in 1979. By the year 2000, China was enjoying unprecedented economic growth, and today is considered the next great power and even a possible challenge to the United States. India started off on its reform path in the mid to late 1980s, and today it is emerging as another potential superpower and a major global economic powerhouse. Those in power in the 1970s and 1980s led China and India on the path toward economic and social change, so that today a new generation of their fellow countrymen can enjoy the life of relative prosperity and opportunity.

Conclusion

Putin's speech to Russia is important because it was an appeal to the young and upcoming generation who has little or no memory of the Soviet Union. Russia is maturing as the new power not just in terms of economy -- for its economy is still relatively small when compared to many other developed and developing countries -- but as the state with a unique blend of Western economic/political principles and a distinctly Russian/post-Soviet approach to them. Soon, the young Russian generation will make the next step from the largely academic life to the professional one, and will become a vocal and powerful voice in Russia's economy, politics and society. Twenty years since the start of the changes that led to the demise of the Soviet Union, this new generation will attempt to forge a new identity and direction for the Russian Federation.

Report Drafted By:
Alex Norman

Montenegro is divided over vote to separate from Serbia

2006-05-22T10:02:00.000+03:00

Montenegro is divided over vote to separate from Serbia
By Alex Todorovic in Belgrade
(Filed: 22/05/2006)

The Balkan state of Montenegro voted yesterday on whether to become independent from Serbia and write the final chapter in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

The result is likely to be close as the country is deeply divided between those loyal to Serbia and those hoping that independence will catapult this beautiful country on the Adriatic coast into the European Union and more prosperous times.

The latest opinion polls indicate that a slight majority of Montenegrins will vote for independence

The State Electoral Commission said turnout in the first nine hours of voting was 85 per cent, the highest since Montenegro first staged democratic elections in the 1990s.

"Montenegro is cut in half," said Predrag Bulatovic, the leader of Montenegro's pro-Serb bloc, as he cast his ballot. "After the vote, we must reconcile and think about Montenegro's European future."

The republic's pro-independence prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, said he was convinced "we have a clear majority that will lead Montenegro to its independence".

The latest opinion polls indicate that a slight majority of Montenegrins will vote for independence.

But it is not clear whether the pro-independence camp will collect at least 55 per cent of "Yes" votes - the threshold set by the European Union for Montenegro to split from Serbia. The EU, fearing violence, set the threshold in an effort to avoid an unconvincing majority for such a crucial decision.

The referendum has sharply divided Montenegro's 620,000 citizens along ethnic, geographic and generational lines. Around 80 per cent of the population are ethnic Serbs, torn between loyalty to Belgrade and a belief that Montenegro can move forward faster alone.

The minority of mainly Slavic Muslims and Albanians favour independence.

Those who live along Montenegro's scenic coastline are more likely to support the split. That region has seen a sharp improvement in its standard of living, boosted by foreign investment and tourism revenue.

Residents of Montenegro's northern and poorer mountainous region, bordering Serbia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, are more likely to vote in favour of the state union.

Serbia and Montenegro share a close history.

Many famous Serbian leaders were from Montenegro by heritage, from "Blackface George" who led the first Serbian uprising against the Turks in 1804, to the recently deceased Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, whose father was born in northern Montenegro.

The most famous "Serbian" romantic poet of the 19th century, Bishop Petar Petrovic Njegos, was from Montenegro but referred to himself as a Serb.

Generations of Montenegrins have been educated in Belgrade, and Montenegrins have a long history of assuming leading positions in Serbian companies and the public sector.

Given this intertwining history, many Serbs are either baffled or even hurt that Montenegrins now want to break away.

Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica has called on Montenegrins to remain joined to Serbia.

With passions running high, there have been fears that whatever the outcome, there could be violence after the results are announced.

The Bosnian war started after the former republic voted for independence in 1992, when its minority Serbs rebelled against the pro-independence government.

Daily Telegraph

Hamas and the Killing of Innocents

2006-05-18T10:41:00.000+03:00

Why should Hamas care if its irredentist terrorism kills or causes Israel to kill innocent civilians?

