Category Archives: Lands

Russia says it will veto UN resolution on Syria

The Associated Press reports: Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said his country will veto a U.N. Security Council resolution to refer the crisis in Syria to the International Criminal Court, calling it a “publicity stunt” and warning that it will harm efforts to end the violence by political means.

The conflict is now into its fourth year, and tense peace talks have gone so poorly that the joint U.N.-Arab league envoy who tried to broker them has announced he will resign.

Dozens of countries are urging the Security Council to refer the Syria crisis to the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal so it can investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by all sides.

France has called for a vote on the resolution Thursday. But permanent council member Russia has vetoed three previous resolutions on Syria, and Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters his country would do the same with this one. Moscow is Syria’s closest ally. [Continue reading…]

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Egyptian court convicts Mubarak of embezzlement

The New York Times reports: A criminal court here convicted former President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday of diverting millions of dollars in public money for his personal use in a case that rights advocates say could also now implicate the current prime minister and spy chief in a cover-up.

The court sentenced Mr. Mubarak, 86 and living under house arrest in a military hospital overlooking the Nile, to three years in prison. His sons Gamal and Alaa were each sentenced to four years for their role in the scheme. The court ordered the three to pay penalties and make repayments totaling more than $20 million.

Two years ago, the former president was convicted and received a life sentence in a separate case for directing the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that ended his rule in 2011, but even the presiding judge acknowledged at the time that the evidence was thin, and an appeals court has ordered a retrial. Mr. Mubarak is expected to appeal the new verdict as well, but the evidence appears far more substantial.

His conviction on Wednesday, involving his presidential palaces, arguably spares the new government installed by former Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of the potential embarrassment of freeing Mr. Mubarak. [Continue reading…]

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America’s double standards on cybercrime and national security

The New York Times reports: The National Security Agency has never said what it was seeking when it invaded the computers of Petrobras, Brazil’s huge national oil company, but angry Brazilians have guesses: the company’s troves of data on Brazil’s offshore oil reserves, or perhaps its plans for allocating licenses for exploration to foreign companies.

Nor has the N.S.A. said what it intended when it got deep into the computer systems of China Telecom, one of the largest providers of mobile phone and Internet services in Chinese cities. But documents released by Edward J. Snowden, the former agency contractor now in exile in Russia, leave little doubt that the main goal was to learn about Chinese military units, whose members cannot resist texting on commercial networks.

The agency’s interest in Huawei, the giant Chinese maker of Internet switching equipment, and Pacnet, the Hong Kong-based operator of undersea fiber optic cables, is more obvious: Once inside those companies’ proprietary technology, the N.S.A. would have access to millions of daily conversations and emails that never touch American shores.

Then there is Joaquín Almunia, the antitrust commissioner of the European Commission. He runs no company, but has punished many, including Microsoft and Intel, and just reached a tentative accord with Google that will greatly change how it operates in Europe.

In each of these cases, American officials insist, when speaking off the record, that the United States was never acting on behalf of specific American companies. But the government does not deny it routinely spies to advance American economic advantage, which is part of its broad definition of how it protects American national security. In short, the officials say, while the N.S.A. cannot spy on Airbus and give the results to Boeing, it is free to spy on European or Asian trade negotiators and use the results to help American trade officials — and, by extension, the American industries and workers they are trying to bolster. [Continue reading…]

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After #FreeHappyIranians get arrested, Khamenei says ‘Be angry with us and die in your anger’!

After authorities arrested six young men and women who produced a Tehran version of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” video, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s message at a graduation ceremony of miltary cadets was, “Be angry with us and die in your anger.”

Iran’s President Rouhani, in a reflection of his trademark smile, is perhaps better aligned with Tehran’s happy youth.

Following the video makers’ arrests, IranWire reports:

The group appeared on state television’s evening news broadcast, grouped in a row facing Tehran Chief of Police Hossein Sajedinia, and confessed to being deceived into appearing in the clip by an unnamed man and woman. Sajedinia advised the young people during the broadcast not to be deceived into appearing in corrupt film productions, and with a smile complimented the swift reaction of his security forces. “These [agents] were able to identify [these young people] within two hours, and within six hours had arrested them all,” he said.

