Category Archives: Issues

Dozens of retired generals, admirals back Iran nuclear deal

The Washington Post reports: Three dozen retired generals and admirals released an open letter Tuesday supporting the Iran nuclear deal and urging Congress to do the same.

Calling the agreement “the most effective means currently available to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” the letter said that gaining international support for military action against Iran, should that ever become necessary, “would only be possible if we have first given the diplomatic path a chance.”

The release came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry said U.S. allies were “going to look at us and laugh” if the United States were to abandon the deal and then ask them to back a more aggressive posture against Iran. [Continue reading…]

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Head of group opposing Iran accord quits post, saying he backs deal

The New York Times reports: When the bipartisan advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran decided last week to mobilize opposition against the nuclear deal with Tehran, Gary Samore knew he could no longer serve as its president.

The reason: After long study, Mr. Samore, a former nuclear adviser to President Obama, had concluded that the accord was in the United States’ interest.

“I think President Obama’s strategy succeeded,” said Mr. Samore, who left his post on Monday. “He has created economic leverage and traded it away for Iranian nuclear concessions.”

As soon as Mr. Samore left, the group announced a new standard-bearer with a decidedly different message: Joseph I. Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut and the new chairman of the group. [Continue reading…]

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Ordinary Iranians unafraid to criticize their own government

Larry Cohler-Esses (from The Forward), “the first journalist from a Jewish, pro-Israel (if not always pro-Israel government) publication to be granted a journalist’s visa since the 1979 Revolution,” writes: Ordinary Iranians with whom I spoke have no interest at all in attacking Israel; their concern is with their own sense of isolation and economic struggle. Official government statistics estimate the unemployment in Iran at around 10%. But unofficial sources estimate it as twice that — and this in a context in which only 36% of the population participates in the workforce. An estimated 150,000 Iranians with college educations leave the country yearly.

But among ordinary Iranians the sense that something is now opening up in the country is pervasive. It began with the election of the reformist presidential candidate Rouhani in 2012, long before the recently negotiated nuclear agreement introduced the prospect of crippling sanctions being lifted. And the impact of this mood on people’s willingness to speak out is clear.

In Iran today, freedom of the press remains a dream. But freedom of tongue has been set loose. I was repeatedly struck by the willingness of Iranians to offer sharp, even withering criticisms of their government on the record, sometimes even happy to be filmed doing so.

“The people of Iran want in some way to show the world that what’s going on in the last years is not the will of the Iranian people but of the Iranian government,” Nader Qaderi told me as I filmed him with my phone outside his butcher shop in North Tehran’s Tajrish Market. A small crowd looked on as we talked. “We have no hostility against Israel,” he stressed.

Asked about prospects for the international nuclear agreement, which is coming under angry fire in Iran no less than in the United States, Qaderi told me: “I think it will be implemented. But there will be no improvement for the Iranian people. Our main concern now is freedom! I think what we need most of all now is political intelligence. People have no clear idea of what they want. This is the real struggle.” [Continue reading…]

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Iran deal furor reveals a split among Jewish Americans

Lisa Goldman reports: The frenzied lobbying in Washington over the international deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program has drawn attention to two unprecedented ruptures — both of which potentially have significant long-term consequences for Israel’s place in U.S. domestic politics.

For decades, unconditional support for Israel had been a point of unshakable bipartisan consensus inside the Beltway, even as bipartisanship on most other issues became a distant memory. A majority of Jewish voters continue to choose the Democrats; deep-pocketed Jewish donors remain vital to the electoral prospects of candidates from both parties, but partisan distinctions meant little when it came to Israel. And the pro-Israel lobbying establishment, first and foremost the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has always worked hard to span the aisle on Capitol Hill, while political leaders from both parties routinely pay tribute to the lobbying group at its annual convention.

The Iran nuclear deal has thrown that consensus into crisis, leaving Jewish Americans divided between a Democratic-voting majority that polls show support the Iran deal (in numbers proportionally larger than the wider U.S. population) and a conservative minority that includes some very powerful donors, and supports the GOP-led opposition to the deal. And AIPAC’s leading role in campaigning against the deal has prompted President Barack Obama to publicly challenge the group in a manner unprecedented for a U.S. leader over the past two decades. [Continue reading…]

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Images of Iranian parking lot reveal evidence of cars, parked

Bloomberg reports: An Iranian parking lot labeled as a site of “intense concern” by an influential Washington research group hasn’t shown any signs of change for at least five years, according to satellite imagery and analysts.

The Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, said in an Aug. 7 research note that Iran’s decision to park 20 vehicles at the Parchin military complex facility was provocative. However, according to 36 satellite images spanning five years, there has always been an average of about 20 automobiles parked at the site since concern over the Parchin complex grew in 2011.

“The ‘parking lot of death’ has been imaged dozens of times and there are clear patterns of passenger cars parked there,” said Robert Kelley, an intelligence analyst and former U.S. nuclear-weapons scientist. “There have been no indicators of a change in Iranian activities of any significance — no earth moving or sanitization whatsoever.”

With debate flaring in Washington over the July 14 agreement between Iran and world powers, some analysts and politicians say activities at Parchin underline the risks of entering into a deal with the Islamic Republic. In a statement on Saturday, Iran said analysts had confused normal roadwork with malicious intentions at the 50 square-kilometer (31 square-mile) complex.

“Parchin is an active site and movement is inevitable,” Paul Ingram, executive director of the British American Security Information Council, said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “Attempting an impossible cleanup in full view of satellites and just before Congressional votes would be stretching conspiracy theories beyond breaking point.” [Continue reading…]

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Inside the secret U.S.-Iran diplomacy that sealed nuke deal

Laura Rozen reports: When Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president in June 2013 on a campaign platform of engaging with the West to reach a nuclear deal and improve Iran’s economy, he apparently didn’t know that Iran and the United States had already opened a secret diplomatic channel and held bilateral talks in Oman on the nuclear issue in March 2013.

“The first time I informed Rouhani of the secret negotiations with the United States was after his election to office,” former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview Aug. 4 with Iran Daily, adding that the incoming president and former Iranian nuclear negotiator was shocked when Salehi briefed him on the consultations ahead of his inauguration: “Rouhani was in disbelief.”

That is among the revelations that have emerged from interviews with senior Iranian and US officials in the wake of reaching of a final Iran nuclear accord by Iran and six world powers on July 14. The final deal — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — is currently under a 60-day review by the US Congress. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some pro-Israel lobby groups are pressing members of Congress to kill the deal by voting next month on a resolution of disapproval that seeks to block President Barack Obama from providing the US sanctions relief promised in the accord in exchange for significant steps Iran agreed to take to limit its nuclear program. Obama has vowed to veto any such resolution, and Democrats currently believe they have enough support to sustain his veto, if required. [Continue reading…]

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Jewish terrorism targeting Palestinians is nothing new

The Daily Beast reports: Raphael Morris, a 20-year-old religious settler from the outpost of Ahiya, has for years engaged in a “holy war,” he tells The Daily Beast. He’s battling to rid Israel of its non-Jewish elements and expand the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria—the biblical term for the land on the West Bank of the Jordan River that once belonged to the ancient kingdom of Israel.

Six years ago, Morris arrived at a nearby outpost with 10 other teenagers and learned to work the vineyard, build houses, and “in a number of instances” created a line of defense against the surrounding Palestinian villages. “The Arabs knew not to mess with us,” he says.

This area of the West Bank is home to dozens of outposts initiated in defiance of the Israeli government by mainly Orthodox teenagers and young families known as “hilltop youth.” But these communities are also breeding a zealous culture of Jewish militancy that has led to intensifying attacks on Palestinian towns.

Ahiya is only a short distance from the village of Duma, where on July 31 Jewish extremists firebombed two Arab homes in the dead of night.

One of the houses was empty, but in the other four members of the same family were sleeping in one bedroom. Eighteen-month-old Ali Saad Dawabshah was immediately burned to death, and his father, Saad Dawabshah, succumbed two weeks later to the third-degree burns that covered more than 80 percent of his body. The mother, Reham, and her four-year-old son, Ahmad, remain in critical condition in an Israeli hospital and few family members expect them to survive.

On the walls of the house the arsonists left graffiti reading “Revenge!” and “Long Live the Messiah” next to a Star of David.

The brutal attacks have shocked Israel, prompting nation-wide “soul searching” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians condemn the act as “Jewish terror.” But such incidents are neither so new nor so isolated as these denunciations would make them seem. [Continue reading…]

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Republican hopefuls reap $62m in support from donors with fossil fuel ties

The Guardian reports: Republican presidential candidates have banked millions of dollars in donations from a small number of mega-rich individuals and corporations with close ties to the fossil fuel industries that stand to lose the most from the fight against climate change.

