"U.S. intervention in Syria will be a disaster for the region," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

President Hassan Rohani's election victory in July was widely seen as an opening for improved relations between Iran and the United States. Rohani took a relatively moderate position on policy issues during his campaign, pledging to improve ties with the West and try a different approach in negotiations over Iran's contentious nuclear program.

That was welcomed by Iranian voters keen on seeing international economic sanctions lifted, and by many U.S. lawmakers open to talks that could prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says a U.S. intervention in Syria would considerably complicate such efforts.

"A military strike is likely to highlight the serious differences between the United States and Iran about developments in Syria," Clawson says. "That is more likely than not to complicate matters for reaching an agreement between the United States and its international partners with Iran about the nuclear impasse."

'A Disaster'

In turn, Iran's continued backing of the Syrian government, its main regional ally, could abruptly end any talk of lifting economic sanctions. This is because military intervention in Syria would be retaliation to a toxic gas attack the West believes was carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

"It would be very difficult for the United States to agree to a lifting of sanctions on Iran if Iran is perceived as providing vital support to a regime that uses chemical weapons," Clawson says.

The Iranian leadership has denounced possible military action against the Assad government, which is also a lifeline for the militant Shi'ite group Hizballah, Iran's proxy in neighboring Lebanon.

"U.S. intervention will be a disaster for the region," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in addressing Rohani's cabinet on August 28, according to state television. "The region is like a powder keg; its future cannot be predicted."

Any fallout from U.S. military action in Syria would depend on the extent of the intervention, Clawson says. The repercussions of surgical strikes against specific regime targets will complicate matters less than an ongoing U.S. campaign to oust Assad.

Especially Sensitive

Rohani has taken a more cautious approach. He has condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria, without placing blame, while joining Russian President Vladimir Putin in an August 28 telephone call stressed the need for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

But in keeping with Iran's hard-line position, General Masoud Jazayeri, deputy in chief of Iran's armed forces, on August 26 warned that any U.S. intervention in Iran would be a "red line."

"The U.S. is aware of the limit of a red line in the Syrian front, and any crossing of the Syrian red line will have severe consequences for the White House," he was quoted as saying by Iran's Tasnim news agency.

Many observers doubt that such consequences would include military retaliation by Iran. The issue of chemical weapons hits close to home in Iran, who had forces and civilians gassed during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, and the thinking is that Tehran would not respond with force to a brief and targeted strike.

But any military action would strengthen the position of Iran's hard-liners, who oppose talks with the United States and could drown out voices of moderation within Iran if Syria is attacked.

In order to protect its interests in Syria, Iran's leadership could opt to step up clandestine efforts in Syria by creating new proxies or calling upon existing groups such as Hizballah to fight for its interests.

"I would make it very difficult for him to call for greater relations with the West in the short term," Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of the London-based political risk-analysis group Cornerstone Global Associates, says of the immediate political impact for Rohani.

"One of his main mandates, as far as international policy is concerned, becomes undermined as a result of really not being able to sell to the hard-liners in the government the importance of greater or closer relations with the West."

via Payvand News

8 Issues to Think About Before Bombing Syria

There are eight main issues that the West should consider before bombing Syria:

1. What are the intervention goals?

All statements coming from Western leaders — particularly the U.S., Britain and France — suggest a narrow focus on chemical weapons rather than action designed to sway the overall trajectory of the conflict in Syria. Beyond a perceived sense of the need to "do something," the intention seems to be to send a signal on chemical weapons to deter further use in the Syria arena and reinforce a global norm alongside an apparent goal of restoring Western credibility. Washington, in particular, seems to have been convinced that if it takes no action on its own "red line" threat, it would be a sign of weakness and send a signal that it has replaced a gung-ho policy with a gun-shy one.

Less than 1 percent of casualties in Syria are even being attributed to chemical weapons claims. If there is a plan involving military action to reduce the suffering of Syrians and improve the situation, then presumably that would be aired irrespective of proof of chemical weapons use.

Nevertheless, any action will have consequences well beyond the chemical weapons issue, so any proposed action should also be measured against broader criteria of prospective implications for Syria and broader regional issues, including sectarian escalation, refugee flows and instability in Iraq and Lebanon, radicalization and diplomacy with Iran.

2. The chemical weapons dilemma

The West will try to influence the military balance in Syria if there is a strike, but there is a danger that the options under consideration could make the situation worse in Syria, in the region and for the prospects of crisis management diplomacy.

If chemical weapons have been used in Syria, preventing its further use doesn't suggest that Syrian casualties will be reduced, given that at least 99 percent of deaths are not attributable to chemical weapons.

3. The problem with evidence

Western powers may now be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the Assad regime has deployed chemical weapons. Yet that determination has not been made in a sufficiently robust way. It must at least be taken seriously and acknowledged that there is a degree of conviction with which some non-Western actors are making a counter case — whether that be in Russia, China, Iran or elsewhere in the region and the world, notably on a who-benefits basis.