If one looks at the existential Palestine-Israel struggle as Hamas looks at it, it is obvious that Hamas is winning. Not only did it prevail in the Gaza elections, but it watches with glee as the Russians, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton advise the rest of the world to feed and clothe the Palestinians and to be nice to Hamas, which, like Iran, wants to eradicate the ?Zionist entity.?

As Hamas sees things, Israel is on the political, military, and PR defensive. The mighty Israel Army has not defeated Hamas. It has not deterred Hamas. It has not intimidated Hamas. It has not frightened Hamas. And despite targeted assassinations and artillery barrages, Israel hasn?t prevented Hamas from lobbing rockets and missiles into Israel almost daily.

It?s only a matter of luck and time before Hamas weaponry hits strategic targets like the Ashkelon power station, which generates 25 percent of Israel?s electricity, or the petroleum pipelines that link Ashkelon to Eilat and Haifa, or Ashkelon?s reverse osmosis plant, which produces up to 15 percent of Israel?s water.

Israel has a stated policy of doing everything possible to limit Palestinian civilian casualties. But the trouble with that policy is that it provides no incentive to non-terrorist Palestinians to stop tolerating Hamas or other terrorist groups. The non-terrorist Palestinians, the Israeli Arabs who are pro-Palestinian the Arabs in the wider Middle East, the Iranians and the other non-Arab Muslims, those Americans and Europeans who hide their anti-Semitism behind anti-Israelism do not hate the Jewish state less because it has allowed its fear of causing Palestinian casualties to cloud both its military judgment and the proven principles of psychological warfare.

If it is true that in war there is no substitute for victory, it is truer that victory comes only when the victor breaks the will of the vanquished. One vanquishes an enemy not by winning his heart and mind, but by crushing him militarily.

In the months prior to the end of the Second World War, the United States and Britain launched massive aerial bombings ? sometimes they sent a thousand bombers at a time ? over German cities, and America dropped atomic bombs over two Japanese cities. Neither President Delano Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, nor the American and British people fretted over enemy civilian casualties. On the contrary, they were absolutely convinced that such casualties would make the Germans and the Japanese surrender more quickly.

Israel need not use carpet bombing to prevail. It can use less Draconian measures, such as destroying terrorists? homes after each and every terrorist act, and ending all economic ties with the Palestinians. It is absurd that the Israelis hire Palestinians for day labor in their country. It is equally absurd that they supply electricity every day to people who pray, wish, and work for their destruction.

?By wide margins,?reported a 2003 Pew Research Center poll, ?Muslim populations doubt that a way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people are met. Eight-in-ten residents of the Palestinian Authority express this opinion.?

Hamas has no qualms about killing innocent Israelis ? that?s what Arab terrorists are supposed to do ? and then waiting for Israel?s inevitable response. When that response results in the unavoidable death of innocents, not only is Hamas delighted, but there are the inevitable anti-Israel letters to foreign newspapers, such as this one in The Oregonian of March 9, 2006:

?Does the World War II atrocity [of the Holocaust] give the Jewish state the right to murder an 8-year-old [Palestinian] boy??

The only way for the Israelis to end the Palestine-Israel conflict, and also to end the deaths of innocent civilians on both sides, is to employ effective force.

They must kill the terrorists in their very beds. And if f their beds happen to be next to the beds of Palestinian civilians, that is sad. But the deaths of innocents is the price the Palestinians decided to pay when they vote for Hamas and tolerate its terrorist and rejectionist agenda. Israel has nothing to apologize for if the Arabs deny the truth that every action has a consequence.

After a successful commando raid in Beirut in the spring of 1973, during which a seventy-year-old Italian woman was unfortunately killed, the then Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General David Elazar, said:

?Israel won?t play by the rules of partial war; wars are not won with a strong defense.?

If despite General Elazar?s dictum, contemporary Israelis keep playing by the rules of partial war, and refuse to fight their enemies by the rules of the region in which they live, both the conflict and the innocent civilian casualties will continue until the end of time.

Edward Bernard Glick is a professor emeritus of political science at Temple University in Philadelphia and a fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society

Edward Bernard Glick/ Temple University in Philadelphia

The real business of NATO

2006-05-17T11:39:00.000+03:00

Risto E.J. Penttila International Herald Tribune

HELSINKI Let's face it: NATO has already become a global policeman. The question now is whether it will turn out to be a good cop or a bad cop.

