Fifa urged to kick out Israeli football clubs located in West Bank

 Palestinian boys play near their home in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem-Sunday 25 September 2016

Football’s international governing body, Fifa, is facing pressure to rule next month that six Israeli football clubs based in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories should either relocate to Israel or be banned from Fifa-recognised competitions.

A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) – published on Monday before a Fifa meeting in October – follows an online petition signed by more than 150,000 people as well as an open letter from dozens of European MEPs this month calling on Fifa to act on the issue.

The clubs in question, all located in the West Bank, include Beitar Givat Ze’ev, Beitar Ironi Ariel, Ironi Yehuda, Beitar Ironi Maale Adumim and Hapoel Bik’at Hayarden, all of which play in the lower Israeli leagues.

The publication of the report comes amid hints from the South African sports official Tokyo Sexwale, who heads Fifa’s committee set up to consider the issue, that it will present recommendations on a number of complaints from Palestinian football concerning Israel, including the issue of settlement teams.

The move is opposed by Israel’s football association and by the clubs involved. They say that a ban on playing in settlements would punish children involved with the clubs, as well as the clubs themselves, and that Fifa has no authority to define what is Israeli territory.

At the centre of the controversy is Fifa’s own rulebook which says that football clubs which are Fifa member affiliates, such as the Israel Football Association (IFA), may not play on the territory of other football associations without the other association’s permission.

Settlements are built on territory that is regarded under international law as illegally occupied by Israel, so critics argue that the settlement clubs are playing outside the IFA’s territory and without the permission of the Palestinian Football Association [PFA], which has been recognised by Fifa since 1998.

HRW and others argue that Fifa is in effect legitimising the 49-year long Israeli occupation by permitting the games to take place.

Although the clubs involved are small, the issue has become an increasingly contentious one for world football. While the issue of the IFA’s alleged breach of Fifa rules has been under the spotlight for some time, the HRW report goes further, suggesting that Fifa is in breach of its own new ethical guidelines, introduced as part of moves to clean up its image.

“By allowing the IFA to hold matches inside settlements, Fifa is engaging in business activity that supports Israeli settlements, contrary to the human rights commitments it recently affirmed,” HRW says.

“An April 2016 report, commissioned by Fifa and written by John Ruggie, the author of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights(UNGP), outline the human rights responsibilities of businesses. Newly-elected Fifa president Gianni Infantino took office pledging to steer Fifa out of the human rights and corruption scandals of recent years, so that fans and players can focus on the ‘beautiful game’ of football. Doing business in the settlements is inconsistent with these commitments,” the group added.

HRW argues that “settlement playing grounds, including one indoor hall, are built on land that has been unlawfully taken from Palestinians”.

It also says that financial documents it has reviewed show that the IFA is engaging in business activity that supports the settlements and that “the clubs provide services to Israelis but do not and cannot provide them to Palestinians, who are not allowed to enter settlements except as labourers bearing special permits”.

The IFA accuses its critics of being “politically motivated” and acting beyond the remit of Fifa to settle.

Despite the indication by Sexwale in a letter in August that his committee would present recommendations, Shlomi Barzel of the IFA said his organisation had “no sense” where the issue was going, suggesting that any decisions would be left until next year’s Fifa congress.

The issue had the potential to become a “big problem for Israeli football”, Barzel said. On the argument that Israeli clubs were playing outside Israeli football’s territory, he said: “It is very simple. This has nothing to do with Fifa. Those areas are disputed.”

Barzel declined to comment on the Human Rights Watch report or to affirm whether he believed that the settlement clubs were based in Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

The HRW report follows a letter from 66 MEPs this month to t Infantino, which cited as a recent precedent the decision by European football’s governing body Uefa that Crimean football clubs could not play in the Russian league following Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

Additionally, football clubs in Nagorno-Karabakh, Northern Cyprus, Luhansk Republic, Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are excluded from Fifa and its national competitions.

That letter argued: “The international consensus is that the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, is an ‘occupied Palestinian territory,’ not a disputed territory. The EU as well as the United States routinely exclude settlements from their cooperation programmes and agreements with Israel – and Fifa should do the same.”

Sari Bashi of HRW said: “Whatever political decisions may or may not be made about the settlements in the future, they represent and contribute to serious human rights violations right now. This problem has one solution: Fifa should tell the IFA clubs to practise, pass, play all you want – but only inside Israel.”