The suggested irrefutability of the Western claim is undermined by the fact that United Nations inspections have not had sufficient time to determine who might have used chemical weapons in Syria. It is worth remembering that the UN inspectors on the ground — a development that the West pushed for hard at the UN — are ostensibly in Syria to review claims of chemical weapons use from five months ago. Western leaders would therefore appear to be on shaky ground in claiming that an investigation of chemical weapons use from five days ago is too little, too late.

4. The legality challenge

In addition, the legality of military strikes against Syria in the absence of authorization by the UN Security Council is questionable at best. There does not appear to be any basis to claim that military action is being undertaken in self-defense. While the use of chemical weapons undoubtedly violates international law, this does not mean that a coalition of countries has the right to take punitive action without the authorization of the UN Security Council. Therefore, the only possible legal basis for action lies in the disputed notion of humanitarian intervention.

Whatever legal arguments are advanced, an attack on Syria would inevitably fuel the belief around the world that Western powers are willing to act outside the Security Council when they wish. Military action would help reinforce the international norm against the use of chemical weapons but arguably undermine the norm against the use of force without Security Council backing. Every time that Western countries bypass or act outside the Security Council, international legality and collective security is undermined.

5. The military dynamic of Western intervention

The signals from Western leaders suggest that any military action would be limited in scope and duration. But it will be difficult for Western powers to limit their strikes to being one-off. It can also be self-defeating if the goal is to deter and restore credibility.

What if Syria uses chemical weapons again? The Syrian opposition, whose main goal for a long time has been to draw in Western military intervention, would do everything to make claims of new atrocities and to provoke Assad.

6. Impact on the trajectory of the Syria conflict

The conflict can get worse for Syrians, even more destabilizing for the region and can generate new threats to Western security.

The regime has not yet unleashed all the firepower it has. The rebels will undoubtedly see this as an opening to a more extensive Western military intervention and will calibrate their actions and public relations efforts accordingly.

In terms of domestic opinion in Syria, the Assad regime does not benefit when U.S. missiles are dispatched from offshore locations and appear over their skies, especially if there are civilian casualties.

Finally, how will this impact the flow of refugees? There is already a devastating refugee crisis that is stretching the coping mechanisms of neighboring states. The possible impact on the refugee situation cannot be a secondary consideration.

7. Impact on the region

The current Western debate on Syria is taking place in the absence of a broader strategic conversation on prioritizing what matters most for Western interests in the Middle East. The default position is to place the emasculation of Iran as the top priority item, despite growing evidence that the greatest threat from the region is a cycle of sectarian escalation with Syria at its core. This sectarian violence is fueling radicalization, threatening to increase the level of anti-Western jihadism across the Greater Middle East.

An attempt to rethink Western powers' Middle East policy should therefore focus on a strategy, the center point of which should be regional de-escalation, requiring more, not less, diplomacy with those with whom the West disagrees, notably Iran and Russia. It is hard to see how a military escalation can serve this goal. But it is easy to see how it would further squeeze the space for sectarian de-escalation.

8. A diplomatic alternative

Until now, most Western policy debate has navigated between military-lite and diplomacy-lite options. Military-lite is what is under consideration now, but pushing harder on diplomacy is what the West should be doing.

In the immediate term, a diplomatic alternative might include working to expand the UN mandate for chemical weapons inspectors. Pushing Russia on this issue will play to an area in which Russia might be highly defensive about. Russia's position is stronger in opposing military force. The West should insist on obtaining clearer evidence on chemical weapon use in advance of further discussions at the Security Council. This would build on the positions that Russia, China and Iran have taken against chemical weapons use to push Assad on inspectors.

via: The Moscow Times

Five Things You Should Know About Disappearances

Every year in dozens of countries around the world, thousands of men, women and children are detained by state authorities for no reason, never to be seen again. They are the "disappeared". In 2012 alone, Amnesty International documented such cases in 31 countries. Here are five facts you should know on International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, 30 August.

Since the beginning of the uprising that led to armed conflict in Syria two years ago, there's again been a dramatic increase in the authorities' use of enforced disappearances to silence opposition and sow fear among their friends and relatives. Thousands of people have been arrested, with many held incommunicado at unknown locations at which torture and other ill-treatment are reported to be rife. This adds to the some 17,000 people, mostly Islamists, who were disappeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the country.

In Sri Lanka, some 12,000 complaints of enforced disappearances have been submitted to the UN since the 1980s .But the actual number is much higher, with at least 30,000 cases alleged up to 1994 and many thousands reported after that.

In Mexico, more than 26,000 people were reported missing or disappeared between 2006 and 2012 - mainly in the context of the violence between drug cartels and security force deployments to combat organized crime. The security forces are responsible for some of these but investigations in almost all cases are so poor that victims are rarely found and virtually no one has been held to account.

More than a third of the countries where Amnesty International documented enforced disappearances in 2012 were in sub-Saharan Africa, in: Angola, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and South Sudan.

