A New York Times Op-Ed Columnist.

Exploiting the Prophet.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF   

Published: September 22, 2012

ARTS

Shock Me if You Can

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

A hundred years after “Rite of Spring” sparked an uproar in Paris, shock has grown mainstream, raising a question: Can art still shock today?

Shocker Cools Into a ‘Rite’ of Passage

By RICHARD TARUSKIN

“The Rite of Spring,” Igor Stravinsky’s ballet that celebrates human sacrifice, is widely praised today but was a flop when it was first produced, in Paris in 1913.

Balanchine’s Enduring Pact With Stravinsky

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

New York City Ballet is opening its fall season with two weeks of ballets choreographed to the music of Igor Stravinsky.

———————————————————————

TOP NEW YORK TIMES NEWS

U.S. Is Preparing for a Long Siege of Arab Unrest

By PETER BAKER and MARK LANDLER

The White House is girding itself for an extended period of turmoil that will test the security of American diplomatic missions and President Obama’s ability to shape the forces of change in the Arab world.

—

Op-Ed Columnist

It’s Not About the Video

By ROSS DOUTHAT

The unrest in the Islamic world is more about power politics than blasphemy.

• Columnist Page | Blog

—

A U.S. Envoy Who Plunged Into Arab Life

By STEVEN ERLANGER

J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed at a diplomatic mission in Libya, had an affection for Arab culture and street life that made him many friends and contacts.

—————————————————————-

Google Has No Plans to Rethink Video Status

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Google said it would not comply with a White House request to reconsider the anti-Islam video that has set off violent protests, saying it did not violate its terms of service regarding hate speech.

• As Violence Spreads, Google Blocks Access to Inflammatory Video

—————————————————————

The Independent (UK) – Revealed: inside story of US envoy’s assassination.

by Kim Sengupta – Friday, September 14, 2012

In short – the movie was the excuse, the attack was planned as a reminder to 9/11. The action is all over the Islamic world and the movie harks back to old religious enmities as the alleged movie-maker is a Coptic Christian. This might be seen as a film-short or preview of what the Islamic World has to contend with when lid of the freedom of expression deniers of the dictatorial kind has been removed.

The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.

American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.

The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.

Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

Mr Stevens had been on a visit to Germany, Austria and Sweden and had just returned to Libya when the Benghazi trip took place with the US embassy’s security staff deciding that the trip could be undertaken safely.

Eight Americans, some from the military, were wounded in the attack which claimed the lives of Mr Stevens, Sean Smith, an information officer, and two US Marines. All staff from Benghazi have now been moved to the capital, Tripoli, and those whose work is deemed to be non-essential may be flown out of Libya.

In the meantime a Marine Corps FAST Anti-Terrorism Reaction Team has already arrived in the country from a base in Spain and other personnel are believed to be on the way. Additional units have been put on standby to move to other states where their presence may be needed in the outbreak of anti-American fury triggered by publicity about a film which demeaned the Prophet Mohamed.

A mob of several hundred stormed the US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa yesterday. Other missions which have been put on special alert include almost all those in the Middle East, as well as in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Burundi and Zambia.

Senior officials are increasingly convinced, however, that the ferocious nature of the Benghazi attack, in which rocket-propelled grenades were used, indicated it was not the result of spontaneous anger due to the video, called Innocence of Muslims. Patrick Kennedy, Under-Secretary at the State Department, said he was convinced the assault was planned due to its extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.

There is growing belief that the attack was in revenge for the killing in a drone strike in Pakistan of Mohammed Hassan Qaed, an al-Qa’ida operative who was, as his nom-de-guerre Abu Yahya al-Libi suggests, from Libya, and timed for the anniversary of the 11 September attacks.

Senator Bill Nelson, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: “I am asking my colleagues on the committee to immediately investigate what role al-Qa’ida or its affiliates may have played in the attack and to take appropriate action.”

According to security sources the consulate had been given a “health check” in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: “The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs.”

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the Mohamed video which made the guards abandon their post. “There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”

Mr Stevens, it is believed, was left in the building by the rest of the staff after they failed to find him in dense smoke caused by a blaze which had engulfed the building. He was discovered lying unconscious by local people and taken to a hospital, the Benghazi Medical Centre, where, according to a doctor, Ziad Abu Ziad, he died from smoke inhalation.

An eight-strong American rescue team was sent from Tripoli and taken by troops under Captain Fathi al- Obeidi, of the February 17 Brigade, to the secret safe house to extract around 40 US staff. The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. “I don’t know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries,” said Captain Obeidi. “It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa.”

Libyan reinforcements eventually arrived, and the attack ended. News had arrived of Mr Stevens, and his body was picked up from the hospital and taken back to Tripoli with the other dead and the survivors.

Mr Stevens’ mother, Mary Commanday, spoke of her son yesterday. “He did love what he did, and he did a very good job with it. He could have done a lot of other things, but this was his passion. I have a hole in my heart,” she said.

Global anger: The protests spread

Yemen

The furore across the Middle East over the controversial film about the Prophet Mohamed is now threatening to get out of control. In Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, yesterday around 5,000 demonstrators attacked the US embassy, leaving at least 15 people injured. Young protesters, shouted: “We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God,” smashed windows of the security offices and burned at least five cars, witnesses said.

Egypt

Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi yesterday condemned the attack in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador. In a speech in Brussels, Mr Morsi said he had spoken to President Obama and condemned “in the clearest terms” the Tuesday attacks. Despite this, and possibly playing to a domestic audience, President Obama said yesterday that “I don’t think we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy”.

Demonstrators in Cairo attacked the mission on Tuesday evening and protests have continued since.

Iraq

Militants said the anti-Islamic film “will put all the American interests Iraq in danger” and called on Muslims everywhere to “face our joint enemy”, as protesters in Baghdad burned American flags yesterday. The warning from the Iranian-backed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq came as demonstrators demanded the closure of the US embassy in the capital.

Bangladesh

Islamists warned they may “besiege” the US embassy in Dhaka after security forces stopped around 1,000 protesters marching to the building. The Khelafat Andolon group called for bigger protests as demonstrators threw their fists in the air, burned the flag and chanted anti-US slogans.

Others

There was a Hamas-organised protest in Gaza City, and as many as 100 Arab Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai postponed a trip to Norway, fearing violence. Officials in Pakistan said they “expected protests”. Protesters in Tunis burnt US flags.

