The man whose bomb almost killed Hitler in 1939

Chris Bowlby writes: A new film released in Germany this month highlights one of the great “what ifs” of history. It’s the story of Georg Elser – a 36-year-old carpenter from a small town in southern Germany – who came very close to assassinating Adolf Hitler in the early days of World War Two.

On 8 November 1939, Hitler was making his annual speech at a Munich beer hall. The event commemorated early Nazi struggles in the 1920s. This time Hitler used it to mock his international enemies, and boast about Germany’s successful start to the war.

But what neither Hitler nor the Nazi top brass and loyal audience realised was that, a few feet away from where the Fuehrer was standing, a bomb was about to go off .

Its ticking timers carefully muffled in cork casing, it had been assembled and planted secretly over many weeks by Georg Elser. He had started making his plans the previous year, after deciding that, under Hitler, “war was unavoidable”.

Hitler began this speech at the same time every year, but on this occasion, eager to return to Berlin and his military planners, the Fuehrer left early.

Thirteen minutes later, the bomb exploded, causing eight deaths and massive damage. The ceiling collapsed just above where Hitler had been standing. [Continue reading…]

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Come out and live, Shabab told Kenya students — and then killed them

The New York Times reports: Elosy Karimi curled up in a crawl space, immobilized by fear.

Her classmates were flooding out of the dorms, in boxer shorts and thin nightgowns. Gunfire was ringing all around her. People were screaming. It was predawn and pitch black.

“If you want to survive, come out!” the militants yelled. “If you want to die, stay inside!”

In the terrifying confusion, Ms. Karimi, 23, decided to risk it inside, she said, and stayed hidden in the ceiling above her bunk bed for the next 28 and a half hours.

“I knew those guys were lying,” she said at the hospital, having just arrived to be checked after the ordeal.

New details emerged on Friday about how a handful of fighters from the Shabab militant group, with just a few light weapons, managed to kill nearly 150 students in Kenya’s worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi.

Survivors said many students had fallen for the militants’ trick, voluntarily leaving their dorm rooms and obeying commands to lie down in neat rows, only to be shot in the back of the head. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS takes control of 90 percent of a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus

Reuters: Islamic State has taken control of 90 percent of a Palestinian refugee camp on the Damascus outskirts where 18,000 civilians have suffered years of bombing, army siege and militia control, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

The hardline group’s offensive in Yarmouk gives it a major presence in the capital. Islamic State, the most powerful insurgent group in Syria, is now only a few kilometers from President Bashar al-Assad’s seat of power.

The United Nations has said it is extremely concerned about the safety and protection of Syrians and Palestinians in the camp. Civilians trapped there have long suffered a government siege that has led to starvation and disease.

“The situation in Yarmouk is an affront to the humanity of all of us, a source of universal shame,” U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman Chris Gunness said.

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After Iraqi forces take Tikrit, a wave of looting and lynching

Reuters reports: On April 1, the city of Tikrit was liberated from the extremist group Islamic State. The Shi’ite-led central government and allied militias, after a month-long battle, had expelled the barbarous Sunni radicals.

Then, some of the liberators took revenge.

Near the charred, bullet-scarred government headquarters, two federal policemen flanked a suspected Islamic State fighter. Urged on by a furious mob, the two officers took out knives and repeatedly stabbed the man in the neck and slit his throat. The killing was witnessed by two Reuters correspondents.

The incident is now under investigation, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan told Reuters.

Since its recapture two days ago, the Sunni city of Tikrit has been the scene of violence and looting. In addition to the killing of the extremist combatant, Reuters correspondents also saw a convoy of Shi’ite paramilitary fighters – the government’s partners in liberating the city – drag a corpse through the streets behind their car.

Local officials said the mayhem continues. Two security officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that dozens of homes had been torched in the city. They added that they had witnessed the looting of stores by Shi’ite militiamen. [Continue reading…]

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The U.S.-Iran alliance that neither will acknowledge

The New York Times reports: In the battle to retake Saddam Hussein’s hometown, Tikrit, from the Islamic State, the United States and Iran have found a template for fighting the Sunni militancy in other parts of Iraq: American airstrikes and Iranian-backed ground assaults, with the Iraqi military serving as the go-between for two global adversaries that do not want to publicly acknowledge that they are working together.

The template, American officials said privately this week, could apply in particular to the looming battle to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Given that President Obama has ruled out the use of American ground troops in Iraq, and that the Iraqi military remains ill-trained for urban warfare, the fight for Mosul will require some combination of American air power, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, Iraqi military forces and perhaps Kurdish pesh merga fighters.