If NATO wants to be a good cop, it must work out principles and decision- making procedures for the most likely crises of the future - even if those crises are a far cry from the war games played during the Cold War.

If NATO continues to deny that it has become a global policeman, it will act without legitimacy and without a moral compass. In other words, it will be a bad cop.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general of NATO, likes to say "NATO is not a global policeman." In a typical speech he repeats the sentence two or three times. To make sure that the point is not lost on more skeptical audiences he throws in a bit of French: "L'OTAN n'est pas le gendarme du monde."

The sound bite sends a clear signal. Yet, it does not stand up to closer scrutiny. NATO provides law and order to the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It patrols sea-lanes in the Mediterranean. It provides assistance to victims of hurricanes and earthquakes. It escorts children to school in Afghanistan. It educates officers in post-socialist states in the virtues of democracy. It provides logistical support for the African Union. It incarcerates war criminals. It fights terrorism.

These are not war-fighting operations. They cannot even be classified as hardcore crisis management. They are low-tech and low-casualty. Their objective is to bring order to weak states and to help the inhabitants get back to living normal lives. And what is more: There is a growing demand for these kinds of law-and-order operations.

The African Union would love to have NATO help bring order to Darfur and other killing fields in Africa. At some point the Israelis and Palestinians are going to be ready for an international peacekeeping force. At that point NATO forces - most likely operating under the United Nations flag - could become a stabilizing element. And, of course, the Americans would be delighted to see NATO troops in Iraq.

Law-and-order operations are not the only kind of task NATO has to confront in the future. Looking forward, the alliance is likely to be involved in two types of operations.

The first category, let's call it traditional operations, is both more dangerous and less likely. It consists of using military force to defend the vital interests of one or more member states. The operations could vary from the defense of the territorial integrity of a member state to an improbable (but imaginable) intervention to secure Western energy supplies. Decision- making in these situations will not be easy but there is a process for it. After all, NATO was created for these kinds of existential crises.

The second category of future operations is both more likely and less dangerous (at least, it is less dangerous for the populations and vital interests of NATO member states). Let's call these operations policing operations. They consist of stopping genocide, patrolling borders, securing sea-lanes and thwarting warlords. Some of the operations in this category are nasty, others are easier to manage. For NATO, the key issue is to make the correct decision about whether or not to engage.

The problem is that most NATO member states and most of its civil servants think that genocides and civil wars are none of NATO's business.

Whose business are they then? The United Nations peacekeepers are suffering from too many engagements and too few resources. The EU military forces are being developed but they will certainly not be able to shoulder difficult operations without the help of the United States for years to come. African peacekeepers are being trained but they are not ready yet. The only show in town is NATO.

It seems quite natural for NATO to pay attention to conflicts, whatever their cause, that have or potentially have an important military content. It also seems natural that the alliance would get involved when something has to be done but no one else is up to the task.

NATO claims to defend freedom, democracy and liberty. Well, freedom, democracy and liberty are at stake when people are being slaughtered in Darfur. The same principles are also at stake when war-torn countries are trying to rebuild themselves.

No one is suggesting that NATO should get involved in all the trouble spots of the world. What I am suggesting is that the alliance recognize what it has become and begin to act accordingly.

Risto E.J. Penttila is the director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum.

Replace Turkey as a Strategic Partner ?

2006-05-09T08:59:00.000+03:00

by Jonathan Eric Lewis

The U.S.-Turkish partnership remained strong throughout the Cold War. Turkey was a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member and a frontline state against the Soviet Union. Washington valued Ankara as a strategic partner. But, with the end of the Cold War, the pivotal status of Turkey receded. Successive U.S. presidents paid heed to the importance of the U.S.-Turkish relationship, but few cultivated it. Until the Turkish parliament shocked Washington by failing to authorize the use of Turkish facilities for Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 1, 2003, many in Washington took the Turkish partnership for granted. The loss of Ankara as a reliable ally has forced U.S. policymakers to readjust their regional strategy. Turkey may no longer be a pivotal state, but the Black Sea and Caspian littoral remains a pivotal region as a bulwark against radical Islam and for energy security. While Washington seeks to repair its once strong partnership with Ankara, increasingly, the security and stability of the region requires a more active and engaged U.S. approach not only to Turkey, but also to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Romania.