*Patrick Cockburn: The murder of US ambassador Christopher Stevens proves the Arab Spring was never what it seemed

*Editorial: Obama must measure his response

*US defends itself to the world – but back home it’s war

• Californian Coptic Christian believed said to be behind controversial movie – U.S. authorities suspect Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was behind anti-Islam film linked to violent riots in Egypt, Libya. (Agencies, Israel Hayom)
• Obama: Egypt’s Islamist regime is neither enemy nor ally – U.S. president says he will have to see how Egypt responds to attack on U.S. embassy and ‘maintaining the peace treaty with Israel.’ (Haaretz+ and Ynet)
• Jerusalem police brace for protests over anti-Islam movie - Thousands of police and border police are to be deployed from the early hours on Friday morning in sensitive locations around the city, including near the Temple Mount. (Haaretz+ and Ynet)

• Diplomatic rock - Five foreign diplomats serving in Jerusalem met two years ago in Jerusalem bar and set up ‘Kalandia Blues’ band [named after Kalandia checkpoint. Band practices weekly in Jerusalem’s ‘Yellow Submarine’ club and gives regular shows in local pubs with really chaotic rock. (Yedioth’s Jerusalem Musaf supplement, p. 56)
• Taking down the checkpoints – Every day Yuval Rott, Tzurit Sagiv and Amir Benatura stand at IDF checkpoints waiting to escort sick Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals and back to the checkpoints. After participating in the Bereaved Families Forum, Rott set up a non-profit, ‘The Path to Recovery’ (HADERECH LEHACHLAMA) for helping sick children get to hospitals. (Yedioth Jerusalem supplement, p. 108)

• Quote of the day:

  “Happy holiday and a Happy New Year to you and the entire Israeli nation.”
  –Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tells Israeli President Shimon Peres.**

QUOTATION OF THE DAY of the New York Times: “The weak job market should concern every American.” – Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, who announced that the central bank would buy large quantities of mortgage bonds, and potentially other assets, until the job market improves substantially.

and The NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL:

Belated Response From Egypt – Is this friendship? President Morsi of Egypt waited until Thursday before condemning the deaths of 4 Americans in Libya and promising to protect embassies in Cairo.

FROM: Karimi-Hakuk, Mahmood    Siena.edu

• About BtS

We were incensed when in  Afghanistan Bamiyan world heritage monuments were raised, now similar forces destroy world heritage in Timbuktu, Mali,  and I heard no whimper so far.

Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley
UNESCO World Heritage Site
The taller of the two Buddhas of Bamiyan in 1976 They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were “idols.”

—————————————————

And 2012 – ongoing in Timbuktu, Mali:

Islamists destroy century-old religious monuments in Timbuktu Al Qaeda-linked Mali Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes destroyed centuries-old mausoleums of saints in the UNESCO-listed city of Timbuktu on Saturday in front of shocked locals, witnesses said. The Islamist Ansar Dine group backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam to be idolatrous. Sufi shrines have also been attacked by hardline Salafists in Egypt and Libyain the past year. The attack came just days after UNESCO placed Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger and will recall the 2001 dynamiting by the Taliban of two 6th-century statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan. “They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly,” local journalist Yeya Tandina said by telephone. Tandina and other witnesses said Ansar Dine had already destroyed the mausoleums of three local saints – Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi El Mokhtar, and Alfa Moya – and at least seven tombs. “The mausoleum doesn’t exist any more and the cemetery is as bare as a soccer pitch,” local teacher Abdoulaye Boulahi said of the Mahmoud burial place. “There’s about 30 of them breaking everything up with pick-axes and hoes. They’ve put their Kalashnikovs down by their side. These are shocking scenes for the people in Timbuktu,” said Boulahi. Contacted late on Saturday, Tandina said Ansar Dine had halted the attacks on the holy site. Attempts to contact members of the group were unsuccessful. Locals said the attackers had threatened to destroy all of the 16 main mausolem sites by the end of the day. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called for an immediate halt. “There is no justification for such wanton destruction and I call on all parties engaged in the conflict to stop these terrible and irreversible acts,” she said in a statement. The sites date from Timbuktu’s Golden Age in the 16th century. France’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks on what it called “a part of the soul of this prestigious Sahelian city.” Ansar Dine has gained the upper hand over less well-armed Tuareg-led separatists since the two joined forces to rout government troops and seize control in April of the northern two-thirds of the inland West African state. Salt, Slaves, Gold, and Learning Located on an old Saharan trading route that saw salt from the Arab north exchanged for gold and slaves from black Africa to the south, Timbuktu blossomed in the 16th century as an Islamic seat of learning, home to priests, scribes, and jurists. Mali had in recent years sought to create a desert tourism industry around Timbuktu but even before April’s rebellion many tourists were being discouraged by a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in the region claimed by Al Qaeda-linked groups. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee said this week it had accepted the request of the Malian government to place Timbuktu on its list of endangered heritage sites. “The Committee … also asked Mali’s neighbours to do all in their power to prevent the trafficking in cultural objects from these sites,” it said of the risk of looting. The rebel seizure of the north came as the southern capital, Bamako, was struggling with the aftermath of a March 22 coup. Mali’s neighbors are seeking UN backing for a military intervention to stabilize the country but Security Council members say they need more details on the mission being planned.

UN chief: Syria forces shot at monitors trying to reach scene of latest massacre.

Ban Ki-moon condemns massacre at Mazraat al-Qubeir as ‘unspeakable barbarity’ and calls on Assad to implement Kofi Annan’s peace plan.

=========================================================

Majority of Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than in other countries.

68% of Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than they would be living in another country.

This shows a survey by the University of Haifa.

60% also agree that the state has a Jewish majority.

56.5% accept the country as a Hebrew-speaking

and 58% of the Sabbath as a day of rest.

Prof. Sami Samuha, who conducted the study says, the question is whether Arab Israelis are more representative of the state or they feel connected to the country feel:

“On the one hand, the connection to the land, but on the other hand, there are benefits, freedom, and stability of the  State of Israel.
Israel provides the opportunity for a modern life and economic and political stability, he said. You can not compare the lives of Arabs in the Galilee to the Arabs in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Egypt. But he found among the Arabs that even in Israel there is the danger of a takeover by the Islamists. “

71% of respondents in the survey believe that Israel is a good place to live. Similarly, many also stated, however, they felt discriminated against as an Arab.

(Ynet, 06:06:12)

BREAKING DOWN THE POLITICAL BARRIERS TO FOSSIL-FUEL SUBSIDY REFORM.

Mali coup: The story so far.

Mali Tuareg and Islamist rebels agree on Islamist state.

 www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-1…  -   BBC – May 27, 2012

Two rebel groups that seized northern Mali two months ago have agreed to merge and turn their territory into an Islamist state, both sides say.