Senior Egypt intelligence chief mocks Abbas in leaked phone call with Dahlan

Egyptian President Sisi welcomes PA president Abbas at Sharm El-Sheikh last year (AFP PHOTO / HO / EGYPTIAN PRESIDENCY)

Sunday 25 September 2016 

A high-ranking Egyptian intelligence officer ridicules Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a leaked telephone conversation with exiled Palestinian strongman Mohammed Dahlan, it was revealed last night.

Abbas was referred to as “stupid,” and his movement Fatah “screwed,” by Major General Wael el-Safty of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID), which is responsible for providing national security intelligence both at home and abroad.

The leaks may be unwelcome in Cairo for a number of reasons: Safty is in charge of the Palestinian portfolio for the GID, and the controversial Dahlan has already been accused of receiving Egyptian backing to replace Abbas. This recording is only the latest in a series of leaks from the heart of Egypt’s military state.

The telephone conversation may also embarrass Egypt in its attempts to play honest broker in mending a feud between Abbas and Dahlan.

The leaks were broadcast on Mekameleen, a Turkey-based Egyptian satellite television channel known for its support of jailed Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely-elected president, who was overthrown by the army on 3 July 2013 in a military coup.

Previous tapes leaked by the TV channel have been examined and authenticated by the leading British laboratory of forensic speech and acoustic analysis, JP French Associates, headed by Peter French, professor of forensic speech science at the University of York. The laboratory provides forensic voice analysis to the British courts, as well as advice and training to international law-enforcement agencies.

The fact that sensitive conversations by top Egyptian officials are being bugged and leaked to opposition media attests to tensions within the highest reaches of the Egyptian security establishment.

'He isn’t smart at all'

In the latest leaked recording, only the Egyptian side of the conversation is audible. Safty’s voice is heard, but not Dahlan’s responses.

Still, it is obvious that the person on the other end of the telephone is Dahlan, because he is referred to by his kunya, or traditional Palestinian name, Abu Fadi.

Furthermore, after exchanging pleasantries, Safty asks about members of Dahlan’s family by name.

“Abu Fadi, the years are passing,” the Egyptian intelligence officer reminisces early on in the tape.

Soon thereafter, they begin talking about someone whose “concentration isn’t at full capacity.” Safty then says this person “has nothing to offer.”

The tapes go on to make clear that the man they are talking about is Abbas, 81.

“You told me something I still remember to this day,” Safty tells Dahlan. “You said that he (Abbas) is like a camel.”

The implication here is that Abbas is repeatedly churning out old ideas without bringing anything new to the table. Camels, like cattle, are ruminant animals that digest then re-digest their food a number of times.

“He isn’t smart at all,” the Egyptian intelligence officer says. “The issue of (Abbas’) age also comes into it… He doesn’t want to change, he doesn’t want to do anything.”

At this point, the conversation turns from petty insults to expressions of real frustration with Abbas. Safty lets loose.

“Fatah is completely screwed,” he says. “The (Palestinian Liberation) Organisation is even worse.”

“He can’t even contain the factions (within Fatah),” he says. “These are the ones that Abu Mazen (Abass’s kunya) couldn’t contain, these people drove me absolutely crazy, their positions have begun to align with Hamas.

“He can’t bring them together,” Safty tells Dahlan in utter exasperation. “I swear, he can’t bring them together.

“It's stupidity,” he says, before again referring to Abbas’s advancing age, adding that the PA president does not have many laps left to run: “The track is running out, if you excuse the phrase.”

Ongoing controversy

MEE previously reported on a joint Egyptian-Jordanian-UAE plan to install Dahlan as PA president in a post-Abbas era.

Dahlan has been exiled from both Gaza and the West Bank and has close ties to the UAE monarchy.

In the Gaza Strip, Dahlan is still hated for his attempted putsch after Hamas’s electoral victory in 2007.

In the West Bank, last August, Abbas cracked down on weapons stockpiling as various factions were preparing for a post-Abbas landscape.

Palestinian security officials and senior Fatah figures told MEE that it was Dahlan who had sparked the arms race, by arming his followers in areas where he still retains support.

Abbas continues to refuse reconciliation with Dahlan.