Eight out of the 17 GOP figures currently jostling for their party’s presidential nomination have between them attracted a bonanza of at least $62m so far this year from sources either directly involved in polluting industries or with close financial ties to them. Three Republican contenders stand out as recipients of this fossil fuel largesse: the Republican climate change denier-in-chief, Ted Cruz; the party establishment favorite Jeb Bush; and the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry.

The funds have come from just 17 billionaires or businesses that have pumped enormous sums – in one case $15m for a single candidate – into the support groups or Super Pacs that work alongside the official campaigns yet are free to attract unlimited contributions. The $62m forms a substantial chunk of almost $400m that has been given to presidential contenders from both main parties in 2015, raising questions about the leverage that fossil fuel interests might seek to exert over the next occupant of the White House at a critical time for the battle against climate change. [Continue reading…]

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Not just the editorial page — WSJ reporting on climate change also skewed

Media Matters reports: When it comes to covering climate change, it’s not just The Wall Street Journal’s editorial section that is problematic in the Rupert Murdoch era — a new study shows the paper’s newsroom has misinformed readers on the issue, too.

A new joint study from researchers at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oslo appearing in the journal Public Understanding of Science (PUS) found major differences between the climate change reporting of The Wall Street Journal and other major U.S. newspapers. The July 30 study, titled “Polarizing news? Representations of threat and efficacy in leading US newspapers’ coverage of climate change,” examined non-opinion-based climate change articles in The Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post from 2006 to 2011.

The study found some disturbing trends in The Wall Street Journal’s news reporting on climate change, including that the Journal was less likely than the other newspapers to discuss the threats or impacts of climate change and more likely to frame climate action as ineffective or even harmful. The authors of the study concluded that, given the Journal’s conservative readership, the negative nature of its climate reporting “could exacerbate ideological polarization on climate change.” [Continue reading…]

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Oil demand will dry up faster than oil supply

Amory Lovins writes: Why would anyone want to be in the oil business? Like airlines, it’s a great industry but a bad business. Here are the most obvious challenges to its business model:

  • Oil companies are extremely capital-intensive; they can’t charge a high enough price to pay for Arctic oil because to deliver energy at a given rate takes more capital investment than photovoltaics do.
  • They have decadal lead times and high technological, geological, and political risks.
  • National oil companies own about 94 percent of global reserves and can take or tax away the major oil companies’ remaining 6 percent at any time, holding their most basic assets and expected profits at risk.
  • Resource owners force major oil companies into riskier and costlier plays even as investors demand lower risks and higher returns.
  • The industry is politically fraught, unpopular, interfered with, and reputationally damaged by its worst actors.
    Its service companies (like Schlumberger and Halliburton) and the national oil companies are becoming formidable competitors.
  • Its permanent subsidies are coming under greater scrutiny and criticism.
  • It must sell its products at world oil prices that are highly volatile and beyond its control.
  • Much of the reserve base underlying its market valuation is unburnable for climate reasons, potentially wiping trillions off balance sheets.
  • The costly Arctic, deep-sea, and otherwise remote reserves that until a year ago got half the new investments by the biggest oil companies are also economically stranded assets  — at least four times costlier than demand-side competitors and increasingly challenged even by some supply-side competitors.

What a recipe for headaches! No wonder savvy investors are starting to shift their money into assets with rapid growth, wide benefit, solid public acceptance and even enthusiasm, modest risk, and durable value. Energy efficiency and renewables lead the pack. Increasingly they poach investment, momentum, and people from major companies’ deep talent pools. Even my own nonprofit organization’s CEO is a ten-year Shell veteran.

Yet I think these widely recognized challenges are easier to handle than others the industry is only just starting to realize. Having advised oil companies for 42 years, I’m worried that many don’t yet grasp how their competitive landscape is being transformed far faster than their cultures can comprehend or cope with.

Most importantly, their demand is going away — not incrementally but fundamentally. Like whale oil in the 1850s, oil is becoming uncompetitive even at low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices. [Continue reading…]

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Buzzfeed editor finds HuffPost Arabi too inclusive

If Buzzfeed’s Tom Gara is to be believed, there’s reason to fear that Huffington Post’s new Arabic site is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Particularly disturbing (to some readers) is that a site generally known for being progressive, would provide space for the criticism of selfie culture, “a mainstay of the Huffington Post’s English-language sites”.

Unlike Gara, I have no problem with conservative Islamists or anyone else taking issue with selfie culture. Frankly, the idea that it needs defending seems to me quite perverse — especially when it results in arguments like the following.