Shaken Confidence

The Turkish National Assembly stunned U.S. policymakers by voting against participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The no vote exposed severe fault lines in the U.S.-Turkish relationship, exacerbated by the subsequent outreach of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Iran and Syria and the tendency of members of his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) to engage in anti-American rhetoric.[1] Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has indicated a desire to develop further ties with Turkey.[2]

Washington's ambiguous attitude toward the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, PKK) and Erdoğan's autocratic tendencies further eroded bilateral confidence.[3] A July 2005 Turkish poll underlined the deterioration in U.S.-Turkish relations. Some 50 percent of respondents held an "absolute negative view" of the United States.[4] Among U.S. policymakers?at least those outside the diplomatic service?the view toward the Turkish government was mutual.

Turkey's growing flirtation with Islamism has also undercut U.S. confidence in its long-time ally. Prior to becoming prime minister, Erdoğan was arrested for reciting an Islamist poem that challenged the Kemalist basis of the state.[5] The AKP has worked to promote an Islamist agenda, seeking to empower graduates of religious schools, and facilitating the influx outside of regulatory oversight of billions of dollars from Persian Gulf and other Islamist sources.[6] More recently, the imprisonment without charges of a Van University professor?who later committed suicide?and the unprecedented arrest of the university's secularist rector has caused mainstream Turkish society to question Erdoğan's intentions.[7]

Erdoğan's government has also undercut the West's war on terrorism. By criticizing Israel's counterterrorism operations as "state terror," Erdoğan enabled Turkey's European critics to characterize the Turkish military's operations against the PKK in the same way. The sympathy of AKP deputies toward Iraqi insurgents also implied some forms of terrorism to be more legitimate than others, a logic which can be turned against Turkey by its longtime Islamist opponents.

Regional Concerns

While the White House might turn its back on other partners whose governments have engaged in rhetoric and activities similar to that of Erdoğan's, the U.S. government simply has too many interests in the region to ignore. Aside from countering Iran's attempt to export its revolution and other antiterrorism concerns, Washington's preeminent interest in the South Caucasus is energy security, and specifically, protection of the 1,090-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which delivers Caspian Sea oil to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. This project, initiated during the Clinton administration and brought online on May 25, 2005, is part of a U.S. strategy to become less reliant on Persian Gulf energy supplies.

Securing the BTC pipeline from a terror attack is difficult because large sections of the South Caucasus remain out of the reach of the states' central governments. This makes it imperative that Washington work for realistic, pragmatic solutions to the Abkhaz, South Ossetian, and Nagorno-Karabagh conflicts. These solutions must simultaneously abide by the international and regional consensus on preserving the territorial integrity of the regional states and also recognize that during the decade or so in which these conflicts have remained "frozen," local officials and populations have established self-government.[8] A positive step toward ensuring the security of the BTC pipeline has been the U.S. training of local military units in the region to protect the infrastructure from attack.[9]

At the same time that Turkey's commitment to regional security waivers, Iran's nuclear proliferation and terror-sponsorship activities continue to threaten regional security. Tehran, for instance, has supported both Sunni and Shi?ite Islamist groups in the region. One such Sunni organization is Turkish Hezbollah, an Islamist terrorist group that seeks to establish an Iranian-style regime in Turkey. Its members may have links with the November 2003 bombings outside two Istanbul synagogues.[10]

Islamists?be they supported by Iran or by Saudi Arabia?remain active in the northeast Caucasus. Although the first Chechen war against Moscow (1994-96) was a nationalist struggle resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union, an influx of Arab jihadists has transformed the conflict from one primarily about independence to part of the larger Islamist struggle against the West.

They have had some success. Due to the influx of both Arab jihadis and Wahhabism in the mid-1990s, Chechnya should be viewed in the context of wider difficulties in the Greater Middle East and to U.S. security rather than just as a local problem.[11] Several of the Islamists directly implicated in the 9-11 attacks were interested in fighting Russians in Chechnya. Saudi donors have long supported the Chechen cause and promoted the creation of a jihadi subculture among young Chechens, leading to the Chechen mujahideens' adaptation of the tactic of suicide bombings. Not only were Chechen fighters able to achieve de facto independence from Russia between 1996 and 1999, but there are also increasing signs that Moscow might not be able to maintain a firm grip on the region's other republics in the years ahead.[12]

Dagestan, especially, has become a target for jihadists. Aside from being a debacle for the Caucasians themselves, an implosion of Russian power could further the exodus of ethnic Russians from the North Caucasus and further consolidate Muslim majorities in regions that have been, for the past two centuries, religiously heterogeneous and culturally Russified.