Previous leaks by Mekamaleen have also exposed far-reaching UAE interference in Egypt, coordination with the UAE in delivering weapons to Libya and funneling funds to Tamarod – a movement that was established to gather popular support against ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. The recordings were primarily attributed to Abbas Kamil, a manager of the office of Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

The torrent of leaks gushing from the heart of the Sisi regime undermines his image as a strongman ruler. 

The GID is one of three intelligence services, with the other two being the Office of Military Intelligence Services and Reconnaissance (OMISR) and the Egyptian Homeland Security (EHS).

Egypt’s intelligence community have notoriously strained internal relations, with conflicts between the GID and OMISR being blamed by one previous director for a failure to predict the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The GID regained its prestige by playing a critical role in Egypt’s victory in the October 1973 War against Israel.

But in Egypt today, the GID is chiefly remembered for its notoriety in the late Mubarak period, and even moreso for its infamous director Omar Suleiman, who ran the directorate from 1993 until the 25 January revolution in 2011.

The importance of the GID was underscored by the fact that it was Suleiman who announced Mubarak’s resignation on 11 February 2011. The former GID director died the following year.

The intelligence services form one pillar of the triumvirate that governs Egypt’s security state, with the other two being the army – which overthrew the British in 1952 and founded the Arab Republic of Egypt – and the police, who were empowered under Mubarak to counterbalance the power of the military.

'A scandalous image'

It was not just Abbas the two men made ridiculed over the phone.

“Did you see the picture of Abu Nidaa when he was eating?” Safty asks Dahlan. “It was a scandalous image I swear, a scandal, scandal, scandal.”

The man they are mocking is Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah member, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and PLO ambassador to Iraq between 1974 and 2002.

The photo in question is innocent enough. Al-Ahmed was simply eating a traditional Arab dish of lamb and rice with his hands at a conference in Qatar.

Al-Ahmed has, however, publicly and vigorously condemned Arab involvement in Palestinian affairs.

Safty asks Dahlan if he should register the number he called him on, and after promising to do so, the call ends.

Mahmoud Abbas runs scared of democracy

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party had more to lose from local elections than rival Hamas.Thaer GanaimAPA images

Omar Karmi-22 September 2016

Whichever way you turn it, the municipal elections for the occupied West Bank and Gaza that were slated for October would effectively have been a referendum on the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and, to a much lesser extent, Hamas.

Perhaps that’s why they were canceled.

Certainly, that was the impression given by the rival parties, Fatah and Hamas, once the Palestinian high court in Ramallah ruled the elections could not go ahead after “procedural hurdles” in Gaza and with Israel preventing voting in East Jerusalem.

Fatah’s Usama al-Qawasmi accused Hamas of deliberately sabotaging the vote with “private courts” to prevent Fatah candidates from standing in Gaza. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas representative, denounced a “politically motivated” court decision designed “to rescue Fatah.”

Of course, the high court would fiercely protest its independence and reject the notion that political pressure had a bearing on the decision. Yet the court cannot seriously be viewed as apolitical, when its judges areappointed by the Palestinian Authority president, a post Abbas has held since 2005.

Moreover, the court’s reasoning that elections could not proceed if they were not held in East Jerusalem did not prevent municipal elections from going ahead in 2012.

At least some political considerations therefore likely swayed judgment.

So what happened?

The elections had been announced in June and, initially, looked set to be a rerun of the 2012 municipal elections which Hamas boycotted. The 2012 vote was confined to the West Bank – excluding East Jerusalem.

But in July, Hamas announced that this time it would indeed participate. It was clear from the moment that Hamas decided to take part that these elections would be about much more than delivering local services.

The vote would have been the first direct electoral contest outside universities between Fatah – in charge of the West Bank’s largest towns, and Hamas, which governs the interior of Gaza, in 10 years. Hamas had won that previous contest, the 2006 elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council.

If this year’s elections had gone ahead, voters would have been allowed to deliver their verdict on the performance of both parties. And in that quasi-referendum, Abbas, heading a divided and discontented Fatah movement, stood to lose far more than Hamas, which is in solid control of Gaza.

Win-win for Hamas?

Hamas played its cards carefully, announcing it would not run as a list in the West Bank but would instead support affiliated or sympathetic independents. A poor showing could be shrugged off. A good result would suggest that had the faction stood on a party list it would have done even better.

It was, said Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization, a “win-win” for Hamas. Concern about the results of local elections was also, she said, a sign that internal Fatah divisions are now one of Abbas’ primary preoccupations.