While complimenting the speed of his forces, Sajedinia neglected to mention during the broadcast that the clip has been on YouTube for a month, had over 100,000 views. Though at the time of their arrest access to the clip in Tehran had been disrupted.

IranWire reached a source informed about the nature of the arrests. “All of the young producers received phone calls informing them that a friend had suffered a car accident and required their help. When they arrived at the address they had been given over the phone, security forces were waiting to arrest them.” Security forces have also allegedly threatened the families of those arrested that if they speak to any media about the detentions, their children will not be released.

The source said that each family has paid a bail of 30 million toman, the equivalent of $10,000, and been told if they comply with the demand not to speak to any media outlets, their children will be released tomorrow, Wednesday.

Among some quarters of the anti-Western anti-imperial left, I imagine this story will be deemed unnewsworthy. Perhaps there will even be suggestions that — as Iranian authorities claim — the videomakers were duped. If you believe that, you might as well get all your news on Iran from Press TV.

Some people think they have to shout in anger to change the world, but the shouts more often come from those who have a clearer view of what they want to destroy than a vision of what they want to create.

No doubt the #FreeHappyIranians wanted to have fun, but they also knew they were pushing boundaries. Theirs was an act of joy, defiance and courage.

Negar Mortazavi, an Iranian freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C., told Mashable that she wasn’t surprised the six people were arrested. When Mortazavi first saw the video, she thought it was dangerous to upload it online, considering its content. “Not wearing hijabs and dancing, boys and girls together — that’s three big red flags,” she said.

But being happy, wanting to dance, finding joy in life — these are not trivial indulgences of a Westernized elite or symptoms of a corrupted youth. These are universal human desires.

Ayatollah Khamenei might hold the most power in Iran, but six young men and women whose names we might never know seem to better represent a nation that too often gets reduced to crude stereotypes by its enemies — and its own leaders.

Update: Rouhani just slipped on his dancing shoes:

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Young Iranians arrested for being too ‘Happy in Tehran’

Robert Mackey writes: Just days after Iran’s president denounced Internet censorship as “cowardly,” six young Iranians were arrested and forced to repent on state television Tuesday for the grievous offense of proclaiming themselves to be “Happy in Tehran,” in a homemade music video they posted on YouTube last month.

By uploading their video, recorded on an iPhone and promoted on Facebook and Instagram, the group was taking part in a global online phenomenon, which has resulted, so far, in hundreds of cover versions of the Pharrell Williams song “Happy” recorded in more than 140 countries. “Happy in Tehran” was viewed more than 165,000 times on YouTube before it was made private.

In a speech over the weekend, President Hassan Rouhani argued that Iran should embrace the Internet rather than view it as a threat, Reuters reported. His remarks were also summarized on a Twitter account updated by his aides.


“We must recognize our citizens’ right to connect to the World Wide Web,” the president said, according the official IRNA news agency. “Why are we so shaky? Why have we cowered in a corner, grabbing onto a shield and a wooden sword, lest we take a bullet in this culture war?” he asked.

“Even if there is an onslaught, which there is,” he added, “the way to face it is via modern means, not passive and cowardly methods.” [Continue reading…]

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Libyan special forces commander says his forces join renegade general

Reuters reports: The commander of Libyan army special forces said on Monday he had allied with renegade general Khalifa Haftar in his campaign against militant Islamists, highlighting the failure of central government in Tripoli to assert its authority.

The announcement gives a major boost to a campaign by Haftar, who has been denounced by the Tripoli government as attempting to stage a coup in the oil producer.

It remains unclear how many troops support Haftar, whose forces launched an attack on Islamist militants in Benghazi on Friday in which more than 70 people died. Militiamen apparently allied to Haftar also stormed parliament in Tripoli on Sunday.

The violence has compounded government’s apparent weakness in combating militias which helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but now defy state authority. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. charges five in Chinese army with hacking

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Justice Department indicted five Chinese military officers, alleging they hacked U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, a major escalation in the fight between the two superpowers over economic espionage.

The indictment, unsealed Monday, marks the first time the U.S. government has publicly accused employees of a foreign power with cybercrimes against American firms. It also marks the most extensive formal allegations by the government of the kind of hacking that American corporations have long complained about, but until now have rarely acknowledged.