The Tuareg MNLA, a secular rebel group, and the Islamist group Ansar Dine signed the deal in the town of Gao, spokespeople said.

Ansar Dine, which has ties to al-Qaeda, has already begun to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, in towns such as Timbuktu.

The groups took advantage of a coup in March to seize the territory.

West Africa’s chief mediator for the Mali crisis told the AFP news agency that he hoped the merger would simplify negotiations with the rebels.

Burkina Faso Foreign Minister Djibrill Bassole also called on both groups to renounce terror.

Mali’s Communications Minister Hamadoun Toure told the BBC that other countries should help Mali tackle al-Qaeda in the region.

‘Accord signed’

Capt Amadou Sanogo seized power in March after claiming the then president, Amadou Toumani Toure, was not doing enough to quash the rebellion.

Faced with mounting international pressure and sanctions, he was forced to step down only three weeks later, but is still thought to wield power behind the scenes.

OPEN DEMOCRACY has Two Interesting Articles on Bangladesh.

Partnership or PR? Chevron in Bangladesh.

Katy Gardner, 17 April 2012  Discordant Development: Global Capitalism and the Struggle for Connection in Bangladesh (Anthropology, Culture and Society) was published earlier this year by Pluto Press. You can read more about Katy’s work at:katygardner.co.uk/

Chevron are investing in communities and promoting human rights in Bangladesh, claiming that partnership with communities is not just good business practice, but crucial for social progress. But are these real partnerships – publishing what they pay, supporting anti-corruption measures and being accountable?

What do such corporate ‘partnerships’ involve? Viewed in the unflattering light of reality rather than the shimmery vista of PR, is there any evidence that relationships with communities could be described as involving the shared goals, co-operation, mutual respect and equality that the term implies? In research in the villages surrounding the Bibiyana Gas Field in Bangladesh, we found few people who would refer to Chevron as partners. Instead, the majority spoke of their fears of corruption, environmental damage and their sense of injustice at the profits made by foreign multinationals exploiting local resources.

The research involved two villages close to the gas field where, after large scale protest against the loss of land as the installation was being constructed, Chevron were now investing in health, education and alternative livelihoods projects as part of their Community Engagement Programme. In their Dhaka offices, the executives involved were keen to talk the talk: the initiatives were to be sustainable, the poor were to be ‘helped to help themselves.’ As one official put it, “we want to empower people.”

It sounds good. But before rushing to congratulate multinational energy corporations for their progressive investments, we need to look closely at the relationships they glibly describe as ‘partnerships’. If the ability to hear and be heard is a basic component of a healthy partnership, we saw little in the way of Chevron hearing the concerns of the poor. People told us that although initially there were ‘community consultation meetings’, once the land acquisition process was complete, community liaison staff retreated behind the high wire fence of the enclave and only the elite leaders had any means of contacting them. There are no grievance procedures and no open meetings. Whilst the company did respond to farmers’ complaints of damage to the environment, they acted without consulting the farmers. The main issue was the installation’s high banked roads, which prevent water from flowing evenly over rice fields during the wet season. Chevron built culverts in the roads, but these were too small and became blocked with weeds. A year later, no further action had been taken.

Meanwhile, whilst officials talk of ‘empowerment’ they have no experience of social development and show little awareness of the root causes of poverty: inequality, injustice and a lack of rights. Though the support given to small rural businesses is useful, the programmes are carried out via Village Development Organisations that are composed of self selected leaders from the local elite, thus strengthening rather than challenging local hierarchies. It was these leaders who were informed of the controlled flaring that was to take place one night. Community Engagement officials imagined that they would spread the message to the wider population. They didn’t and the result was mayhem. When people woke to the huge flames, they assumed there had been an accident and panicked, running from their homes in terror.

Even more worrying are issues of transparency. Whilst Chevron has a relatively good reputation for its levels of disclosure ‘at home’, the company’s record with regards to its overseas operations leaves much to be desired. This is all the more disappointing when it has enthusiastically signed up to the core aims of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. According to a report published by Revenue Watch / Transparency International, Chevron scored 88% for organisational disclosure (compared to the industry average of 65%), but only 8% for country level disclosure (compared to the industry average of 16%).

Within Bangladesh, the details of deals made with the government are secret, as are the company’s environmental, social and health impact assessments. Yet speak with ordinary Bangladeshis and they will tell you that government corruption and lack of transparency in deals with the extractive industries are of vital importance to the national interest. This surely, is where multinationals could make a real contribution to social progress: publishing what they pay, supporting the government and other agencies in anti-corruption measures and being accountable to the populations where they work, would be real steps towards supporting human rights and justice, rather than funding NGOs to carry out small scale projects that provide plenty of photo opportunities for the PR machine, but little in the way of real partnership.

=======================

Bangladesh: journey of fear towards an uncertain future.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, 17 April 2012
 www.opendemocracy.net/salah-uddin…

About the author:  Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is the editor of the Bangaldeshi tabloid, The Weekly Blitz, a columnist, author and peace activist who won the PEN USA Freedom to Write award in 2005, the first of a series of awards for moral courage in the media.

The two large parties in Bangladesh have already turned to the worst sort of dynastic politics. At the same time, Islamist influences and left wing groups are becoming ever more involved with the dominant political forces. Alongside this, parliament has become totally ineffective.

The Arab Spring has brought the issue of constitutional rights, and their violation, to the fore in Egypt, Tunisia, and most recently in Syria. Now this problem is affecting a country further East, Bangladesh, for the first time since it gained independence. Bangladesh’s ruling party, Awami League, claims to espouse Abraham Lincoln’s vision of government for, by and of the people, but has instead shown the worst face of autocratic leadership. It has used its own party hooligans as enforcers and made the capital Dhaka into a dangerous place.

The government has also imposed restrictions on all electronic media and used its intelligence forces to hinder the broadcasting of a major speech by the Leader of the Opposition. He had addressed a mammoth rally of at least five hundred thousand people, gathered to express their frustration and anger at a series of failures by the government. Three private television channels were switched off by the intelligence agencies without any prior notice simply because these channels were broadcasting footage of the rally in Dhaka. Through these actions, which violate articles 36 and 37 of the Bangladeshi constitution, the Awani League has finally revealed itself as an opponent of the people.