“Abbas is worried about Fatah fragmentation and obsessed with the possibility of opening the door for any challenge to his leadership from [Muhammad] Dahlan,” said Buttu, referring to the erstwhile Fatah leader in Gaza who was ousted from the coastal strip after Fatah members there attempted an unsuccessful US-backed putsch against Hamas in 2007.

Dahlan, who enjoys support from the United Arab Emirates and other regional countries, is often cited as the main rival to Abbas and a possible successor despite the fact that he hasn’t lived on Palestinian territory since he was dismissed from Fatah in 2011, and his domestic constituency is primarily in Gaza.

Compounding matters, there has been little renewal within Fatah’s ranks and no elections to the faction’s ruling body, the central committee, since 2009.

“Any ambitious local Fatah leaders have found their path blocked,” said Buttu. “The only way forward was to stand as independents.”

That, however, threatened a repeat of the 2006 elections, when a breakaway faction, al-Mustaqbal (Arabic for “the future”) led by the imprisoned but popular Marwan Barghouti and including several prominent members of Fatah, registered to run as a separate list.

A last-minute compromise was worked out, but divisions within Fatah were all too plain and played into what became a sweep for Hamas.

This time, retribution for abandoning the mothership was swift in coming. Fatah’s central committee had warned already before final registration in early September this year that anyone running as an independent would be struck off the party list.

And a day after the high court canceled the election, Abbas summarily fired two Fatah members in Hebron, former minister of local government Khalid Fahd al-Qawasmi and the deputy head of the Hebron municipality, Jawdi Abu Sneineh, who had put themselves forward as independents.

Faltering leadership

Those were not the only dismissals. Indeed, in the past year, Abbas has removed several officials from their positions, whether in Fatah, the PLO – of which he is also chair – or in PA institutions.

In August, reports surfaced that Abbas had dismissed several members of the central committee. That followed on from the dismissal in April of Nablus governor Akram Rajoub.

And last year, Abbas fired Yasser Abed Rabbo from his position as number two in the PLO.

Such increasingly autocratic turns have come in tandem with polling consistently showing Abbas to be less popular than his counterpart in Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.

The latest such poll – taken by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in June – indicated that Abbas would lose a straight run-off with the Gaza-based Haniyeh.

The gap between the two men had, however, narrowed slightly, when compared to a poll taken three months earlier. In a contest between the two men, 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for Haniyeh, down from 52 percent in the earlier poll. Some 43 percent of respondents said they would vote for Abbas, up from 41 percent a few months earlier.

Nearly two thirds of respondents in the June poll wanted Abbas to resign, while a majority considered the Palestinian Authority “a burden on the Palestinian people.” A full 80 percent believed that PA institutions were corrupt.

But the June poll also found Fatah slightly ahead of Hamas, and that with Marwan Barghouti as leader, Fatah would win a presidential election.

Barghouti, however, remains in an Israeli prison. An aging Abbas is still in power, clinging to a strategy – if that is the right term – of “negotiations, negotiations, negotiations.”

Such negotiations have done nothing to halt the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements and theworsening of Palestinian living standards.

And Hamas? The elections would have marked the first time since 2006 that the Islamist movement could measure itself up against Fatah.

Hamas’ time in charge of the besieged Gaza Strip has been an unhappy one, with three major Israeli military assaults, thousands killed, tens of thousands wounded and made homeless, one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and a UN warning that the coastal strip might be uninhabitable by 2020.

Yet the movement is still able to present a cohesive front, something that Fatah has been unable to do since the 2006 elections. Hamas also has a regional dimension with its affiliation to the broader Muslim Brotherhood, however beleaguered.

Fatah has become a collection of individuals. And Abbas appears to be increasingly fearful that elections will expose this reality.

Awkward questions could also be asked about his mandate to lead – it is 11 years since he was elected president. His term expired in 2009.

October’s municipal elections could have been a first step back into the democratic pool. Some high-level figures in the PA apparatus decided not to go near that pool – perhaps because they feared drowning.

Omar Karmi is a former Jerusalem and Washington, DC, correspondent for The National newspaper.