Among those named as victims in the document are brand names from America’s industrial heartland, including U.S. Steel Corp., Westinghouse Electric Co. and Alcoa Inc.

U.S. officials said other cases relating to China are being prepared. In addition, alleged hackers in Russia are likely to be charged soon, according to people familiar with the government’s investigations. U.S. agencies have also been investigating incidents with possible ties to Iran and Syria, these people say.

It is unlikely the suspects will ever be brought to trial in the U.S., since there is no extradition treaty with China. Yet in publicly naming the five, and providing details in a 48-page indictment, the Obama administration is ratcheting up the political and diplomatic costs to China and others if they use computers to steal secrets or attack U.S. interests. [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: China on Tuesday summoned the U.S. ambassador in Beijing and warned it would retaliate if Washington followed through with the charges. It said the affair would damage “mutual trust”.

At the centre of the row is a nondescript tower block in the northern suburbs of China’s financial capital Shanghai, home to Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Unit 61398.

The 12-storey block houses as many as several thousand staff, according to Mandiant, a U.S. cyber security firm recently acquired by global network security company FireEye Inc . Mandiant identified the location as the source of a large number of espionage operations in a 70-page report last year. [Continue reading…]

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Syria insurgents issue ‘revolutionary covenant’

EA Worldview reports: The Islamic Front, Syria’s largest insurgent bloc, and other factions have issued a Revolutionary Covenant setting out political and military principles.

The Covenant declares a commitment to a fight not only against the Assad regime but also the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham. It promises respect for human rights and the pursuit of “a state of law, freedom, and justice, without any sort of pressure or dictatorship” for all Syrians, including ethnicities and minorities. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq’s Maliki ‘wins most seats in parliamentary polls’

BBC News reports: Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s alliance won last month’s parliamentary elections in Iraq, but fell short of a majority, preliminary results show.

The electoral commission said State of Law had taken 92 of the 328 seats in the Council of Representatives.

Its two main Shia rivals, Ammar al-Hakim’s Muwatin and the Ahrar movement loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, followed with a combined 57 seats.

Mr Maliki wants a third term, but other parties have voiced strong opposition.

They blame him for the sectarian violence that has left more than 3,000 people dead this year, and accuse him of trying to monopolise power. [Continue reading…]

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Libyan militias led by former general attack parliament and declare it dissolved

The Washington Post reports: Militias allied with a former Libyan general staged a brazen attack on Libya’s parliament on Sunday and declared it dissolved, in some of the worst fighting the capital has seen since the 2011 revolution.

By Sunday night, those forces announced that the elected General National Congress was being replaced by an existing constitutional drafting committee. It was far from certain that the order would be observed. But the power grab threatened to send Libya hurtling into a full-blown civil war.

Tripoli residents and journalists reported heavy fighting, including rocket attacks and gunfights, in several central neighborhoods. Dozens of vehicles mounted with antiaircraft guns could be seen speeding toward the center of the capital from a southeastern suburb. Plumes of black smoke rose over the city.

It was unclear whether ex-general Khalifa Haftar commanded sufficient force to prevail in the showdown in Tripoli — the latest chapter in a struggle for power, land and resources that has raged in this oil-rich country since the fall of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi. The central government has struggled unsuccessfully to rein in scores of militias that emerged from the anti-Gaddafi uprising. [Continue reading…]

Alaa al-Ameri reports: Haftar served as a high-ranking military officer under Muammar Qaddafi and was a prominent commander during Libya’s war with Chad in the 1980s. Following his capture by Chadian forces, he went into exile in the US in 1987, where he joined the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, a group of Libyan exiles who spent much of the 1980s and 1990s trying to kill Qaddafi. Haftar returned to Libya in 2011 in support of the revolution, and was appointed chief of staff to Colonel Abdul Fatah Younis, the National Transitional Council’s commander of revolutionary forces.

The Libya to which Haftar returned had seen the rise and fall of armed Islamist opposition to Qaddafi in the form of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) during the 1990s, and yesterday’s fighting was the latest chapter of a power struggle between Islamist and secularist strands of the 2011 revolution that has been playing itself out since the early days of the uprising against Qaddafi.