Following these incidents on March 12 of this year, Mahfuz Anam, a respected journalist and editor of The Daily Star, wrote a front page editorial expressing anger over these violations of rights of the country’s citizens. In an article titled “Awami League’s Moral Defeat”, he wrote:

“When does a government strangulate its capital city by preventing almost all modes of transport from reaching it? When does a government bring to a virtual halt almost all internal city movements? When does a government create such a panicky situation that traders do not open shops out of fear of vandalism? When does a government prevent its own citizens from carrying out their day to day activities? When do government leaders tell blatant lies on television while the truth is clearly the opposite? When does a ruling party let loose its goons upon normal citizens on suspicion that they might attend the opposition rally? When does an elected government adopt the most oppressive measure to prevent the opposition from holding a public rally?”

“Only when it is unsure of itself. A party confident of its popular base, sure of its public support, certain of the efficacy of its policies and surefooted about its public record would never have done what the ruling Awami League did yesterday to prevent the BNP from holding its public rally. What the ruling party did over the last two days to prevent mass participation in the opposition rally reveals a political party frightened of the strength of the opposition and loath to allow it to show it. In its massive show of strength the Awami League looked its weakest.”

Return of the hartal ghost to a troubled economy:

While journalists, think tanks, other members of civil society and the general populace are angered at the hostility of the ruling party towards the citizens of the country, they are also unhappy with the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP] and its coalition partners for calling a general strike on March 29. General strikes, known as hartal, are the most disruptive and destructive activities undertaken by opposition parties in Bangladesh. When the Awami League was in opposition, it also followed the same route of calling regular hartals day-after-day, causing tremendous damage to the country’s economy in the process.

It is worth noting that the Bangladeshi economy is in a worse state than it has been for several years, due to a major decrease in foreign exchange earnings as well as a lack of foreign investment in the country caused by an acute power crisis. The current government has totally failed to cope with the power shortage in the country over three and half years, and has not delivered on the specific promises made in its electoral manifesto made before winning a landslide victory. (Opposition parties have always rejected this huge victory, saying the election was ‘engineered’ by the policymakers of the military controlled interim regime, which now evidently enjoys a cosy relationship with the ruling party.

Even the foreigners are not safe:

For the duration of the current government’s administration, the law and order situation in the country has gone from bad to worse. Incidences of campus violence perpetrated by the ruling party’s student front, extortion, abduction, murder, extra-judicial killing, rape, oppression of religious minorities, and harassment of citizens have each surpassed all previous records. In one recent incident, the ruling party failed on all counts to properly investigate the murder of a journalist couple in Dhaka. Though the Home Minister and the Prime Minister repeatedly made commitments to investigate the case fully, there have in reality been no developments, which has already forced the journalistic community in Bangladesh to unite in demanding an investigation aimed at targeting the perpetrators. It was rumoured in the media that influential members of society were behind this brutal murder, with the blessing of the ruling party.

The worst insight into the country’s current law and order situation came to light when a Saudi diplomat was murdered in the diplomatic enclave in the capital city. Khalaf bin Mohammed Salem al-Ali (45), was killed by unidentified gunmen during the late hours of March 5, 2012. This is the first time in the history of the country that a foreign diplomat has been killed in the capital. Referring to the diplomat’s killing, opposition chief Khaleda Zia once again claimed that the law and order situation in the country is in a bad way. “The country is in a very precarious condition today. The lives and properties of the people are not safe. There is no security at our homes or outside. Even the foreigners are not safe,” she said.

Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation, enjoys good relations with Saudi Arabia, which is a top destination for Bangladeshi migrant workers. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest donors to Bangladesh. Following the murder of the Saudi diplomat, a real crisis is feared, if the government fails to identify the culprits within a short space of time. Should the government demonstrate the same inability or unwillingness to progress this investigation as they did with the murder of the two journalists earlier in the year, the primary concern is that the Saudi authorities will be offended and expel the two million plus Bangladeshi workers currently working in their country.

Since the current government came to power in January 2009, the flagrant robbery of small investors is taking place on the Bangladesh stock exchange. The government has not taken any action against the culprits, again believed to hail from the inner circles of the ruling party. Another scheme to embezzle wealth comes from the fraudulent multi-level marketing companies now in operation in the country. To give a sense of the scale of this embezzlement, one of the biggest multi-level marketing companies in Bangladesh, Destiny 2000 Limited, is believed to have already robbed $8bn from the people by selling fake schemes.

Let us start first with a Thomas Friedman article-conclusion first!

If you ask “what are the real threats to our security today,” said Lester Brown of The Earth Policy Institute, “at the top of the list would be climate change, population growth, water shortages, rising food prices and the number of failing states in the world.

As that list grows, how many failed states before we have a failing global civilization, and everything begins to unravel?”

Hopefully, we won’t go there. But, then -

we should all remember that quote attributed to Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”   —- Well, you may not be interested in climate change, but climate change is interested in you.

Folks, this is not a hoax. We and the Arabs need to figure out — and fast — more ways to partner to mitigate the environmental threats where we can and to build greater resiliency against those where we can’t. Twenty years from now, this could be all that we’re talking about.

Please go to the link for a very interesting article that tells us that the Arab Spring did happen in part because of the lack of attention to climate change on the part of government officials that were racking it all in to themselves – those official rapists of their countries.

Thomas Friedman is not the only one asking why Arab Spring now, and why the Arab World has not produced any democracies like other Islamic Countries – non-Arabs – actually did. Why is there no Arab State like Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Bangladesh? This last version of the Question was posed by Fareed Zakaria on today’s CNN/GPS show.

Seemingly – all Arab States that are within the huge North-Africa Middle-East area of the Arab conquests in the 12th and 13th Centuries have no real Civil Society. In all these States the economy is run by the people of the ruling Monarchy or by those close to the Government.
The people as such were kept low by an alliance of the rulers with the heads of the religion and the goal of this alliance was to fight another religious group – and here comes in the military that is completely loyal to the ruling power that is also the economy’s leader. This kind of socio-economic system did neither allow for the development of a meaningful Civil Society, nor a really forward looking Middle Class.

To above obervation by Fareed Zakaria we see the add-on by Thomas Friedman:  “The Arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population and climate stresses as well. If we focus only on the former and not the latter, we will never be able to help stabilize these societies.”

Thomas Friedman tells us of draught in Syria and North Africa and how this draught pushed the societal lid and was part of the reason for this present day upheaval.

And a Warning – 12 of the world’s 15 most water-scarce countries — Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and Palestine — are in the Middle East, and after three decades of explosive population growth these countries are “set to dramatically worsen their predicament.