“You can see where this is going,” a senior Pentagon official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Are the Iraqi forces ready yet? I would say no.” [Continue reading…]

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In Russia, the struggle to un-recruit ISIS followers

The Daily Beast spoke to Sevil Navruzova, head of the Center for Countering Extremism in Dagestan, who spends her working hours on Skype interviewing Russian citizens who are fighting for ISIS: Most of the men and women interviewed each day by Navuzova and her staff say they are determined to die for their beliefs.

The “insane propaganda” on the Internet is the main source of information for the recruitment strategy of the so-called Islamic State, Navruzova said. Instructions tell them where to go and how to get the money for the trip.

Navruzova told The Daily Beast in a recent interview that some recruiters were local—Special Services had arrested at least two of them in the past two years, but that didn’t make a dent.

“The drain of youth is massive, it amounts to hundreds from Dagestan alone,” Navruzova said.

Young Russian Muslims watched videos of ISIS leaders and sheikhs calling to join the holy war. The travel package for a recruited Russian included an air ticket, $500 of pocket money and a backpack with T-shirts, socks and other basic needs.

“This is not just a popular trend, this is a lifestyle. Many in the Muslim community live day and night with the idea of joining the war, not for the sake of money but for pure hope to live for once in Sharia World. Recruiters say that the entire Muslim world has to be involved in the war now,” Navruzova said.

Male recruits are not the only ones who are leaving Russia. Women take off to join ISIS, too.

On the morning of February 27, Beke Gadzhiyeva, a 20-year-old from Derbent, seemed to be just another student at the local university, She had breakfast with her family, showing no sign of any plans to travel; a few hours later she was in a car driving across the Russian border to Azerbaijan. The last time she was seen was at Baku airport. “Somebody provided her with luggage,” said Navruzova, who now has to deal with Gadzhiyeva’s broken-hearted mother, looking for ways to bring her daughter back to Russia, “before she marries one of the fighters.”

It is one of Navruzova’s priorities to prevent widows of local insurgents from taking extreme actions against themselves or others, she said.

Nobody in ISIS has “zombified” the young Russian citizens, nobody offered them money: “On the contrary, insurgencies often recruit well-educated youths from wealthy, intelligent families,” says Navruzova. [Continue reading…]

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Russia hails Iran nuclear deal, but is a mixed blessing for Moscow

The Wall Street Journal reports: Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee for Russia’s upper house of parliament, wrote online that the deal was a “win-win” agreement that “proves international mechanisms are working.”

“This is very positive news that gives us hope not just on the Iranian issue, but on many others, including in the Middle East and in Europe (Ukraine),” he wrote.

Fainter praise from other politicians, however, underscored the diplomatic difficulties ahead for Russia, which may find its hand weakened as Iran and the West grow closer.

Alexei Pushkov, chairman for the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s lower house, suggested the achievement was overshadowed by the “significant dangers” posed by U.S. Republican lawmakers who have promised to reject the deal.

“It is the aggressive irresponsibility of the American Congress and its members, which is evident both in its attitude toward Russia and in its attitude toward Iran,” he said. “To what degree can we trust the American executive branch if part of Congress believes that it is possible to disavow an agreement with an American signature on it?”

Iran is one of Russia’s few remaining allies in the Middle East, along with the Shiite minority regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has few friends among the predominantly Sunni nations in the region.

Under heavy pressure from the West, Russia was forced to scrap an $800 million contract to deliver the S-300 missile system to Iran in 2007. The military official told Interfax that a new contract could possibly include the S-300 system, as well as a range of other equipment. [Continue reading…]

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How a whiteboard served as intermediary between talks and text

The New York Times reports: Both sides made significant compromises. For the United States, that meant accepting that Iran would retain its nuclear infrastructure in some shrunken form. For Iran, it meant severe limits on its production facilities and submitting to what Mr. Obama has called the most intrusive inspections regime in history.

It is still far too early to tell if the compromises will survive the next and final negotiating round, or review in Washington and Tehran. The timing of sanctions relief remains unresolved, for example, and already the two sides are describing it in different terms.

But the events of the last two years, and particularly the past week, offer some fascinating insights into what happens when two countries that have barely spoken with each other for 35 years — and have a long and troubled history of mistrust, sabotage, lies and violence — all but move into the same hotel room to try to figure out how they are going to get along.