A 2004 Johns Hopkins University Central Asia-Caucasus Institute study group found that "with the U.S.-led antiterrorism coalitions projecting power into Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the South Caucasus has de facto been drawn into the perimeter of Euro-Atlantic strategic concerns."[13] It is essential that Washington maintain its strategic reach, even if it cannot rely on Ankara to do so. The deterioration in U.S.-Turkish relations mandates not abandonment but rather a search for new allies.

Uncertain Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan could be at the top of the U.S. government's list. As a pro-American, secular Shi?ite state with strained ties with Iran and good relations with both Israel and Turkey, Azerbaijan remains a major strategic asset for Washington. Azerbaijan has cooperated in the war on terror by allowing for coalition overflights. Baku has also contributed troops to Iraq.[14] Baku's strategic position on Iran's northern border has also made it a valuable partner in containing Tehran's influence in the Caucasus, a phenomenon made more complex due to the ethnic kinships between Azerbaijanis and Iranian Azeris.[15]

However, while Washington has continued its outreach to Azerbaijan, there are worrying signs that Baku may not be as reliable a partner in the future. The lack of democracy in Azerbaijan has recently become a point of contention between Washington and Baku. Western observers criticized the fairness of the November 6, 2005 parliamentary elections in which President İlham Aliyev's party nominally won. The State Department concluded that "the elections did not meet a number of international standards."[16] It is always possible that Aliyev's impatience with Washington human rights concerns may cause him to reappraise his relationship, much as Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov did when he withdrew permission for U.S. forces to use Uzbek facilities.

Iran has moved to exploit Baku's uncertainty about Washington's actions. Iranian diplomats often warn Azerbaijani officials that U.S. involvement in the region may be temporary while Iran will remain a regional power. Azerbaijani authorities have sought to promote a good-neighbor policy to placate the Islamic Republic, and Baku has opened a consulate in Tabriz?an ethnically Azeri city in northwestern Iran.[17]

Tehran, meanwhile, has also worked to augment its influence in Azerbaijan. It has sponsored missionary activity to promote Ayatollah Khomeini's notion of religious governance. Even before Azerbaijan's 1991 independence, Iranian missionaries were active in the rural areas around Baku, in Nakhichevan and Lenkeren.[18] In recent years, the Islamic Republic has sought to gain more direct control over Shi?ite religious life in Azerbaijan by rebuilding mosques and by encouraging Azerbaijani clerics to study in the Islamic Republic.[19] Iranian authorities have also proselytized among Azerbaijani refugees in camps near the Iranian border.[20] Iran's most overt attempt to undermine Azeri secularism has been through its support for the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, a theocratic anti-Turkic party, founded in 1992 but banned three years later.[21]

Simultaneously, the Islamic Republic has moved to undermine Azerbaijani stability. The Iranian government has sought to bolster nationalism among Azerbaijan's small Talysh minority. State-employed Iranian academics, for example, have helped to form the International Talysh Association to work for the rights of the "oppressed" Azerbaijani Talysh.[22] Azerbaijan's minority Sunni community is also susceptible to radicalization. Senior members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad have spent time in the country.[23] Sunni Islamists have used Azerbaijan as a hub for plotting terror attacks, including the 1998 Al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa and one foiled attack on the U.S. embassy in Baku.[24] There are also growing concerns about the radicalization of the ethnic Lezgin community, some of whom have turned to Wahhabism.