Then think also about the observatio – “Alot more mouths to feed with less water than ever. As Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of “World on the Edge,” notes, 20 years ago, using oil-drilling technology, the Saudis tapped into an aquifer far below the desert to produce irrigated wheat, making themselves self-sufficient. But now almost all that water is gone, and Saudi wheat production is, too. So the Saudis are investing in farm land in Ethiopia and Sudan, but that means they will draw more Nile water for irrigation away from Egypt, whose agriculture-rich Nile Delta is already vulnerable to any sea level rise and saltwater intrusion.

The Link to Thomas Friedman:  www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-other-arab-spring.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120408

by Thomas Fuchs

The Other Arab Spring.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Published in The New York Times  April 7, 2012 as an OP-ED Column.

ISN’T it interesting that the Arab awakening began in Tunisia with a fruit vendor who was harassed by police for not having a permit to sell food — just at the moment when world food prices hit record highs? And that it began in Syria with farmers in the southern village of Dara’a, who were demanding the right to buy and sell land near the border, without having to get permission from corrupt security officials? And that it was spurred on in Yemen — the first country in the world expected to run out of water — by a list of grievances against an incompetent government, among the biggest of which was that top officials were digging water wells in their own backyards at a time when the government was supposed to be preventing such water wildcatting? As Abdelsalam Razzaz, the minister of water in Yemen’s new government, told Reuters last week: “The officials themselves have traditionally been the most aggressive well diggers. Nearly every minister had a well dug in his house.”

In the Maldives,  an Islands-State former monarchy, that was a late convert to Islam (only 12th century while Indian sub-continent regions already had Muslims 500 years earlier, it was Arab merchant-seafarers   that converted the last Buddhist king of the Maldives), a republic since 1965, and after the totalitarian rules of Presidents Ibrahim Nasir and Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a true  democracy was established in rather clean elections in 2008, it existed only for three and a half years, and was ended by a coup January 2012.

Mohammed Waheed Hassan Manik, the new ruler, was sworn in as President of the Maldives on 7 February 2012, in connection to the forced resignation of President Nasheed amidst weeks of protests and demonstrations led by local police dissidents who supposedly opposed Nasheed’s 16 January order for the military to arrest Abdulla Mohamed, the Chief Justice of the Criminal Court. Dr. Waheed came out against the arrest order and supported the opposition that forced Mohamed Nasheed to resign by telling him that if he resigns there will be no further violence. Nevertheless, since then prisons for the opposition have been reopened, and Mr. Nasheed claims that it is a return to the Gayoom – Nasir competition days when Nasheed himself was imprisoned.

It seems that  economic issues are behind the upheaval, and as we heard from Mr. Nasheed he proposes that the US and India recognized Mr. Waheed in an attempt to acknowledge a new status quo that they like.

We bring this up here because of Mr. Nasheed’s global fame as supporter of  global action to halt climate change which obviously pitted him against fossil fuels interests – world-wide but pin-pointed against the Arab Oil-States as well.

Interesting that there is now talk of building a coal fired power plant, like in India, while under Nasheed there was an effort to go for renewable energy – solar and wind power – in these blue paradise islands still blessed with clean air and clean water and open for tourism.

Mr. Nasheed predicts that by 2030 16 of the Maldive Islands will go under if the world continues on the path of business as usual – “we always can relocate as persons but not as a civilization,” he says.

Mr. Nasheed, post-Copenhagen meeting of 2009, where he became a global leader just one year after taking office in his own State, back home arranged for his cabinet to have an “under-water” government cabinet meeting for the sake of the global media. This is part of the documentary film ‘The Island President’ that was released this week in New York City, and the film tour brought him also to a Columbia University event where he met students including backers of his from 2009. Mr. Nasheed, when asked about the road to RIO+20 said that the UN cannot do it because they will pick always the lowest common denominator among Nations – and this is not enough.

He said that in the end the US will have to act it alone like Germany started to do it. To my question about a government’s responsibility to protect its citizens he answered that the Maldive military behind the coup is interested in business projects and not in the future of the islands. His interest is in replenishing coral reefs and fish stock.

ON POLITICS IN GENERAL MR. NASHEED REMARKED THAT IT IS EASY TO REMOVE A DICTATOR BUT NOT TO FLUSH OUT HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF THE OLD SYSTEM. WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE MALDIVES IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST, he said. THE COME-BACK OF DICTATORSHIP MUST BE AVOIDED, he said.

Now that brings me to the major part of this posting  which deals with a major full day event at the New York based Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) cooperative effort with the St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford and the Conservative Middle East Council (MEC) of the UK.

The Event started in the evening of Thursday March 29th with the introductory “THE ARAB UPRISING: HOW DID WE GET HERE?” presented by Professor Margaret MacMillan, Warden, St.Antony’s College and Professor of History, University of Toronto. Her full presentation can be found on the website of the CFR as are all other presentations of this meeting.     I must confess that I did not stay for the presentation because I left before Professor MacMillan started as I wanted to listen across town to Mr. Nasheed. This cost me dearly the following day, when at lunch I did not recognize Professor MacMillan who sat at my table and I stated my point of view that we are forced to deal with the Arab World, that we created, by our insistence to make them our oil suppliers. I also said that there are no US National interests in Foreign Policy except for Oil Interests – and I was rebuked strongly – in an effort to put me back in my place. Now I say that I deserved it as I did not know what she said the evening before the full meeting. Also, as my history of the Middle East starts with the 1945 Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin meeting at Yalta, the stop at Port Said on the way home, and President Roosevelt striking the deal with King Ibn Saud, I did not know that after finishing her book on the causes that led to World War I, Professor MacMillan turns to the resulting  WWII new world order as established at Yalta -
I promise herewith to be an anxious reader when her book is released by the publisher.

Had the oil-men of Texas not told President Roosevelt that the US oil reserves are not sufficient to fight again a war of liberation in Europe, then I felt Yalta’s division of the World that gave the Soviets East Europe, Britain Iran, and the US Saudi Arabia, might not have taken place, and global warfare may have evolved differently – perhaps not the cold way.

—

Friday, March 30, 2012 the  CFR Conference sessions were: (1) Prospects for Democracy,  (2) Monarchies,  (3) Islam and Politics, (4) Regional Consequences – The Geopolitics of the Changing Middle East, (5)  Policy Responses for the United States and Europe.

It was clear that the pre-lunch three panels were intended to provide the background for the after-lunch two up-date panels about the changing Middle East and the place of the non-Arab States of the larger Middle East – specifically Turkey, Israel and Iran. Interesting, in the morning sessions were present also Ambassadors of Arab States – I did not see them in the afternoon. Did their presence in the morning session somehow make for reduced forwardness on the part of the speakers? I did not hear the word oil from the speakers while the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the UN was present, neither were there complete answers to questions. Nevertheless, the picture came out clearly thanks also to the ample time allowed for questions.