It is fairly certain there will be a lot more wrangling in the next three months as the negotiators seek to wrap up a final, comprehensive treaty. That is because the negotiators left the Beau Rivage Hotel with astoundingly high bills — suites run more than $1,500 a night — but not an agreed-upon document detailing Iran’s commitments and those of the United States and its negotiating partners.

Wherever Wendy Sherman, the lead American negotiator, traveled in the ornate hotel here, she was trailed by a whiteboard, where the Iranians and the Americans marked down their understandings, sometimes in both English and Persian.

The board served a major diplomatic purpose, letting both sides consider proposals without putting anything on paper. That allowed the Iranians to talk without sending a document back to Tehran for review, where hard-liners could chip away at it, according to several American officials interviewed for this article, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“It was a brilliantly low-tech solution,” one White House official said. (It also had its drawbacks. One American wrote on it with a regular marker, then had to scrub hard to wipe out some classified numbers.) [Continue reading…]

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Only the finest white tea in Erdogan’s White Palace

Pinar Tremblay writes: The AKP’s grip on the media is well documented in Turkey and is used not only to prevent embarrassing news from spreading, but also to generate a false positive image in the public opinion of the president and his family.

In an attempt to showcase Emine Erdogan as a frugal, simple and environmentally friendly first lady, pro-AKP Yeni Safak Daily published a profile of how she manages the palace’s kitchen. Some intriguing details were revealed. In an effort to minimize waste, the Erdogan family recycles lemon and apple peels into vinegar. They also use their olive and date pits to make sauces. (Al-Monitor could not verify what kind of sauce can be made from these pits.) It appears that Emine is conscious about organic farming and investigates in detail all the origins of the products that enter the palace. We also learned that she had recommended dry mango slices to the first lady of Mali, Keita Aminata Maiga. According to the Yeni Safak article, Maiga was reportedly complaining about not being able to export mangos because of a short shelf life. Emine then recommended to dry mango slices to assist in Mali’s exports. But nothing got the attention of the Turkish public more than the white tea discussed in the article. The first lady of Turkey recommended that we all reconnect with Mother Nature and consume only the most natural products, and confessed that the most frequently consumed tea at the palace is white tea from the Rize region on the eastern Black Sea coast of Turkey.

So what is the big deal? White tea is sold in well-stocked supermarkets all over the world, along with black and green tea, at $3-$4 for a pack of 20 tea bags. But that is not the white tea consumed at the presidential palace in Turkey. Indeed, even most residents in Rize are not aware of this white tea, which sells for about $1,800-$2,000 per kilo (2.2 pounds). Considering the increasing poverty and the fact that 22 million out of 77 million people in Turkey live on an average monthly income of $320, this most unrefined and luxurious white tea is not available at your regular supermarket. The majority of Turks, who are mostly black tea drinkers, have not even heard of white tea. The white tea consumed at the palace caused an uproar in social media, where people ridiculed the allegedly modest palace life of the Erdogan family. [Continue reading…]

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How useful is the idea of the Anthropocene?

Jedediah Purdy writes: As much as a scientific concept, the Anthropocene is a political and ethical gambit. Saying that we live in the Anthropocene is a way of saying that we cannot avoid responsibility for the world we are making. So far so good. The trouble starts when this charismatic, all-encompassing idea of the Anthropocene becomes an all-purpose projection screen and amplifier for one’s preferred version of ‘taking responsibility for the planet’.

Peter Kareiva, the controversial chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, uses the theme ‘Conservation in the Anthropocene’ to trash environmentalism as philosophically naïve and politically backward. Kareiva urges conservationists to give up on wilderness and embrace what the writer Emma Marris calls the ‘rambunctious garden’. Specifically, Kareiva wants to rank ecosystems by the quality of ‘ecosystem services’ they provide for human beings instead of ‘pursuing the protection of biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake’. He wants a pro‑development stance that assumes that ‘nature is resilient rather than fragile’. He insists that: ‘Instead of scolding capitalism, conservationists should partner with corporations in a science-based effort to integrate the value of nature’s benefits into their operations and cultures.’ In other words, the end of nature is the signal to carry on with green-branded business as usual, and the business of business is business, as the Nature Conservancy’s partnerships with Dow, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, J P Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the mining giant Rio Tinto remind us.