Islamist militias began consolidating their power over eastern Libya through targeted assassinations before the revolution was even over — and Younis was arguably their first victim. He was a former close Qaddafi ally, seen by some as Qaddafi’s second in command. He had taken part in the coup that brought Qaddafi to power in 1969, but he defected to the fledgling revolutionary government in February 2011 after he was sent to crush the rebellion in his native Benghazi. Unlike many of Qaddafi’s close circle, Younis was not known for ostentatious living or sadistic violence.

He had, however, coordinated counterinsurgency operations in eastern Libya against the LIFG in the 1990s.

One unique aspect of the LIFG is that it combined figures from a wide swathe of the Islamist spectrum. Some, like Abu Anas al Libi, who was captured in Tripoli by US Special Forces last year, gravitated toward al Qaeda. Others, like Abdelhakim Belhadj, a key military commander during the Libyan revolution and now a politician with the Muslim Brotherhood-linked al-Watan party, maintained a view of armed Islamism that opposes the targeting of civilians per se, but legitimizes military and government targets. The upshot is that the remnants of the LIFG in Libya represent a rare nexus of Muslim Brotherhood and more violent Islamist tendencies.

The legacy of the battle against the LIFG came home to roost at the height of the revolution in July 2011, when Younis was abducted by members of the February 17th Martyrs Brigade — one of the Islamist militias now under attack by Haftar’s forces — and was then reportedly shot dead for his role in the suppression of the LIFG 15 years earlier. His burned body, along with those of two of his officers, was later dumped on the outskirts of Benghazi.

After the revolution, attacks against military personnel continued, though they were initially dismissed as either the settling of old scores dating back to the conflict in the 1990s, or the work of Qaddafi loyalists seeking revenge on colleagues who had defected to the revolutionary forces. From 2012 onward, however, the attacks in eastern Libya seamlessly transitioned from targeting foreigners and Libyans connected to the old regime, to targeting anyone from the Army, police, or judiciary who challenged the dominance of Islamist militias. [Continue reading…]

Al Jazeera reports: Libya’s army chief ordered the deployment of militias to the capital Monday, a day after the storming of the parliament building in Tripoli apparently by a renegade general’s forces which also staged an attack in Benghazi on Friday.

Monday’s development paves the way for a possible showdown between the militias — which hail from Libya’s western and central regions — and the troops allied with Gen. Khalifa Haftar, whose forces said they also suspended parliament and demanded a hand over of power, blaming the house for empowering militias loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to a statement posted on the official Facebook page of the media officer for the President of the General National Congress, Nouri Abu Sahmain signed an order for “Libya’s Central Shield,” an umbrella group of powerful militias which answer to parliament, to confront “attempts to take over power” in Tripoli, apparently referring to Haftar’s forces. [Continue reading…]

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The unfolding Ukraine crisis signals a new world order

Tony Brenton, former British ambassador to Russia, writes: A way out of the Ukraine crisis may now be faintly discernible. The round-table negotiations promoted by the Germans has the support of all the key governments. It is intended to produce a ceasefire, discussion of future Ukrainian constitutional arrangements, and the election of a new Ukrainian president on 25 May. There are still all sorts of ways it could go wrong: the east Ukrainian dissidents are not yet involved and will need to be; and polarisation continues, with both sides gradually losing control of their thuggish surrogates. But things now look marginally more hopeful than they have since the ill-fated Geneva agreement of a month ago.

The west has had to learn some hard lessons to get to where we are now.

It is generally accepted that the EU (in a mode splendidly described by one commentator as of “impotent megalomania”) precipitated matters by blundering into the most sensitive part of Russia’s backyard without seriously asking itself how it might react. This was not an isolated error but the culmination of 20 years of the west simply not taking Russia seriously, most notably with the Kosovo war and the expansion of Nato. When Russia did react in the (legally indefensible, but historically understandable) form of annexing Crimea and destabilising east Ukraine, the western view then swung 180 degrees to focusing on the need to “contain” a revanchist Russia intent on rebuilding the Soviet Union.