Casey Miller, for instance, values selfies because she thinks they help maintain “intimate friendship” with long-distance friends without the “commitment of Skype.” (Those, I guess, would be the friendships one hopes to sustain without having to sacrifice time. Why spend 10 minutes talking, instead of 10 seconds taking and sending a selfie?)

Research — and common sense — does however suggest that selfies offer weak bonds. As Time reported in 2013:

“Increased frequency of sharing photographs of the self, regardless of the type of target sharing the photographs, is related to a decrease in intimacy,” concludes the joint study conducted by the University of Birmingham, the University of Edinburgh, and Heriot-Watt University. In other words, people who constantly share photos of themselves generally tend to have more shallow personal relationships.

As Galen Guengerich astutely observes, “the selfie chronicles a counter-Copernican revolution.”

Nicholas Sabloff, the Huffington Post’s executive international editor, sidestepping this particular debate on mobile device-shaped culture, told BuzzFeed News that regarding the anti-selfie post written by an Algerian columnist, “The views on the blog do not reflect HuffPost’s global editorial viewpoint, nor the viewpoint of our HuffPost Arabi editors.”

But that didn’t stop Buzzfeed disingenuously claiming in its headline that Arabi “takes a stand” against selfies.

Gara seems to be especially suspicious of Arabi’s editor-in-chief, Anas Fouda, who previously worked for Al Jazeera and its rival, Al Arabiya.

In signing up with the Huffington Post, he appears to have taken inspiration for the Arabic site from founder Arianna Huffington herself.

The first time the two met and discussed the concept of Huffington Post Arabi, “she spoke to me of the wisdom that is in our region, a region that was once the cradle of civilization and religion,” Fouda wrote in his editor’s note marking the launch of Huffington Post Arabi.

That note, like much of the content on the new site, then took an unexpected twist. “I in turn believe in the positivity of looking for a way out,” he wrote, “and that the inherent wisdom that stems from our history and religious heritage are necessary weapons in this time of #WorldWar3.”

This time of #WorldWar3?

Wow, an “unexpected twist” — but only for those who neglected to read the opening of Fouda’s piece. Which is to say, rather than taking an unexpected twist, his commentary came full circle and ended where it began:

It took several years before people started to realize that Europe’s war of 1914 to 1918 was both big and influential enough to be worthy of being called a “World War.” So they gave it that grand name, and added “First” two decades later when they fought a second war that was not any less vicious or influential.

People fight wars first and come up with names that suit their grandeur and influence later. Years from now, historians will look at what happened in our region and perhaps won’t find a more appropriate name than #WorldWar3, especially since the world will never return to what it once was.

In this region, half of the world is fighting a proxy war against the other half. America, Russia, Israel, international military alliances, old monarchies and dictatorships are all fighting here to preserve or expand their areas of influence. At the same time, armed sectarian, religious, or ethnic groups — ones that have no face other than that of rage — fight to abolish all that is old, to create a new map, and perhaps a new world order.

When newly appointed at Buzzfeed after leaving the Wall Street Journal, Gara said in an interview:

if you’re running a news organization on the assumption people are dumb and deserve to be fed trash, not only are you kind of evil, but you’re missing out on the much bigger opportunity of assuming people want to read great stuff and know what’s really going on in the world.

Arianna Huffington offers Gara the excuse that his post might be a reflection of the August news slump.

That might be true, but equally so, this seems to me like a case of dishing out trash on the assumption that people are dumb.

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Google gave itself a new name to protect its old name

Matt O’Brien writes: Google wants to convince investors that it’s not throwing their money away on long shots that are really no shots. By splitting itself in two, Google can show people how much its search business is making versus how much its other businesses are spending. That alone should give investors an idea what Google’s value would be if it stuck to search, which should help keep its actual value closer to that. It’s a way to push the stock price up without cutting all the side businesses down.

But more than rebranding Google, this is about rebranding Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two haven’t exactly endeared themselves to Wall Street with the way they’ve semi-haphazardly thrown money at anything that seemed cool—remember Google Glass?—without much regard for its business prospects. So now they’re trying to present themselves not as Silicon Valley nerds, but rather as Silicon Valley Warren Buffetts. Indeed, Page has invoked Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as the kind of well-run conglomerate — yes, they exist — that Google aspires to be. And that’s why the two emphasized that, in their new roles running Alphabet, they will “rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well.” In other words, the checks are about to get even less blank. The most promising projects will get money, and the rest will get put out to pasture. [Continue reading…]

For those who are spellbound by the fabulous universality of the new brand, Alphabet, the idea of a company embracing everything from A-Z might be less significant than the fact that Google apparently doesn’t value the name enough to buy the domain — alphabet.com belongs to BMW and BMW has no intention of selling it.