Kareiva is a favourite of Andrew Revkin, the roving environmental maven of The New York Times Magazine, who touts him as a paragon of responsibility-taking, a leader among ‘scholars and doers who see that new models for thinking and acting are required in this time of the Anthropocene’. This pair and their friends at the Breakthrough Institute in California can be read as making a persistent effort to ‘rebrand’ environmentalism as humanitarian and development-friendly (and capture speaking and consultancy fees, which often seem to be the major ecosystem services of the Anthropocene). This is itself a branding strategy, an opportunity to slosh around old plonk in an ostentatiously shiny bottle. [Continue reading…]

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For better U.S.-Iran relations, the Iranian people are the key

Trita Parsi writes: American neoconservatives, Israeli hawks, and Arab dictators alike are haunted by the same nightmare: After a nuclear deal, the US and Iran will gravitate toward an unspoken alliance, after which the US will betray its security commitments to historical allies in the Middle East.

No such thing will happen. The US and Iran have many common interests in the region, and while there is a desire for increased collaboration, neither side is ready for an alliance, unspoken or otherwise.

The Iranians prefer to maintain their role as the world’s chief critics of US policy. Open alliance with Washington would be to Tehran’s disadvantage, the regime believes. On the US side, antipathy toward Iran runs deep within the federal government and legislative bodies, and political resistance to anything resembling formal partnership with a clerical regime in Tehran would be overwhelming.

But Iran is more than just a government. At some point, Washington needs to look past the Islamic Republic’s current political system, and toward its vibrant society. Indeed, beyond the politics of the two governments, all the ingredients for strong cooperation are present. [Continue reading…]

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This is a framework that can be defended in Tehran

Farideh Farhi writes: What a day it was and on sizdeh bedar no less, the thirteenth and last day of the Nowruz holidays! It is without a doubt the most joyous of the country’s new year celebrations, when almost all Iranian families go outside their homes presumably to reconnect with nature (in reality, thanks to their cosmopolitan consumerism, they do a lot of damage to it). Most Iranians I know, even in the diaspora, try to go for an outing and make a wish for the coming year.

So, whether planned or not, for the “government of hope and prudence,” the name used to distinguish Rouhani’s government from the Islamic Republic’s previous administrations, it was an especially auspicious day to announce an agreed framework. After eight grueling days, which, unlike in the United States, was covered in detail and monitored intently inside Iran, a framework was produced that I think can be defended and sold inside Iran.

No doubt, as in the United States, naysayers abound. The editor of the hard-line Kayhan daily, the grumpy Hossein Shariatmadari — who, like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, has an annoying fondness for cute and thoroughly slighting one-liners — has already announced that Iran gave away “an all saddled-up horse in exchange for a torn bridle.” The two differing fact sheets—with the US one emphasizing limitation and the Iranian one emphasizing sanctions relief—will give opponents enough ammunition to continue their mutually reinforcing barrage of criticism.

But by acknowledging Iran’s significant compromises in concrete terms (e.g., reduction of the number of working centrifuges in spite of previously stated red lines) and yet maintaining and even potentially expanding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program in other areas, the framework opens the way for a final agreement that a good part of the Iranian population will support as decent and respectable. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s leadership and the new framework agreement with Iran

Robert E. Hunter writes: Well, Obama did it. Or, rather, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, the other members of the P5+1 (the UN Security Council members, Germany, plus the EU) — and let us not neglect Iran — have done it. This is not a bad several months’ work. But now for the denizens of Washington and Washington-watchers everywhere, plus every possible party in the Middle East, the “fun” really begins.

For people who care about Obama’s core objective, to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, the framework agreement concluded in Lausanne has to be seen as a good deal, a very good deal indeed. Yes, hard negotiations still lie ahead, to meet the June 30 deadline to reduce the framework to some form of formal agreement — with the form itself likely to be debated thoroughly — in part to meet legitimate concerns in the US Congress over its constitutional role in critical foreign policy and security matters.

But despite the work that must be done in the next three months, those who care about Obama’s core objective can already exhale with a “whew” of historic proportions. That is also true for people who believe in the value of talking with enemies as well as friends. As put by the late Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, “You make peace with your enemies — not the Queen of Holland.” During the Cold War, arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union had benefits far beyond the technicalities of agreements reached. Because of the very fact of negotiations, it became possible to talk about broader issues and to move, however slowly, first to détente and then to the end of the Cold War. That can now become possible between the United States and Iran, far beyond the results in Lausanne on the so-called “nuclear file.” [Continue reading…]

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A better deal than Israelis expected

Ron Ben-Yishai writes: If the inspection of the agreement’s key points is carried out as presented to the public on Thursday evening, Iran will face an enormous challenge if it were to attempt cheating the agreement.