Going to the last two sessions first – let us say that Turkey is now a main player in the Arab Middle East.

The November 3, 2002 elections in Turkey brought a landslide victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – a party with an Islamic pedigree – which received almost two-thirds’ of the parliamentary seats with 34.2 percent of the vote.

These elections ushered in a major realignment of the Turkish political landscape, bringing in the AKP —  winning 363 of the 550 seats in the Turkish parliament. Of the eighteen parties running in the elections, the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP) was the only other party to win parliamentary representation, garnering 19.4 percent of the vote and 178 seats (the remaining 9 seats went to independent candidates).

On the other hand, the major parties that ran the country in the 1990s, the center-left Democratic Left Party (DSP) of outgoing Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), and former President Turgut Ozal’s centrist Motherland Party (ANAP) failed to pass the ten percent threshold needed to enter the parliament. Islamist opposition Felicity (previously Welfare) Party (SP), and former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller’s center-right True Path Party (DYP) were also unsuccessful in winning representation in the parliament.

Looking back at material from 2002 I found:

Although the AKP is an offshoot of the Islamist Welfare Party (RP), which was banned in 1997 for Islamist activities, the electorate sees the party as a new force and not necessarily Islamist.

Various secular parties, courts, media outlets, and nongovernmental organizations view the party with suspicion due to its leaders’ past affiliation with RP. Yet, AKP’s moderate, non-confrontational rhetoric over the last year has made it attractive to a diverse array of voters ranging from Islamists to rural nationalists and moderate urban voters.

A second factor explaining AKP’s success is that the party has been able to channel some of the profound anger that characterized the November 3 elections.

AKP appealed to middle and working class voters, who were unsatisfied with the economic plans of the outgoing government that were backed by the International Monetary Fund. Such anger in Turkey has traditionally been concentrated at the lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. After the February 2001 economic meltdown, however, even the middle classes became angry.

Accordingly, AKP attracted many moderate urban voters, who were appalled by the inefficient and corruption-ridden governments of the 1990s, as well as by the political instability and economic downturns that characterized this decade. Many voters turned to AKP, which marketed itself as new and untainted by the legacy of the 1990s. AKP promised to deliver growth and stability, as in the Turgut Ozal years of the 1980s, a decade to which most Turks now look back with nostalgia.

What above evaluation did not say in 2002 is that many Turks were hurt by the way the EU did not accept Turkey for its membership, and these Turks decided to retreat to what they consider closer to Turkey’s background – away from European secularism back to Islamic heritage of the Arab Middle East or  Central Asia. That is how AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan looked at making common cause with the Arab Middle East/North Africa. With Egypt – the Central State that sits on the Suez Canal – facing problems – Turkey is now the natural leader of this potential bloc.  Only Saudi Arabia has the possibility to interfere, and that was settled by now with having a Turk as head of the Saudi Arabia based OIC ( Organization of Islamic Cooperation.) So Turkey plays to win. I tried to introduce this as a question but it was not picked up.

Israel seemingly played to lose. With the role of the Global powers playing in the region being diminished, the Israelis did not move ahead to recognize an opportunity to welcome the regimes that are borne in the ashes of the Arab Spring. The Israelis saw only the potential dangers and ignored any possible benefits from the Arab Spring. This because Israel, perhaps by necessity, regarded itself as belonging to the West and ignored the possibility to belong to the neighborhood of the East. Real Politik was the relationship with the winter dictators for regional Security, and for their own security. Mubarak was the enforcer of an unpopular Sadat agreement that favored Israel, and Israel was ready to shelter Mubarak before his forced resignation.

The Syrian revolution is about Syria and not about Israel – but the occupied territories cloud is in the background. Egypt cooperated with Israel in blocking Gaza, the Turks opposed this – so the Turks are now the big winners Marwa Daoudy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and Avi Schlain, Emeritus Fellow at St Antony College, U. of Oxford, agree that it was not a bright idea for Ehud Barak saying that Israel is a “Villa in the Jungle” – this did not leave much hope for rapprochement.

In Egypt it is now about “National Dignity” and the perception that Mubarak was an Israeli stugge – when the revolution started the military and government crushed CDs and shreded government documents – we will never know the truth.

Syria started out in as a democracy but a 1949 coup by the CIA ended this.  Nasser talked about Positive Neutralism” in order to get money from all sides, but I did not get a full answer about the fate of Nasserism that was Pan-Arabism.
The short answer was that people in the Arab States worry about their own condition and not InterArabism.

The consensus after this panel was that if the Arabs don’t want us there – the best we can do is step out.

For the future – Hamas is now residing in Egypt and after listening to Egypt in forming a National Government, the Palestinians will be able to declare a cease fire with Israel and push for negotiations. The Egyptians will continue the agreements with Israel but declare they will not repeat the mistake of being one sided in favor of Israel.

The Last panel was about Policy Responses for the United States and Europe and here the cat came out from hiding, and it was that the war in Libya was easy for the West because it promised large riches of Oil – and as always, those that get involved will also bring in their oil corporations in tow. Eugene Rogan of St. Antony said YES-BUT – in Libya case it was also a military consideration because we (the US) could not afford another Sarajevo. Yes, but what about Syria? All right – they do not have oil in such quantities. So What?

Gideon Rose, Editor Foreign Affairs, said Reve Back the rhetoric or Increase Policy? We must make clear what kind of friends we are and what red lines we have. We should not be ashamed of promoting democracy added Robert Danin the Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies. He continued – it has to be indigenous and we should be able to support it via institutions like Freedom House.

There is a lot of Unemployment and Underemployment in the Arab lands, and there is a lot of money in the Gulf States. Things went worse during this last year of upheaval. The extreme haves must support the extreme have-nots in the region he said. I told myself that this will be the day.

Asked what are the three major problems in the White House after November? The Answer was Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia

Eugene Rogan, Faculty Fellow and University Lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East, St. Antony, addressing the UN, said that the Kofi Annan Moral Mission to Syria has no chance to succeed. What is needed is a UNIFIL operation to make space between the fighting sides in Syria. Only then can start negotiations.

Other speakers included:

Elliott Abrams from CFR and Michael J. Willis from St. Antony on PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY — James M. Lindsay, Director of Studies at CFR – presider of that panel;

Mohamad Bazzi, CFR and NYU, and Columnist Raghida Dergham as Presider at the panel on MONARCHIES.