The Azerbaijani government has not remained passive in the face of Iranian subterfuge. In 1997, it banned Iranian missionary activity on its territory. Tehran's religious influence has since waned.[25] Azerbaijanis' resentment at the Iranian oppression of their Azeri ethnic kin also limits the Iranian influence operations.[26] Long-standing disagreements over territorial Caspian waters and the corollary oil rights also hamper further developments of Iranian-Azerbaijani ties.[27]

While the U.S. government was disappointed in the November 2005 elections that returned Azerbaijan's ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party to power,[28] Washington realizes that it currently has little choice but to retain robust ties with Baku. Azerbaijan remains an important energy supplier and could play a crucial role in containing Iranian influence in the Caucasus should Washington and its allies embark upon a policy of containment toward Tehran. While democracy concerns will prevent the warmth in U.S.-Azerbaijani ties that existed in the mid-1990s, Baku still has the potential to be an important strategic partner should Ankara continue its slide toward accommodation with both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Baathist Syria.

Warming U.S.-Armenian Relations?

Another regional state with which Washington might develop ties is Armenia. Of all the Caucasian states, Yerevan's relationship with Washington has been the coolest. The Armenian government's contentious policies toward both Washington and Ankara, as well as its continued occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, led both the U.S. and Turkish governments to exclude it from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

Nevertheless, some factors make Armenia attractive in the fight against Islamist terrorism. Armenia is the only state in the South Caucasus without an active Islamist constituency on its territory. Rather than treat Yerevan as a political backwater, Washington might try to tie the small country to the West. The Armenian government has indicated willingness for a stronger strategic partnership with the United States. In late October 2005, Armenian defense minister Serge Sargsyan visited both Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon to discuss U.S.-Armenian military ties.[29] Despite low public support, Yerevan sent noncombat troops to Iraq to serve as detonation experts, doctors, and truck drivers.[30] Increased dialogue between Washington and Yerevan has opened the door for a possible Armenian entrance into NATO. Indeed, even Vladimir Socor, a critic of Armenian foreign policy and its ties with Russia, has argued that Armenia, if it is able to resolve its conflict with Azerbaijan, should be offered an opportunity to join the alliance.[31]

U.S. policymakers should not take any warming of bilateral relations for granted, though. Both Iran and Russia continue to court Yerevan actively. Tehran, for example, is cooperating with Yerevan to run a pipeline through the southeastern Armenian province of Syunik.[32] Washington is likewise concerned by the warmth of Russian-Armenian ties.[33] The Russian Federation is the largest investor in the Armenian economy,[34] and the two states have close military ties. Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional military alliance akin to NATO, which also includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.[35] Moscow, therefore, was not pleased by Sargsyan's visit to Washington.[36] Should Armenia fall further under either Russian or Iranian sway, it can undermine U.S. strategic interests.

From Tbilisi to Bucharest

Georgia has become a key player in the U.S.-led war on terror through its participation in the International Military Education and Training Program. Likewise, its counterinsurgency operations in the Pankisi Gorge region of northeastern Georgia, where Al-Qaeda had established a foothold, and its contribution of soldiers to both Afghanistan and Iraq have bolstered Tbilisi's importance in Washington.[37]

U.S.-Georgian relations improved following the November 2003 Rose Revolution and the January 2004 inauguration of pro-U.S. president Mikhail Saakashvili. In November 2004, Tbilisi increased its troop presence in Iraq more than fivefold to 850.[38] During his two-day visit to Georgia in May 2005, President George W. Bush offered his support to Georgia's new government and suggested that Washington might help solve Georgia's separatist conflicts in its Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions.[39] Demonstrating Washington's renewed interest in Georgia was the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. government body providing foreign development aid based on economic reforms and good governance. One Georgian analyst called the deal, which Saakashvili signed on September 12, 2005, "the most important economic aid project offered to Georgia since its gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991."[40]

Given Georgia's location on the eastern Black Sea, its predominantly Christian and pro-American population, and its short flying distance from not only Iraq but also Iran and Syria, policymakers should consider Georgian airfields as important strategic resources. That NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer recently said that the "door is open" to Georgian membership in the alliance strengthens the need for a robust U.S.-Georgian military alliance.[41]

Romania, unlike Georgia, is already a member of NATO, and unlike Greece, its political life is not dominated by anti-Americanism. The Romanian military's NATO-driven interoperability with the U.S. military, as well as the cementing of a democratic system, may soon belie the claim that Turkey is "the most stable country in the Black Sea region with effective armed forces."[42]