In the absence of any willingness among western publics to fight for the independence of Simferopol, the only weapon available was sanctions. These allowed western leaders to claim they were “doing something”, but in fact cruelly exposed their unwillingness to take real economic pain on Ukraine’s behalf. They have also become something of a badge of patriotic pride for those Russians targeted by them – of the six uses of sanctions by the west against the USSR/Russia since the second world war none have worked.

Happily, we now seem to be waking up to the reality that we are dealing not with a revanchist Russia, but with a coldly calculating one – a Russia that is neither patsy nor praying mantis. They don’t want to fight a war or take on the economic burden of rebuilding eastern Ukraine, but they do have a minimal list of requirements – Ukrainian neutrality, more autonomy for Russian speakers – which have to be met before they will back off. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered troops deployed near Ukraine to return to their home bases and praised the launch of a dialogue between the Ukrainian government and its opponents even as fighting continued in the eastern parts of the country.

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The Idea of Israel and My Promised Land – review

Avi Shlaim reviews The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge by Ilan Pappe and My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit: Zionism achieved its greatest triumph with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The Zionist idea and its principal political progeny are the subject of deeply divergent interpretations, not least inside the Jewish state itself. No other aspect of Zionism, however, is more controversial than its attitude towards the indigenous population of the land of its dreams. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the state of Israel, famously said that it is by its treatment of the Palestinians that his country will be judged. Yet, when judged by this criterion, Zionism is not just an unqualified failure but a tragedy of historic proportions. Zionism did achieve its central goal but at a terrible price: the displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians – what the Arabs call the Nakba, the catastrophe.

The authors of these two books are both Israelis, but they approach their subject from radically different ideological vantage points. Ilan Pappé is a scholar and a pro-Palestinian political activist. He is one of the most prominent Israeli political dissidents living in exile, having moved from the University of Haifa to the University of Exeter. He is also one of the few Israeli students of the conflict who write about the Palestinian side with real knowledge and empathy.

Pappé places Zionism under an uncompromising lens. In his reading it was not a national liberation movement but a settler colonial project imposed on the Palestinians by force with the support of the west. From this premise it follows that the state of Israel is not legitimate even in its original borders, much less so within its post-1967 borders. To correct the injustice, Pappé advocates a peaceful, humanist and socialist alternative to the Zionist idea in the form of a binational state with equal rights for all its citizens. [Continue reading…]

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Thousands flee Iraq assault on opposition-held Fallujah

Reuters reports: Thousands of civilians have fled Fallujah since last week after the Iraqi military intensified shelling in a new bid to crush a five-month old Sunni uprising, killing scores of people in what residents describe as massive indiscriminate bombardment.

The mortars, artillery and what residents call “barrel bombs” rained for at least seven days on Fallujah — a city that was the nemesis of US troops a decade ago and is now the main battle ground in a war pitting the Shiite-led government against rebellious Sunni tribal chiefs and an al-Qaeda offshoot.

More than 420,000 people have already escaped the two main cities of western Anbar province, Fallujah and Ramadi, in fighting since the start of the year. Residents say the new pounding of Fallujah’s residential neighborhoods appears aimed at driving out all remaining civilians in preparation for an all-out assault to defeat armed groups once and for all.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is trying to cobble together a coalition to keep himself in office for a third term after an April 30 parliamentary election, has vowed to destroy fighters who seized parts of Anbar province last year. [Continue reading…]

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Ukraine is all for dialogue, but not under the barrel of a Russian gun

Andrii Deshchytsia, Ukraine’s acting minister of foreign affairs, writes: Last week Russia’s President Putin said he believed referendums should not take place in the eastern regions of Ukraine on 11 May. Remarkably, the change of Putin’s rhetoric has inspired some hope in many European capitals.

Putin distanced himself publicly from pro-Russia armed separatists in the east, pretending Russia had no influence over them. Unfortunately, his posturings are nothing more than a diplomatic trick and are indicative of the long-term game the Kremlin is playing.