The lesson from Google Glass might not have been that it was a worthless experiment but rather that Google doesn’t want its name so firmly attached to its failures.

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The Pentagon’s dangerous views on the wartime press

In an editorial, the New York Times says: The Defense Department earlier this summer released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war. The 1,176-page document, the first of its kind, includes guidelines on the treatment of journalists covering armed conflicts that would make their work more dangerous, cumbersome and subject to censorship. Those should be repealed immediately.

Journalists, the manual says, are generally regarded as civilians, but may in some instances be deemed “unprivileged belligerents,” a legal term that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war. In some instances, the document says, “the relaying of information (such as providing information of immediate use in combat operations) could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities.”

The manual warns that “Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,” so it calls on journalists to “act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities.” It says that governments “may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy.”

Allowing this document to stand as guidance for commanders, government lawyers and officials of other nations would do severe damage to press freedoms. Authoritarian leaders around the world could point to it to show that their despotic treatment of journalists — including Americans — is broadly in line with the standards set by the United States government.

One senior Pentagon official, who was asked to explain when a journalist might be deemed an “unprivileged belligerent,” pointed to the assassination of the Afghan military commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in September 2001. That example is preposterous because Mr. Massoud was killed by assassins who posed as television journalists and hid explosives in a camera. They were not, in fact, journalists.

The manual’s argument that some reporting activities could be construed as taking part in hostilities is ludicrous. That vaguely-worded standard could be abused by military officers to censor or even target journalists. [Continue reading…]

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Hawkishness is once again the hottest thing on the American right

Peter Beinart writes: Over the past decade, the foreign-policy debate in Washington has turned upside down. As George W. Bush’s administration drew to an end, the brand of ambitious, expensive, Manichaean, militaristic foreign policy commonly dubbed “neoconservative” seemed on the verge of collapse. In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group, which included such Republican eminences as James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Ed Meese, and Alan Simpson, repudiated Bush’s core approach to the Middle East. The group not only called for the withdrawal from Iraq by early 2008 of all U.S. combat troops not necessary for force protection. It also proposed that the United States begin a “diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions,” with the government of Iran, which Bush had included in his “axis of evil,” and that it make the Arab-Israeli peace process, long scorned by hawks, a priority. Other prominent Republicans defected too. Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon called the president’s Iraq policy “absurd” if not “criminal.” George Will, the dean of conservative columnists, deemed neoconservatism a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism” that true conservatives should disdain.

That was then. Today, hawkishness is the hottest thing on the American right. With the exception of Rand Paul, the GOP presidential contenders are vying to take the most aggressive stance against Iran and the Islamic State, or ISIS. The most celebrated freshman Republican senator is Tom Cotton, who gained fame with a letter to Iran’s leaders warning that the United States might not abide by a nuclear deal. According to recent polls, GOP voters now see national security as more important than either cultural issues or the economy. More than three-quarters of Republicans want American ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq, and a plurality says that stopping Iran’s nuclear program requires an immediate military strike.

What explains the change? Above all, it’s the legend of the surge. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. shelves its $500M Syrian rebel army — sees Syrian Kurds as a more reliable fighting partner

The Daily Beast reports: The Obama administration is still publicly counting on a $500 million rebel army to beat ISIS in Syria. But privately, the Pentagon brass long ago moved past its own proxy force, The Daily Beast has learned. They’ve found another group to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead.

In recent weeks, the handful of fighters in the administration-backed rebel army — the so-called “New Syrian Force” — have been killed, kidnapped, or fallen off the proverbial radar. But the Pentagon maintained a brave face, even after these 54 fighters (out of what was supposed to be a total of 15,000) were decimated by Islamist attacks. “We continue to see volunteers want to be a part of this program,” Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters Friday.

It’s a public stance that has left many in the administration and in the defense establishment scratching their heads.

“I don’t understand why we are still training, other than to inoculate criticism. … [The administration] cannot admit it is a complete disaster,” said one senior defense adviser familiar with the U.S. approach. Even after the U.S.-trained fighters vanished, “there was no receptivity to new ideas.”