Bucharest has played an important albeit unappreciated role in the liberation of Iraq. In sharp contrast to Turkey, which did not allow the U.S. military to launch operations from its territory, the Romanian government allowed the U.S. military to use the Kogalniceanu air base in southeast Romania as a staging ground to transport some 7,000 combat troops into Iraq. U.S. negotiators working to extend the U.S. lease at the Incirlik air base in Turkey considered Romanian bases as a contingency should Turkish politicians place too many restrictions on Incirlik's use. U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld alluded to such a "Plan B," that might involve airlifting infantry directly into northern Iraq from another country.[43]

In July 2005, the Romanian and U.S. militaries conducted joint training exercises at the Babadag Training Area.[44] Romanian troops have served in both Afghanistan and Iraq.[45]

Given Romania's willingness to provide future bases in the realignment of U.S. military forces, policymakers should recognize this new strategic role that Romania is now playing in U.S. efforts in the Middle East. Although everything should be done to continue positive ties with Ankara, a more engaged and robust American-Romanian military alliance would be advantageous should an increasingly nationalist-Islamist Turkey continue its drift toward both Iran and the Arab world.

Conclusion

There has been scant attention to the emergence of the Caucasus and the Black Sea periphery as a pivotal strategic area for U.S. interests and Washington's long-term agenda of promoting democratic reform in the Greater Middle East and countering the ideology of Islamism. Any state's importance to Washington policymakers can be correlated to the number of high-level visits it receives. In 2004, for instance, Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Georgia. [46] Tbilisi was one of relatively few capitals to receive a presidential visit in 2005. While Madeleine Albright visited Turkey twice while at the helm of the State Department, Powell visited only once before the war. His subsequent visit to Ankara was meant to stem damage to the relationship following the March 1 vote, but it was too little, too late. His final 2004 visit to Istanbul coincided with the NATO meeting; it was pro forma.[47] Romanian prime minister Adrian Nastase had two working visits to Washington in 2004.[48] While Bush received Erdoğan at the White House in June 2005, the meeting was chilly.[49]

Does this mean that Ankara should cease to be considered a U.S. ally? No. The Turkish military remains a major U.S. partner in Afghanistan, and the United States remains Turkey's third largest export partner.[50] Washington should do all that is reasonable to maintain strong military ties with Turkey.

This does not mean, however, that U.S. policymakers should turn a blind eye to some worrying signs in Turkish political life, most notably anti-Americanism. The deterioration in relations and palpable White House distrust of Erdoğan suggest further U.S. outreach toward the South Caucasus and Romania might be prudent. U.S.-Turkish relations do not preclude closer ties with Georgia and Romania. Nor should the formerly strong U.S.-Turkish partnership prevent contingency planning for a time when the West may lose Turkey. Likewise, Washington should pay greater attention to threats emanating from the North Caucasus, particularly Chechnya and Dagestan, and prepare for a possible worst-case scenario? the loss of Ankara as a strategic partner and an implosion of Russian control over the North Caucasus.

It is still the case that most Americans have little or no knowledge of such places as Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and Romania and their linkages with the Middle East. Nevertheless, for the past several years, there have been intimate connections between these places, as well as others in the Caucasus and on the Black Sea, and the Arab-Islamic world. The politics of Dagestan, the BTC pipeline running from the Azerbaijani Caspian Sea coast to the Turkish Mediterranean, and the strategic importance of the eastern Romanian Black Sea coast have the real potential to shape and dictate Washington's opportunities for a successful forward strategy in the Middle East. It is thus imperative that government bureaucrats, journalists, and policymakers working on the Middle East emphasize that this peripheral zone?a faraway land of which Americans know little?could be the key to Washington's success or failure in the Middle East in the years ahead.

Jonathan Eric Lewis is a Washington-based political analyst writing on Eurasia and the Middle East.