As many European diplomats have observed, Putin’s acts regarding Ukraine belie his words. Despite his claims to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s border, he did not – according to all the independent intelligence reports of Ukraine, Nato and the Pentagon. A few hours after his “goodwill” commitment, an armoured Russian “Tiger” (wheeled troop transporter) crossed Ukraine’s border by force to join armed militants in the Luhansk region. This is just one of a multitude of examples of Russia’s direct involvement in the unrest in Ukraine’s east. However, this fact is often lost in the western media because of the Kremlin’s highly coordinated information campaign on Ukraine. [Continue reading…]

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The BJP landslide victory in India

Samanth Subramanian writes: On Friday, as the results were announced, it became clear that almost all of the prognosticators, amateur and professional, had got it wrong. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) had assessed its chances confidently, and it was commonly expected to amass enough seats to lead a coalition of allies into government. But few expected Narendra Modi, its candidate for Prime Minister, to romp home in such a blistering manner. No single party had won an outright majority in the Lok Sabha, Parliament’s lower house, since 1984. Of the five hundred and forty-three seats, the B.J.P. won a stunning two hundred and eighty-two; with its coalition allies, it controls a dominating three hundred and thirty-four seats. The Congress, India’s oldest party, has led the governing coalition for the past decade. Although its members acknowledged in private that they were likely to be voted out, they suspected that they would secure roughly ninety seats—which would have been a record low. Instead, they took a miserable forty-four seats. What looked a few weeks ago like a mere dramatic change of government now appears to be a seismic shift, arguably the most significant in India since 1977, when the Congress was voted out after three decades in power. Even in that election, held after the Congress government, under Indira Gandhi, declared an emergency and suspended constitutional rights for two full years, the party managed to win a hundred and fifty-three seats.

Any election can be spun as a tussle to define the very soul of a country, but that has truly felt like the case for the past year in India. Both the Congress and the B.J.P. framed their campaigns as plebiscites on the fate of the country. The Congress asked voters to examine whether they wanted to elect Modi, a man who had ruled the state of Gujarat when more than a thousand people — mostly Muslims — were killed in religious riots, in 2002, who was known for his autocratic temperament, and whose political education was shaped by Hindu nationalists. In one campaign speech, the heir to the Congress dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, explicitly compared Modi to Hitler, warning that he would discard democracy altogether. “Hitler thought there was no need to go to the people,” Gandhi said. “He believed that the entire knowledge of the world was only in his mind. Similarly, there is a leader today in India who says, ‘I have done this, I have done that,’ and behaves arrogantly.” [Continue reading…]

Subir Sinha writes: Given than the elections have been declared “free and fair”, does this apparent magnitude of popular support for Modi not suggest that the fears of people like me, who recently signed a letter expressing concern at this prospect, are unjustified?

Modi appears to have been democratically elected. But, as his record in Gujarat indicates, he has exhibited a propensity to wield power in an undemocratic way and for undemocratic ends. Within his own party, he prevents emergence of independent leadership, making sure that potential rivals are politically finished. He encourages defections from other parties, rewarding defectors with party tickets, undermining the legitimacy of opposition.

He undermines key constitutional bodies: whether agencies investigating the 2002 massacres or extra-judicial killings in Gujarat, or the Election Commission. He centralises power, once holding 14 portfolios in the state cabinet. He talks of “uprooting” opponents and “erasing” opposing political parties, and his supporters promise exile and incarceration to critics.

The cult of personality around him likens him to Hindu gods: this militates against the principle of political equality at the basis of democracy. He does not open himself to any critical questioning, about the “Gujarat model” or about the massive finances spent by his campaign. Gujarat, which he holds up as a model of “good governance”, has the highest levels of violence against those seeking to use the “right to information” to find out about the activities of his government. [Continue reading…]

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A profile of India’s new prime minister, Narendra Damodardas Modi

Vinod K Jose writes: In the second week of January 2011, more than 10,000 businessmen from 100 countries descended on Gandhinagar for the fifth instalment of the biannual summit branded as “Vibrant Gujarat”—a marathon matchmaking ceremony of investment pledges and signings intended to bring business to Gujarat and, not incidentally, to make headlines while doing so. The 2011 mela did not disappoint on either count: by the time it was all over, the businessmen had promised investments in excess of $450 billion, the largest-ever sum for a single event in an emerging economy, and the media had obligingly trumpeted both the jaw-dropping figure and the unending chorus of corporate titans paying tribute to Gujarat and its chief minister.