But what Ryder didn’t say is that, in the eyes of the administration, a better force had emerged — already trained, competent, organized — that posed little risk of abandoning the fight or worse yet, switching sides. They are the Syrian Kurdish militia — the Popular Protection Units or YPG, by their Kurdish initials. And they have successfully wrestled Syrian territory out of ISIS’s hands.

“We knew it would be a challenge but we didn’t expect them to confront the fight they did,” said a second senior defense official, referring to the New Syrian Force. On the other hand, “the YPG is the most effective fighting force in Syria.”

According to one group, the YPG has so far reclaimed at least 11 villages from ISIS, including in the Syrian city of Kobani, one of the biggest victories in the year-long campaign. And in June, the YPG regained control of the Syrian border town of Tal Abyad, cutting off a key ISIS conduit to weapons and supplies. Like the New Syrian Force, the YPG can call in coalition airstrikes as needed.

Along with hoping nascent Arab fighters can take on ISIS, the U.S. is now keen to work alongside as many as 50,000 proven Kurdish fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Israelis lean right toward one-state solution

Daoud Kuttab writes: Of all the Israelis who spoke out against the burning of the Dawabsheh family in the village of Duma near Nablus, the voice of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin seemed the most sincere.

Speaking at a rally in Jerusalem on Aug. 1, the Israeli president rejected the idea that this was an isolated case with no context to it. “Every society has extremist fringes, but today we have to ask: What is it in the public atmosphere that allows extremism and extremists to walk in confidence, in broad daylight?” he asked. American writer Peter Beinart later wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz on Aug. 5 that Rivlin accepted moral responsibility while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “denied and lied about incitement including his own.” This was the clearest accusation against Netanyahu of responsibility for what happened.

But beyond Rivlin’s humanistic exterior is a senior Israeli official who is an ardent supporter of the total annexation of the West Bank to Israel. Rivlin’s actions don’t hide the fact that he, like many in his and Netanyahu’s Likud Party, has a much more radical plan for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. [Continue reading…]

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Ocalan calls on PKK and Ankara to end fighting

Rudaw reports: The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has called on the PKK and Turkish government to end ongoing clashes and resume negotiations, which were planned to lead to permanent peace in the country.

The Civil Peace Department, a government-backed organization which supervises the peace process between Ankara and the PKK, published a letter written by Ocalan in which the jailed leader slammed the negotiating partners for the “bloodshed.”

“Our (PKK) fighters, leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the Turkish government’s officials failed to administer and commit themselves to the peace negotiations,” Ocalan wrote from his prison on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, calling for an immediate ceasefire. [Continue reading…]

Rudaw reports: Recent Turkish airstrikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq have killed 390 PKK members and injured 400, Turkey’s official Anadolu Agency on Sunday quoted unidentified security sources as saying.

“Turkish security sources are claiming to have killed a total of 390 militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in a series of recent air strikes against rebel targets in northern Iraq,” the agency said.

“An anonymous security force source also told Anadolu Agency that 400 PKK insurgents were injured in the attacks,” the agency added. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Two women shot at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul on Monday and at least eight people were killed in a wave of separate attacks on Turkish security forces, weeks after Ankara launched a crackdown on Islamic State, Kurdish and far-left militants.

The NATO member has been in a heightened state of alert since starting its “synchronized war on terror” last month, including air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq. It has also rounded up hundreds of suspected militants at home.

A far-left group that killed a Turkish security guard in a 2013 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Ankara claimed it was involved in Monday’s attack.

The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, said one of its members was involved in the attack, and called Washington the “arch enemy” of the people of the Middle East and the world. [Continue reading…]

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A new fight over oil shows why it’s so hard to keep Iraq from splintering

The Washington Post reports: Iraq’s Kurdish region has begun to sell oil independently of the central government, a move that is exacerbating divisions in the country as it struggles to turn back Islamic State militants.

The Kurdish region last month stopped transferring oil to the state as it had promised to do under a landmark deal in 2014. Kurdish officials argued that payments from Baghdad had not been sufficient. Instead, the region exported more than 600,000 barrels a day itself, Kurdish and Iraqi officials said, a step that Baghdad considers illegal.

The dispute threatens to widen differences in a country already effectively split into three parts: the Kurdish north, areas in southern and central Iraq controlled by the Shiite-led government, and territory in the north and west seized by the Islamic State.

The collapse of the oil deal also risks ruining one of the key achievements of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who was credited with improving relations with the Kurds after years of acrimony. [Continue reading…]

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