U.S., Russia trade blows over Syria as warplanes pound Aleppo

Warplanes press attack on rebel-held eastern Aleppo

A front loader removes debris in a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail--Men inspect a hole in the ground filled with water in a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail


Swings are seen in a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail--People walk past a hole in the ground filled with water in a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail

 Sun Sep 25, 2016

The United States accused Russia of "barbarism" in Syria on Sunday as warplanes supporting Syrian government forces pounded Aleppo and Moscow said ending the civil war was almost "impossible".

A diplomatic solution to the fighting looked unlikely as U.S. and Russian diplomats disagreed at a U.N. Security Council meeting called to discuss the violence, which has escalated since a ceasefire collapsed last week.

Rebels, who are battling President Bashar al-Assad's forces for control of Aleppo, said any peace process would be futile unless the "scorched earth bombing" stopped immediately.

Capturing the rebel-held half of Syria's largest city, where more than 250,000 civilians are trapped, would be the biggest victory of the civil war for Assad's forces.

They have achieved their strongest position in years thanks to Russian and Iranian support and launched a fresh offensive for a decisive battlefield victory on Thursday. Residents and rebels say thousands have been killed in the new strikes.

"What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counter terrorism, it is barbarism," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told the 15-member council.

"Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Assad make war. Instead of helping get lifesaving aid to civilians, Russia and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys, hospitals, and first responders who are trying desperately to keep people alive."

The French and British foreign ministers also took aim at Russia, saying it could be guilty of war crimes.

But Russia defended its position.

"In Syria hundreds of armed groups are being armed, the territory of the country is being bombed indiscriminately and bringing a peace is almost an impossible task now because of this," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the council.

SCORCHED EARTH

In the first major advance of the new offensive, Syrian forces seized control of the Handarat Palestinian refugee camp, north of Aleppo.

Rebels counter attacked and said on Sunday they had retaken the camp before the bombing started.

"We retook the camp, but the regime burnt it with phosphorous bombs," said Abu al-Hassanien, a commander in a rebel operations room that includes the main brigades fighting to repel the army assault.

The army, which is also being helped by Iranian-backed militias, Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah militant group and a Palestinian militia, acknowledged rebels had retaken Handarat.

"The Syrian army is targeting the armed groups' positions in Handarat camp," a military source was quoted on state media as saying.

Planes continued to pound residential areas on Sunday, flattening buildings, rebels and residents said.

"The Assad regime and with direct participation of its ally Russia and Iranian militias has escalated its criminal and vicious attack on our people in Aleppo employing a scorched earth policy to destroy the city and uproot its people," a statement signed by 30 mainstream rebel groups said on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said at least 45 people, among them 10 children, were killed in eastern Aleppo on Saturday.

The army says it is targeting only militants.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war and 11 million driven from their homes.

DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

Russia and the United States agreed on Sept. 9 a deal to put the peace process back on track. It included a nationwide truce and improved humanitarian aid access but it collapsed when an aid convoy was bombed killing some 20 people.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who hammered out the truce in months of intensive diplomacy, pleaded with Russia to halt air strikes.

U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura appealed to the Council meeting to come up with a way to enforce a ceasefire.

"I am still convinced that we can turn the course of events," he said, adding that he would not quit trying to bring peace in Syria.

However, Russia is one of five veto powers on the council, along with the United States, France, Britain and China. Russia and China have protected Assad's government by blocking several attempts at council action.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Russia was guilty of prolonging the war in Syria and may have committed war crimes by targeting an aid convoy.

"We should be looking at whether or not that targeting is done in the knowledge that those are wholly innocent civilian targets, that is a war crime," he said in a BBC interview aired on Sunday.

The rebels said they could not accept Russia as a sponsor of any new peace initiative "because it was a partner with the regime in its crimes against our people".

It said Russian-backed Syrian forces were using napalm and chemical weapons without censure from the international community.

U.N. investigators are looking into the alleged use of the incendiary weapons phosphorus and napalm in several cities.

The war has ground on for nearly six years, drawing in world powers and regional states. Islamic State - the enemy of every other party to the conflict - has seized swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

World powers appeared to believe that neither Assad nor his opponents were capable of decisive victory on the battlefield.

But Russia's apparent decision to abandon the latest peace process could signal it now thinks that victory is in reach, at least in the western cities where the majority of Syrians live.

Assad's fortunes improved a year ago when Russia joined the war on his side. Since then, Washington has worked hard to negotiate peace with Moscow, producing two ceasefires. But both proved short-lived, with Assad showing no sign of compromise.