On the first day of the summit—held inside the newly-constructed Mahatma Mandir, a monument to Gandhi in the unlikely form of a convention centre—the stage was preposterously crowded, in keeping with the usual tradition at Indian public events. Eighty people were seated on the dais in three rows, but all eyes were on the man at the centre, the organiser and unquestioned star of the show, Narendra Damodardas Modi. Wearing an ivory-coloured suit and his trademark rimless Bulgari glasses, with a neatly-trimmed grey beard, Modi looked every bit the serious man of action: he listened intently to every speaker, deep in concentration that was rarely broken by a smile. At his side were envoys from the two nations who had signed on as official partners for the fair, the Japanese ambassador and the Canadian high commissioner, and these men were in turn flanked by the two most prominent ambassadors from India Inc, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani. Another three dozen corporate chairmen and CEOs were also on stage, smiling and satisfied, along with the prime minister of Rwanda and the president of the US-India Business Council, who announced from the stage that he wished to see the United States as a partner country at the next summit.

Vibrant Gujarat has been successfully marketed as a major global business event—so much so that Modi’s American lobbying and public relations firm, APCO Worldwide, recently won two international awards for its work promoting the project. The five summits since 2003 have generated investment pledges worth $920 billion for Gujarat, but their value for Modi can’t be measured by mere numbers. In fact, the figures themselves may be misleading: though Modi claims an implementation rate of greater than 60 percent for pledges made at the summits, an analysis of data from the state industry department suggests that only 25 percent of the promised investments have actually been made. While one-quarter of a trillion dollars is hardly small change, the considerable disparity between the image and the reality actually highlights the tactical genius behind the investment summits, which are the crowning achievement in one of the most extraordinary acts of reinvention in Indian politics.

Modi has turned the act of investing in what has long been one of India’s most business-friendly and industrialised states into a high-profile spectacle—and amplified the disclosure of annual investment inflows into singular triumphant announcements. In other words, Modi has successfully deployed the ancient mercantile and entrepreneurial energy of Gujarat to overhaul his own image.

Ten years after the anti-Muslim pogroms that killed more than 1,200 Gujaratis, Modi has managed to bury the past and resurrect his own extinct prospects for political advancement, replacing epithets like “fascist”, “mass murderer” and “Hindutva fanatic” with a title of his own choosing: Vikaas Purush, or Development Man. For the first families of Indian business, Modi is “the next leader of India”, “a visionary”, “the unstoppable horse”, and “the CEO who can lead the country”, to quote just a sampling of the effusive endorsements from men named Tata, Ambani and Mittal. [Continue reading…]

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German government tightens rules for sensitive public IT contracts

Reuters reports: The German government has tightened tender rules for sensitive public IT contracts in the wake of reports about mass surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said on Friday.

Last year former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed U.S. technology companies’ close cooperation with national intelligence agencies by leaking documents on the NSA’s access to the accounts of tens of thousands of net companies’ users.

German Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said suspect firms would be banned from taking on some public contracts in Germany if they had to hand over confidential data to foreign intelligence or security services. [Continue reading…]

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Fighting among pro-Assad groups points to factional future

The Daily Star reports: Fierce clashes erupted between pro-Assad militias from the National Defense Forces and the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party in Homs this week in an unusually public confrontation between allies.

The skirmish, which left one person dead according to activists, came in the wake of a landmark deal that saw the last remaining anti-Assad fighters surrender the city last week. The deal was seen as an important victory for Bashar Assad, crowning a string of recent gains and as he campaigns for re-election in a presidential vote to be held on June 3, on a platform of restoring security and stability.

In the days following the deal, Homs residents have flooded back to their battered and abandoned homes in the Old City, where the rebels had been penned in under an intense government siege for over two years. But the city remains deeply divided, and the days following the deal have also seen intense looting and vandalism by vengeful elements of NDF paramilitaries and others, according to dozens of reports circulated on social media and residents’ testimony.

While it remains unclear what triggered the firefight in the Hamadieh neighborhood of Homs, the incident has served to highlight the chaotic and acrimonious conditions in the city, and the challenges that factionalism and rivalry present to any lasting settlement.

Some reports suggested the battle broke out after NDF troops looted Christian homes. [Continue reading…]

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