Isobel Coleman of CFR, Ed Husain of CFR, and Michael J. Willis of St Antony with Deborah J. Amos of National Public Radio on the panel on ISLAM AND POLITICS.

One last comment – The Monarchies fared better then the secular Dictatorships because they have some sort of legitimacy. On the other hand, the secular politicians were viewed as corrupt thieves and treated accordingly when people decided finally to hit the streets.

The UPDATE is for two reasons:

1, on March 13th we had looked at the appointment of former UN Secretary Kofi Annan with hope that his persona could influence events, then we realized that the UN Department of Political Affairs burdened him with a very bad team that we called tainted because all its members were tainted one way or the other. Among them was also Mr. Nasser Al-Kidwa, former UN representative of Palestine and former Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

2. We had also personal misgivings with the inclusion of retired UN employee Ahmad Fawzi who seemingly had a close contact to politically active UN Arab partisans. Mr. Nasser Al-Kidwah was not let in by the Syrians.

Today we learned that  though al-Kidwah was appointed as Deputy to Mr. Annan, now someone who was not an Arab, but part of The Kofi Annan UN Administration – his Under-Secretary-General for Peace-Keeping Operation during the whole eight years two terms – 2000-2008, Columbia University Professor and Frenchman, Jean-Mariw Buehenno, got to be a second Deputy Special Envoy to this Joint Mission of the UN and the Arab League.

Otherwise, it is clear that nothing has been done todate by the UN to help the Syrian citizens who are under siege from their own Government.

======================================-==

We posted earlier:

The 2011 class of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna will be known as Class Kofi Annan in recognition of the 1997-2006 UN Secretary General.
 www.sustainabilitank.info/2011/01…

That was BEFORE the UN appointment of Mr. Kofi Annan as negotiator in the Syria internal conflict that bares worries in other UN Member States were governments do not want to lose out to an uprising of their own people like Hosni Mubarak lost out to the people of Egypt. In the case of Libya it was the people plus external intervention by France and Britain that cleared the country of its leading pest, that is why China and Russia do not want any part in international intervention in case of internal strife – they just think of their own regimes – would you expect them to allow external involvement in what they consider their own affairs? How far can you indeed push the idea that democracy ought to be the way of government? Do you expect them to adhere to the two UN niceties of The Declaration on Human Rights and The Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

In the case of Syria these issues come to the forefront and it was Mr. Kofi Annan who was chosen to be the UN standard bearer to confront Mr. Bashar al-Assad with his responsibilities to his own citizens who rightfully detest him.

We liked Mr Annan when he was UN Secretary General, and indeed think he was the best Secretary General since Dag Hammarskjold. We also agree that with his understanding of R2P he is the best man to confront the Syrian establishment, but is he the best negotiator when coming in with a 100% understanding of the truth? Can he reach the needed compromise that stops the shooting? We know he is a skilled negotiator – but here he comes in with all the cards open on the table and this just cannot convince the Syrian regime that time has come to find a way out – something like assuring Mr. al-Assad a datcha in the Caucasus and ranches in Brazil to his Alawite henchmen.

With fighting going on – who will chase out whom? Syria has become home to Sunnis that escaped Iraq, but Syrian Sunnis are now themselves an endangered species even that they are in the majority and not like in iraq where the Sunnis were the minority. If they lose will it mean a strengthening of an anti-Sunni situation or rather a continuation of a secular situation where religious extremes from both ends – Sunni and Shi’a  - present danger to the rest of Islamic Western Asia? Is Saudi Arabia really interested in clearing out the Alawites who are sort of a secular Shi’a group that held Syria together until now?

With above thoughts in mind we read our friend – Anne Barnard’s report from the Middle East and decided to post our doubts that Mr. Kofi Annan can pull it off, and our feeling that he was sent there not with the intent to succeed, but rather as a way to allow the UN to continue to sit on its hands, while the Syrians go on killing their own, and eventually force more people to flee – this as the only way to attempt to quiet down this pesky event – the peace of the dead and gone.

Anne Barnard writes from Beirut for the New York Times:

Massacre Is Reported in Homs, Raising Pressure for Intervention in Syria.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 12, 2012 — Syrian opposition activists said on Monday that soldiers and pro-government thugs had rounded up scores of civilians in the devastated central city of Homs overnight, assaulted men and women, then killed dozens of them, including children, and set some bodies on fire. Syria immediately denied responsibility.

The attacks prompted a major exile opposition group to sharpen its calls for international military action and arming of the rebels. Some activists called the killings a new phase of the crackdown that appeared aimed at frightening people into fleeing Homs, an epicenter of the rebellion that the Syrian government had claimed just a few weeks ago it had already pacified after a month of shelling and shootings.

The government reported the killings as well but attributed them to “terrorist armed groups,” a description it routinely uses for opponents, including armed men, army defectors and protesters in the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria’s restrictions on outside press access made it impossible to reconcile the contradictory accounts of the killings, which appeared to be one of the worst atrocities in the conflict. But accounts of witnesses and images posted on YouTube gave some credence to the opposition’s claims that government operatives were responsible.

An activist in Homs, Wael al-Homsi, said in a telephone interview that he had counted dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, in the Karm el-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs while helping move them to a rebel-controlled area in cars and pickup trucks. He said residents had told him that about 500 athletically built armed men, in civilian clothes and military uniforms, had killed members of nine families and burned their houses, adding, “There are still bodies under the wreckage.

“I’ve seen a lot of bodies but today it was a different sight, especially dismembered children,” Mr. Homsi said.
“I haven’t eaten or drunk anything since yesterday.”

In a video posted on YouTube, a man being treated for what appeared to be bullet wounds in his back said he had escaped the killings in Karm al-Zeitoun. “We were arrested by the army, then handed over to the shabiha,” he said, using a common word for pro-government thugs. After two hours of beating, he said: “They poured fuel over us. They shot us — 30 or 40 persons.”

Both activists and the Syrian government described the attacks as “a massacre,” a day after a special emissary of the United Nations and the Arab League, Kofi Annan, a former United Nations secretary general, left the country without reaching a deal to end the fighting.

News of the killings came as the United Nations Security Council debated in New York, where the United States and Russia, Syria’s main international backer, tangled over how to address the Syria crisis.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Russia and China, which have vetoed previous resolutions aimed at holding Mr. Assad accountable and beginning a political transition, to join international “humanitarian and political efforts” to end the crisis, which she attributed directly to Mr. Assad.