Outside Aleppo, anti-Assad fighters have been driven mostly into rural areas. Nevertheless, they remain a potent fighting force, which they demonstrated with an advance of their own on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in New York; Writing by Anna Willard; Editing by Alison Williams and Adrian Croft)

Chomsky: Our Country Is Beset by Problems -- Do You Have the Patience of Decades It Takes Activists to Fix Them?

"We've changed things before and we can do it again."

Photo Credit: Ryan Keplin / Flickr

By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet-
September 23, 2016
Lifelong activist, prolific author and an MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky shared insights about Chomsky Archive, an MIT Libraries project commited to the preservation of his life's work. He also offered hope for audience members and online viewers doubting real progress through protest. 

"We want quick victories," Chomsky pointed out, but went on to explain that even the Civil Rights movement was rooted in a movement that had spread to America nearly 200 years prior. 

"[Civil Rights] sparked around nineteen sixty with several events; a couple of black students [arrested] at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina... Freedom writers in the South violence [with] tremendous courage registered voters, marches like Selma," Chomsky explains. "But it didn't begin in 1960, [it] goes back to abolitionism and that's the way life works; you're not going to get quick [victories], you get small changes, but major victories are going to take time," said Chomsky. 

Chomsky's first involvement with activism was as a teenager, advocating for Arab-Jewish cooperation in the mid-1940s. By the 1960s he became involved in anti-Vietnam war protests, which was very popular at MIT, where he had at that time, been teaching for over a decade. 

"[The protests] had an effect on bringing the war to an end," Chomsky said. "If you look closely at how it came to an end, it traces back to the fact that there was so much opposition to the war, engendered by these activities that the government was never able to call the national mobilization of the kind that was called during World War II... what was fought [in the sixties] was the 'guns and butter war,'" Chomsky explained, saying the government kept "the population quiet [and] at the same time continue[d] with the war."

WATCH:

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor. Follow her @alexpreditor.

Where Are We Now — President Bashar al-Assad

Courtesy: SANA

Syrian Arab News Agency

( September 24, 2016, Damascus, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Associated Press published Thursday, following is the full text:

Journalist: President Assad, thank you very much for this opportunity to be interviewed by the Associated Press.

President Assad: You are most welcome in Syria.

Where Are We Now — President Bashar Al-Assad by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Putin Has Finally Reincarnated the KGB

Twenty five years after the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s most infamous spy agency is back in all but name.

BY ANDREI SOLDATOV-SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

This past Sunday, as most of Russia focused its attention on parliamentary elections, the country’s most popular daily,Kommersant, broke news of a story that, if true, could have consequences that last far beyond this latest round of Duma reshuffling.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Kommersant, is planning a major overhaul of the country’s security services. The Russian daily reported that the idea of the reforms is to merge the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, with the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which keeps an eye on domestic affairs. This new supersized secret service will be given a new name: the Ministry of State Security. If that sounds familiar, it should — this was the name given to the most powerful and feared of Joseph Stalin’s secret services, from 1943 to 1953. And if its combination of foreign espionage and domestic surveillance looks familiar, well, it should: In all but name, we are seeing a resurrection of the Committee for State Security — otherwise known as the KGB.

The KGB, it should be remembered, was not a traditional security service in the Western sense — that is, an agency charged with protecting the interests of a country and its citizens. Its primary task was protecting the regime. Its activities included hunting down spies and dissidents and supervising media, sports, and even the church. It ran operations both inside and outside the country, but in both spheres the main task was always to protect the interests of whoever currently resided in the Kremlin. With this new agency, we’re seeing a return to form — one that’s been a long time in the making.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Russian leaders sought to create a depoliticized security structure. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the reform of the KGB became an immediate, pressing issue. The agency was not reliably under control: The chairman of the KGB at the time, Vladimir Kryuchkov, had helped mastermind the military coup attempt aimed at overthrowing Mikhail Gorbachev that August. But new President Boris Yeltsin had no clear ideas about just how he wanted to reform the KGB, so he simply decided to break it into pieces.

The largest department of the KGB — initially called the Ministry of Security; then, later, the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK); then, even later, the FSB — was given responsibility solely for counter-espionage and counterterrorism operations. The KGB’s former foreign intelligence directorate was transformed into a new agency called the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. The division of the KGB responsible for electronic eavesdropping and cryptography became the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, or FAPSI. A relatively obscure directorate of the KGB that guarded secret underground facilities continued its functions under a new name: the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President, or GUSP. The KGB branch that had been responsible for protecting Soviet leaders was renamed the Federal Protective Service, or FSO, and the Soviet border guards were transformed into an independent Federal Border Service, or FPS.