[1] Soner Cagaptay, "Where Goes the U.S.-Turkish Relationship?" Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2004, pp. 43-52.
[2] Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Nov. 9, 2005.
[3] The New York Sun, Nov. 2, 2005.
[4] "Turkish Public Opinion about the USA and Americans," ARI Movement, sponsored by Koç Holding, July 5, 2005; "Short Analysis by Dr. Emre Erdoğan," Infakto Research Workshop, ARI Movement, accessed Nov. 28, 2005.
[5] BBC News, Nov. 4, 2002.
[6] Michael Rubin, "Green Money, Islamist Politics in Turkey," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 13-23.
[7] The Turkish Daily News (Ankara), Nov. 15, 2005.
[8] The National Interest, Dec. 1, 2004.
[9] Fiona Hill, "The Eurasian Security Environment," testimony to the House Armed Services Committee Threat Panel, Washington, D.C., Sept. 22, 2005.
[10] Evan Kohlmann, "Terrorized Turkey," National Review Online, Nov. 23, 2003.
[11] Lorenzo Vidino, "How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for Terror," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005, pp. 57-66.
[12] Liz Fuller, "North Caucasus: No Clear Strategy in Region," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Oct. 2, 2005.
[13] Svante E. Cornell, Roger N. McDermott, William O'Malley, Vladimir Socor, and S. Frederick Starr, Regional Security in the South Caucasus: The Role of NATO (Washington: Johns Hopkins University, 2004), p. 25.
[14] "Azerbaijan Support to the Global War on Terror," U.S. Central Command, U.S. Department of Defense, accessed Nov. 28, 2005.
[15] Brenda Shaffer, Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 1-11.
[16] "Azerbaijan Parliamentary Elections," U.S. Department of State, news release, Nov. 7, 2005.
[17] Fariz Ismailzade, "Azerbaijan Wrestles with Geopolitical Dilemma," Eurasia Insight, Feb. 15, 2005.
[18] Igor Rotar, "Islamic Fundamentalism in Azerbaijan: Myth or Reality?" Jamestown Foundation Prism, Aug. 31, 2000.
[19] Tadeusz Swietochowski, "Azerbaijan: The Hidden Faces of Islam," World Policy Journal, Fall 2002.
[20] Author's correspondence with Brenda Schaffer, research director, Caspian Studies Project, Harvard University, Nov. 14, 2005.
[21] Raoul Motika, "Islam in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan," Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 115, July-Sept. 2001, pp. 111-24.
[22] Eurasia Daily Monitor, May 27, 2005.
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Honda Invests 250 Million US Dollars More to Turkey

2006-05-08T16:22:00.000+03:00

By Memduh Taslicali

ISTANBUL - Japanese automotive producer Honda is only able to meet produce 3.5 million of the total global annual automobile production demand of four million.

The international automotive giant has taken moves to meet the remaining 500,000 demand and has developed new investment plans.

Top level administrators from Honda headquarters have begun making frequent visits to Turkey recently in line with these plans.

The company also intends to increase the production capacity in its Gebze facilities from 30,000 to 100,000 cars.

Katsumi Sawai, Honda-Turkey General Director, said filling the demand for 500,000 automobiles cannot be produced by a single country alone and that 200,000 vehicles will likely be produced in America. Sawai also noted Honda is taking into consideration the quality and performance of workers in Turkey.

The Japanese company will shortly make its final decision about where it will conduct its latest investments.

Sawai added the headquarters in Tokyo highly praises Turkey and sees it as a successful operation. The vehicles produced by Honda-Turkey are transported to Japan for testing. Following these tests Honda?s car experts agreed that the vehicles produced in Turkey are better than the ones produced in Japan. "Not utilizing this qualified and quality work force, which Honda Turkey has, would be a shame for the Honda society," said Sawai, adding the sale rates in Europe and Turkey are also influential in implementing such decisions.

Sawai said with the new investments Honda's City and Civic Sedan models will be produced in Turkey, with the possibility of a third model be added to the portfolio.

Sawai said they are also considering the Civic Hatchback, which is currently produced in Britain. "We do not know where it will be produced after the cooperate decision."

The General Director said if the production decision is taken, the present factory in Gebze will not be sufficient, and they are considering enlarging the Gebze factory. Talking at the launch of the new Civic Sedan, Umit Karaarslan, Honda Turkey Deputy General Manager, said they plan to produce 10,000 automobiles from their new model, 7,000 of which will be sold in domestic market and 3,000 which be exported.

Karaaslan said total sales of Honda?s Civic and City will reach 20,000 in 2007; if this target is met, they will increase their market share to about five percent. According to him the present loan application process in Turkey will push the demand for automobiles higher.

Zaman
7 May 2006