But, if the framework presented becomes the final agreement, including its technical addendum, even Israel could learn to live with it. As President Obama said, the current deal prevents Iran from developing enough fissile material for an explosive device or a nuclear bomb – for at least 10 years. If Tehran chooses to violate the deal, it will take them more than a year to gather enough enriched material for a single nuclear device.

We could not have achieved a better outcome even if Israel, the United States, and other countries had carried out military strikes on the nuclear sites in Iran. Even if the attack had been successful, the delay caused to the Iranian nuclear weapon program would have been shorter than 10 years.

Thus, it appears, it was a good deal. [Continue reading…]

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Iran nuclear framework agreement: Not a bad deal

Barak Ravid writes: Thursday night’s dramatic declaration of a framework nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers surprised almost everyone outside of the locked negotiating rooms at the hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, including the doubtful, cynical journalists waiting outside those rooms over the past eight days for the results. Also surprised, though they’ll never admit it, were many officials, including Israelis, who have vehemently attacked the emerging deal in recent months.

In contrast to the messages conveyed in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Congress, the Israeli government’s public position over the last two years and the Pavlovian response that came out of Jerusalem on Thursday night, the framework agreement is not a bad deal at all. In-depth examination of the details shows that the deal includes many positive aspects that preserve Israeli security interests and answer some of Jerusalem’s concerns.

Iran perhaps scored some victories in terms of the narrative. Its rights, as it sees them, were respected by the world powers, and Iran can declare that its nuclear facilities won’t be closed, that uranium enrichment will continue, and that the humiliating sanctions will be lifted. But the world powers made significant achievements of their own on the real practical issues.

The framework agreement levels many restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program for generations to come. The Israeli government’s claims that in a decade, Iran’s nuclear program will be normalized in the eyes of the world, and that the Islamic Republic could then do as it wishes, have turned out to be baseless.

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It’s up to Netanyahu whether Israel continues with its hair-tearing gevalt-screaming hysterics

Chemi Shalev writes: The [Iran nuclear] deal took many observers, including journalists following the talks in Lausanne, by surprise. After repeated extensions of the March 31 deadline and leaks about producing only a sort of general and nonbinding proclamation, the “parameters” were more detailed and extensive than expected and seemed to justify more efforts to achieve a detailed accord. Critics are likely to point to gaps and holes and concessions in the agreement, as they should, but initial reactions seemed to indicate that the Administration’s achievements could not be dismissed and might suffice to persuade Congress to hold off final judgement until the June 30 deadline.

Obama probably has no illusions about persuading Republicans in Congress to support him: his immediate targets are “hawkish” Democrats who will make or break a veto-proof majority on any new Iran-related legislation. Cognizant, perhaps, of their anxiety with the harshness of his statements on Israel after the recent March 17 elections, Obama reaffirmed his “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s defense.” After hemming and hawing about a post-elections congratulations call to Netanyahu, Obama now volunteered to brief the Israeli prime minister, albeit after updating various other world leaders.

It’s still reasonable to believe that part of Obama’s stand-offish attitude towards Netanyahu was tactical and meant precisely for this minute: to push Netanyahu into a corner and to depict his expected objections to an Iran deal as one more element in his overall anti-Obama and pro-Republican stance. But after he talks to the president and issues his expected condemnation of the deal, Netanyahu would do well to do his own “reassessment” on the efficacy of his own strategy and tactics until now.

Some of the questions Netanyahu might ask himself: Did his anti-Obama intifada increase or decrease the chances of blocking the “dangerous deal” in Congress? Did it help or hinder his ability to influence the administration’s positions in the negotiations? Were his achievements worth the damage done to the U.S.-Israeli relations? Will continuing with the same attitude increase or decrease his leverage? Will he now devote the three months until June 30 to efforts to derail the talks or will he try to influence what seems to many people, especially after Lausanne, to be a done deal?

After the Purim/Haman analogies, many Israelis and Jews around the world will find it easy to couch what seems to be an Iranian-American rapprochement in apocalyptic redemption terms of the Passover Hagaddah: “In every generation they stand up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed Be He, redeems us from their hands.” But it’s Netanyahu’s response that will mostly determine whether Israel reacts with cool rationality to the new challenges it faces, or descends into the hair-tearing gevalt-screaming hysterics which have characterized its response until now.

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