The main successor of the KGB amid this alphabet soup of changes was the FSK. But this new counterintelligence agency was stripped of its predecessor’s overseas intelligence functions. The agency no longer protected Russian leaders and was deprived of its secret bunkers, which fell under the president’s direct authority. It maintained only a nominal presence in the army. In its new incarnation, the agency’s mission was pruned back to something resembling Britain’s MI5: to fight terrorism and corruption.

But Yeltsin’s team never formed a clear strategy for how to transform what had once been the secret services of a totalitarian state into the intelligence community of a democracy. In a 1993 executive decree, Yeltsin lamented, reeling off a list of acronyms for various incarnations of the security agencies, that “the system of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB-NGKB-KGB-MB turned out to be incapable of being reformed. Reorganization efforts in recent years were external and cosmetic in nature.… The system of political investigation is preserved and may easily be restored.”

It was a prescient comment: By the mid-1990s, various component parts and functions of the old KGB had begun to make their way back to the FSK, like the liquid metal of the killer T-1000 android in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, slowly reconstituting itself after having been blown to bits.

First to return was the power to conduct domestic investigations. In November 1994, Yeltsin restored the investigative directorate of the FSK and placed the infamous Lefortovo prison, which had once held political prisoners and had been used for interrogations that involved torture, back under its remit. The next year saw a crucial name change: The FSK was rechristened the FSB. The shift from “K”
(kontrrazvedka, or counterintelligence) to “B” (bezopasnost, or security) was more than cosmetic; with the new name came a broad mandate for the FSB to become the guardian of “security” for Russia.
Over the course of the next five years, the FSB would win back many of its old functions. It would once again be given responsibility for pursuing dissidents, who were now branded “extremists,” and would be given its own foreign intelligence directorate, duplicating the SVR’s.

When Putin came to power in 2000, he initially appeared to follow the route laid out by his predecessor, Yeltsin. His main concern, at least at first, seemed to be minimizing competition between the secret services; as a result, in 2003, he allowed the FSB to absorb responsibility for the border troops and FAPSI — the electronic intelligence agency — and gave the service expanded powers over the army and police.
But the president, himself a former KGB officer, was too taken in by KGB myths about the role of the Cheka in Russian society to be satisfied with the FSB being a mere security organ. He was determined to see it become something bigger. Putin encouraged a steady growth in the agency’s influence. The president began using the FSB as his main recruitment base for filling key positions in government and state-controlled business; its agents were expected to define and personify the ideology of the new Russia. When FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev, in December 2000, called his officers Russia’s “new ‘nobility’” — a nickname that agents in the KGB could have hardly dreamed of being applied to them — he was taking a cue from his boss.

By the late 2000s, it was clear that Putin had bigger changes in store, but it wasn’t yet clear whether those changes would elevate the FSB or destroy it. Putin began making it apparent that he wasn’t happy with the agency’s effectiveness. In 2007, he asked another service, an antidrug agency led by his personal friend Viktor Cherkesov, to look into the FSB’s dealings, in the hope, it seems, of bringing it down. The attack on the agency failed utterly — and Putin was forced to fire his friend. Then Putin launched a new agency and gave it enormous powers: The Investigative Committee, a sort of Russian FBI, was tasked with conducting the most sensitive investigations, from the murders of Kremlin critics like Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov to prosecuting political activists. This was accompanied by an expansion of the Internal Troops — army units charged with operating within the country — and the launch of a new Department to Counter Extremism, housed within the Interior Ministry. Finally, this year, Putin created the National Guard, which is a massive and armed-to-the-teeth military force tasked with fighting internal dissent.

Throughout the 2000s, and for much of the 2010s, it looked as if Putin’s response to concerns about FSB ineffectiveness would be simply to create new agencies. With this weekend’s news, that strategy appears to have come to an abrupt end. If the Kommersant story is true, it would mean Putin has finally made up his mind about the fate of the FSB: It is to once again be restored to its former glory, as the most powerful security organ in the country by far.

