Syria: For the record. Two senior US military officers testified to the US Congress that they judge that Syrian government forces are winning the so-called civil war in Syria. A US press spokesman, however, said the Damascus government will never govern all of Syria again. Unfortunately, that person knows little about the Middle East and less about Syria.
SmartPlanet: Africa Boom Held Back by Infrastructure Gap — China Investing, Rail Could Be Next Thing
03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, Earth Intelligence
Africa is the world’s fastest growing continent
The number of Africans living below the poverty line has fallen dramatically and the business climate is good. So what's holding back the fastest growing continent in the world?
With a projected average growth rate of 6 percent from 2013-2015 and one-third of African countries with economic growth rates currently above 6 percent, the African Development Bank says that Africa is now the fastest growing continent in the world.
In a new report, the African Development Bank Group says that 350 million Africans now earn between $2 and $20 a day as the share of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 51 percent to 39 percent.
Mini-Me: Uzbekistan Wants to Join NATO, Conquer Eurasia [We Do Not Make This Stuff Up] — Full Reading [English Below the Line] Makes Clear This Is A Manifesto — From Water to Genocide to Labor to Historical Grievances
02 Diplomacy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO History, Military, Peace Intelligence
Huh?
Uzbekistan Media: We Should Join NATO, Conquer Eurasia
A recent piece in Uzbekistan's state-sanctioned media has advocated joining NATO and taking over the territory of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and most of the rest of Eurasia. The piece, published on 12news.uz, was taken down shortly after being published, but was preserved on inoSMI.ru. [PBI: English translation below the line.]
The piece, at nearly 9,000 words, offers a number of controversial (to put it kindly) claims: that Tajiks are merely Persian-speaking Uzbeks, that Uzbekistan is the successor state to the Mongol Golden Horde, that the agreement between Russia and Kyrgyzstan to develop hydropower plants is invalid because it misspells “Kyrgyzstan,” among many others. Its main thesis, however, is that the “threats of a natural-technical character” — namely proposed hydropower plants in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — are the gravest security threats facing Uzbekistan, comparable to a nuclear bomb. And the solution is that Uzbekistan should join NATO.
The piece is a bit out there, but Uzbek analysts point out that it must have been officially sanctioned. “This site [12news.uz] is not just semi-official, it’s official,” dissident political analyst Tashpulat Yuldashev told uznews.net. “It's curated by Dilshod Nurullaev, former Security Commission chairman and advisor to the President,” he said. “There is total censorship in Uzbekistan, and such a politically charged article would not have been allowed to be published without permission from the very top.” That assertion was backed up by another Uzbek analyst to The Bug Pit.
Chuck Spinney: Israeli Genocide & Other Atrocities Against the Bedouin — Funded by the US Taxpayer!
06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence
Written by an Israeli activist.
Published on Friday, July 12, 2013 by Al Jazeera
How Israel justifies the imminent relocation of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin by characterizing them as invaders.
by Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini
On June 24th the “Prawer Plan for the Arrangement of Bedouin-Palestinian Settlement in the Negev” passed its first reading in the Israeli parliament. If implemented, the Plan will constitute “the largest single act of forced displacement of Arab citizens of Israel since the 1950s,” expelling an estimated forty thousand Palestinian Bedouin from their current dwellings.
The Plan’s ultimate objective is to Judaize the Israeli Negev. In order to do this, however, seventy thousand (out of 200,000) Bedouin who currently live in villages classified as ‘unrecognized’ by the Israeli government must be moved.
The government already forbids them from connecting to the electricity grid or the water and sewage systems. Construction regulations are also harshly enforced, and in 2011 alone about a thousand Bedouin homes and animal pens—usually referred to by the government as mere “structures”—were demolished. There are no paved roads, and signposts from main roads to the villages are removed by government authorities. The villages are not shown on maps, since as a matter of official geography, the places inhabited by these second-class citizens of Israel do not exist.
SmartPlanet: China Invests $1.1B in Nigeria — While Others Destabilize Africa
02 China, 03 Economy, Commerce, Ethics, GovernmentChina invests $1.1 billion in Nigerian infrastructure
Less than two weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama traveled to Africa where he announced a $7 billion energy plan and welcomed development competition on the continent. “I want everybody playing in Africa,” he said.
And it didn’t take long for China to show that it’s playing, and winning. On Wednesday China announced an investment of $1.1 billion in Nigeria’s infrastructure, in the form of low-interest loans. According to Al Jazeera, the loan will help pay for airport terminals in four cities, a light-rail line in the capital city of Abuja, roads, and energy infrastructure. And that’s on top of the $1.7 billion in contracts that Chinese companies have won to build up the country’s roads.
Continue reading “SmartPlanet: China Invests $1.1B in Nigeria — While Others Destabilize Africa”
Neal Rauhauser: Modern Turkey + Turkey RECAP
08 Wild Cards
The Turkey of today is the homeland of ethnic Turks in the western two thirds, while the major population groups of the east are Kurds and the Zaza, an Iranian people with their own language, but who view themselves as closely connected to the Kurds.
Read full post with additional graphical maps.
Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Modern Turkey + Turkey RECAP”
Chuck Spinney: Has the US Lost Its Grand Strategic Mind?
02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of SecrecyAs Esam Al-Amin explained here, Mohamad Morsi made some colossal blunders during his one year rule of Egypt, as its democratically elected president. He was elected in what most observers regard as a reasonably fair election.
But the exclusive report by Al Jazeera (also attached below) reveals that the United States — which claims to support democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere — has been actively involved in bankrolling Morsi's opposition, and in so doing has continued its long policy of subverting Islamist democratic victories when they win fair elections (Hamas in 2006) or threaten to win fair elections (Algeria 1991).
Al Jazeera reveals how stark contradictions continue to rip through the three legs of the moral triangle that is US foreign policy — i.e., the contradictions between (1) the values we profess to to the world that we uphold, (2) the values we actually hold as demonstrated by our actions abroad as well as at home (don't forget the neo-fascist, non-accountable, hidden hand the emerging American deep state exemplified by the NSA scandal) and (3) the world we have to deal with deal with (in this case epitomized by the changing conditions of the Arab Spring).
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Has the US Lost Its Grand Strategic Mind?”