Mrs. Clinton added, referring to shelling and other government military action in Syrian cities over the weekend, “How cynical that, even as Assad was receiving former Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Syrian Army was conducting a fresh assault on Idlib and continuing its aggression in Hama, Homs and Rastan.”

Her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, agreed that any solution in Syria “requires an immediate end of violence.” But he said armed elements of the opposition in Syria were also responsible for the crisis there, and that the Security Council must act “without imposing any prejudged solutions.”

Mrs. Clinton had a separate meeting with Mr. Lavrov, calling it “constructive.” She told reporters he would deliver to Moscow her “very strong view that the alternative to our unity on these points will be bloody internal conflict with dangerous consequences for the whole region.”

The Syrian National Council, the main expatriate opposition group, held a news conference in Istanbul and issued a statement that intensified longstanding calls by some of its members for outside military action. George Sabra, an executive board member and a spokesman for the council, told reporters that it was a moral imperative for the international community to stop the killing and to arm the opposition Free Syrian Army.

“Words are no longer enough to satisfy the Syrian people. Therefore, we call for practical decisions and actions against the gangs of Assad. We demand Arab and international military intervention,” he said. The council, however, does not represent the entire opposition, which has struggled to agree on a unified message and includes people who oppose further militarizing the uprising, which has come to resemble a civil war.

—========================—

From the UN:

Toll of Syrian conflict: 8,000 deaths, 230,000 displaced

The ongoing conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people, according to UN officials, and forced at least 230,000 Syrians to flee their homes.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy to the country, said he was expecting a response today from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad that included “concrete proposals” to end the violence.

—————

From the Turkish Ambassador:

His estimate is that more then 10,000 is the number of the dead.

The May/June issue of the Austrian Business Magazine for Economy, Environment and Corporate Social Responsibility “corporAID” stayed that11% of total monetary transactions by African Governments vanish in dark alleys towards foreign banking deposits. The paper knows because much of the money ends up in Austrian Banks. Further – the article states that by 2006  $700 t0 $800 Billions nave vanished this way.

The article mentioned names:

Champion was Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who stashed away in his family foreign accounts during his 30 years of Government Service – a neat amount of $70 Billion.
He is followed by the Gaddafis of Libya who needed all of 42 years in order to stash away only $60 Billion.

The list of the first 10 highest  Kleptomaniac African Heads of State is rounded up in the following order:

#3  - Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe                 — $10  Billion.

#4  -  Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan                         –    $9 Billion

#5  -  Mobutu Sese Seko of the DR of Congo – $5 Billion

#6  -  Sani Abacha of Nigeria                                    - $5 Billion

#7  -  Zine Ben Ali of Tunesia                                   – $5 Billion

#8  -  Yoweri Museveni of Uganda                      - $4 Billion

#9  -  Charles Taylor of Liberia                             –  $3 Billion

#10 –  Omar Bongo of Gabon                                   –  $2 Billion

These evaluations are backed by the British All Party Parliamentary Group and by the Washington Global Financial Integrity GFI Group.

“Now that the UN Security Council action has been blocked by the double veto [China and Russia] we are compelled to work outside the UN system.”

US and EU begin work on Friends of Syria group.

British defence minister Philip Hammond said on a TV panel show on Thursday that he is “lobbying everybody who comes through London” to join the group.

Meanwhile, EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy tweeted from an EU-India summit in New Delhi: “We discussed the appalling [situation] in Syria.” EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton while in Mexico urged Russia to reconsider its UN decision.

US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nulland told press in Washington on Thursday (9 February) that senior US diplomat Jeffrey Feltman met with French and Qatari leaders to draw up plans for the new coalition.

She noted that Feltman was in Morocco on Wednesday and will travel to a congress in the Philippines on Friday: “He’ll go tomorrow to Manama to a conference … where there are lots of Europeans and lots of Arab League representatives to continue to talk about how this group might come together and what its mandate might be.”

She added: “Now that the UN Security Council action has been blocked by the double veto [China and Russia] we are compelled to work outside the UN system.”

Nulland said the Friends of Syria will first meet “at some time in the relatively near future.” France, Morocco or Turkey are candidates to host the inaugural event.

Almost all the main protagonists have said President Bashar Assad must go. But it remains unclear what the group will do.

———————–

A similar ‘coalition of the willing’ on Libya last year orchestrated the war against Gaddafi. But the EU and US have repeatedly said military strikes on Syria are out of the question.

Nulland noted the group will see “how we can provide more humanitarian support to the people.”

France and Turkey have in the past spoken of setting up humanitarian “corridors” inside Syria – a move which would require international troops to protect the safe zones and which would create a brideghead for Syrian army defectors.

France has also said it might give weapons to the opposition. But British foreign minister William Hague told Sky News on Thursday: “We haven’t done that in any of the [Arab Spring] conflicts or we certainly don’t have any plans to do such.”

The UN says the death count in Syria is at least 5,400 people – putting the number in context, the Irish troubles over a period of 30 years claimed some 3,000 lives.

“The violence and brutality I have witnessed over the last 10 months shocks me,” the British ambassador to Syria, Simon Collins, wrote in his blog after leaving Damascus. “I can say without exaggeration that 6 February [when he also left] was the most emotionally taxing day of my career as a foreign service officer,” the US ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, said on Facebook.

————————————————————————

MENA – FN ARAB NEWS is ready to cut the Arabs noses in  order to spite
the World’s face.

They have today two articles following the Russia and China VETO of
action to save fellow Arabs from their Syrian executioner.

The first article is about people sitting in glass houses that should
not throw stones at others – or the US not being able to condemn the
Russian Veto because the US so many times applied the Veto in matters
of the Arab World and friends being out to erase the State of Israel.
Never mind that  Arab brothers are being killed now in Homs – Arab
News is more interested in throwing a stone at the US.

Also, the writer of that article does not know much about the UN
except his interest in using the Palestinian issue to gore the US – he
talks of a 196-members UN body – the last we counted it there were
only 193 Member States of the UN.

www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093480766&src=NLEN
Is about the US

The other article is even more to the point -
www.menafn.com/qn_news_story_s.asp?StoryId=1093480736&src=NLEN

“Saudi – We are all under Tel Aviv’s Feet” that was reported also in
the International Herald Tribune. Here the attaxk is on the present
government of Canada that is friendly to Israel and has little stomach
for Arab push against Israel saying it is in effect disguised
anti-semitism.

====================================================================

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE EDITORIAL FEBRUARY &, 2012

Killing in Syria

Published: February 6, 2012

Two days after Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a peaceful transfer of power in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad continued his killing spree.