There’s some method at work here. It’s been clear for some time that Putin is getting nervous about his political future. With elections pending in 2018, he’s started selective repressions, placed governors and officials in jail, and removed old friends from key positions, in moves seemingly aimed at what his role model Yuri Andropov once called “improv[ing] labor discipline.” Efforts to strengthen the security services fit within this pattern of centralizing control; what’s new is that he’s decided the best way to strengthen them is to merge them into one gigantic service, with a fearsome name and a reputation that reminds any would-be dissidents of the most frightening days of the Soviet era.

At the same time, the FSB has lost a certain something in this transition: Gone is any talk about a “new nobility,” and the agency is no longer being used as a recruitment base for other sectors of the government and economy. Putin has made it clear that what he needs is an instrument, pure and simple, to protect his own regime — just like the Politburo had its instrument in the KGB.

Ironically, however, it seems likely that the announced reforms will not actually improve FSB effectiveness — if anything, they’ll do the opposite. The agency will now be forced to spend resources to eliminate duplication (over the years, the FSB developed its own strong foreign intelligence branch, and it’s not clear how it will merge this with the SVR’s, for instance), to find new positions for generals who are out of jobs, and to deal with renaming departments, rewriting regulations, and the various other forms of bureaucratic chaos that accompany big mergers. That could paralyze the new mega-siloviki for an undetermined period — just at the time Putin needs it most.

Image credit: YANA LAPIKOVA/AFP/GettyImages

Indian court issues arrest warrant for Malaysia’s second richest man Krishnan

Ananda Krishnan, of Astro - Maxis, at the annual Allen & Co. Media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, Wednesday, July 7, 2010. Pic: AP

25th September 2016

A COURT in New Delhi, India issued an arrest warrant for Malaysian billionaire T. Ananda Krishnan following an investigation into an alleged telecommunications licensing corruption case.

According to Bloomberg, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has also obtained warrants for arrest for Ralph Marshall, deputy chairman at Krishnan-controlled Astro All Asia Networks Plc. Krishnan currently controls one of Malaysia’s largest telecommunications companies, Maxis Group, and is the second richest man in the country.

The bureau, according to the business news agency, sought the warrants as part of the investigation into claims of impropriety against India’s former telecommunications minister Dayanidhi Maran who allegedly favored an operator for a phone license.

In 2011, the bureau told the Supreme Court that Maran was being investigated for allegedly delaying the granting of a license to Aircel Cellular Ltd. The former minister had also allegedly pressured the company’s founder Chinnakannan Sivasankaran to sell his controlling stake to Maxis.

SEE ALSO: India’s Congress party leaders in court in corruption case

Maran resigned as textiles minister in 2011 and was telecommunications minister under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet between 2004 and 2007.

Bloomberg also pointed out that India has a history for issuing “unrealistic” arrest warrants citing the 2014 Suprme Court order against Samsung Electronics Co Chairman Lee Kun-Hee to appear before judges in a dispute over a US$1.4 million payment. The case is still pending, the agency reported.

According to The Hindu, the Special 2G court on Saturday ordered that the trial of Dayanidhi and his brother Kalanithi Maran, who is also implicated in the case, be held separately from that of two Malaysian nationals also accused in a corruption case arising out of the Aircel-Maxis deal.

SEE ALSO: Malaysian tycoon embroiled in India 2G scandal

The open warrants against Krishnan and Marshall was issued by Special judge O.P. Saini.

“It is ordered that the trial of the appearing accused, that is, Dayanidhi Maran, Kalanidhi Maran, Messrs Sun Direct TV Pvt. Ltd. and and Messrs South Asia Entertainment Holdings Ltd. be segregated from the trial of accused Ralph Marshall, T. Ananda Krishnan, Astro All Asia Networks Plc. and Maxis Communications Berhad,” Saini was quoted as saying.

“It is further ordered that an open and perpetual warrant of arrest be issued against Ralph Marshall and T. Ananda Krishnan, as prayed by the prosecution,” he said.

In 2013, India’s Parliament approved a contentious anti-graft bill that empowers an independent ombudsman to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption by politicians and bureaucrats.

The “Lokpal,” or watchdog, bill was passed by the lower house of Parliament after the government agreed to several amendments suggested by opposition lawmakers.

The anti-corruption bill was spurred by social activist Anna Hazare, who has been on a hunger strike for the last nine days. He has said he will end his fast once both houses of Parliament adopt the bill.