Despite constant requests by the relatives of the missing, the UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), responsible for the investigation and prosecution of crimes under international law, failed to investigate hundreds of the enforced disappearances and abductions that took place during the 1998-89 armed conflict in Kosovo, and in its aftermath.

STORIES

Syria

Syrian human rights lawyer Khalil Ma'touq, and his friend and assistant, Mohammad Thatha set off to Khalil Ma'touq's office on 2 October 2012 but never arrived there. It is believed that they were detained at a Syrian government security checkpoint at some point along the way.

In February 2013, in response to a request for information from a group of lawyers, a public prosecutor in Damascus denied that Khalil Ma'touq was being held. However, detainees released at that time from the State Security branch 285 in Kafr Soussa in Damascus reported seeing him held there.

In April, Khalil Ma'touq's lawyer told Amnesty International that a State Security officer had informed him of his client's transfer to an Air Force Intelligence branch in late March.

People close to the two men have received unofficial tip-offs over time suggesting that Khalil Ma'touq is in extremely bad health - he suffers from advanced lung disease and has severe breathing difficulties. He takes regular medication and must be under constant medical supervision.

Khalil Ma'touq has provided legal assistance to many victims of human rights abuses in Syria for many years. He has defended hundreds of political prisoners, journalists, and prisoners of conscience, including those tried by the Supreme State Security Court which fell far short of international standards of fair trial and was abolished in 2011.

Angola

Angolan war veterans Silva Alves Kamulingue and Isaías Sebastião Cassule have not been seen or heard from since they were abducted from the street in Luanda, the capital, on 27 and 29 May 2012 respectively. Their families have tried in vain to locate them and the Angolan authorities have repeatedly denied any knowledge of the men's whereabouts.

Silva was on his way to a protest he had helped organize to demand payments of pensions and salaries owed to them when, at about 3pm, he telephoned a journalist and told him he was being followed by a group of "well-built men" in civilian clothes similar in appearance to those who had been involved in the violent suppression of demonstrations in Luanda in previous months. He said he feared for his life and that he was running to a nearby hotel. According to the journalist, the line then dropped and he could not re-establish contact with Silva, who has not been seen or heard from since.

Isaías disappeared two days later, on 29 May 2012, at around 6.15pm. Four men abducted him in Luanda's Cazenga district where he was meeting a man who claimed to have a video recording of Silva's abduction. A friend who was with Isaías at the time said that, 15 minutes into the meeting, a car arrived, several well-built men got out of it and walked toward them. At this point he was afraid and ran away, leaving Isaías behind. Isaías has not been seen or heard from since.

Mexico

Armando del Bosque was detained by Mexican marines in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, on 3 August and hasn't been seen since.

Navy officials deny detaining him but eyewitnesses say they saw 33-year-old Armando driving his car in a town a few minutes from Nuevo Laredo, when marines stopped him, dragged him out of his vehicle, handcuffed him and took him away in a military vehicle.

He was then taken to the Navy's provisional compound on the outskirts of town. Armando's father went to the compound a few minutes later and a captain informed him that his son had been arrested and that he was being questioned. The captain promised to update him on his son's situation as it developed.

An hour later, the officer met Armando's father again and told him the captain denied that his son had been arrested and refused to provide any further information.

Relatives, supported by the statements of four eyewitnesses, filed a complaint with the Federal Attorney General's Office and the National Human Rights Commission. There is no evidence that an effective search for Armando del Bosque or an investigation into his apparent enforced disappearance has been conducted.

Kosovo

Petrija Piljević was abducted from in front of her apartment in Prishtinë/Priština on 28 June 1999 by three armed men in Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) uniform. A Kosovo Serb neighbour who attempted to help her was also abducted. Both were initially held in another apartment in the same building.

Neighbours who witnessed the abduction called a patrol from the Kosovo Force (KFOR) to the scene, but unable to speak English, they could not explain the situation to the soldiers. Instead a Kosovo Albanian neighbour spoke to the KFOR patrol leader, and subsequently the patrol left without taking any action. Shortly afterwards, Petrija Piljević and her neighbour were taken outside by the men in KLA uniform and put in a car. Two gun shots were heard and the car drove away in an unknown direction.

In 2000, Petrija Piljević's remains were exhumed and returned to her son. No one has been brought to justice.

In 2013 a Human Rights Advisory Panel established by UNMIK found that UN international police had failed to conduct a prompt, through and effective investigation into Petrija Piljević's abduction, and had failed to inform her son when they suspended the investigation in 2003.

via http://allafrica.com

Nigeria: Country May Soon Ban Fish Importation - Minister

Akinwumi Adesina

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Akinwumi Adesina, said on Tuesday that the Federal Government may soon place a total ban on the importation of fish and other aquatic consumables.

Mr. Adesina said this in Ado-Ekiti at the launch of the Special Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme for Fisheries and Aquaculture value chain.

He, however, said that the ban would be imposed, only if arrangements being put in place by the government to that effect worked as planned.

The minister, represented at the occasion by the Federal Director of Fisheries, Foluke Areola, stressed that Nigeria had no business importing fish given its huge natural and renewable resources.

He said it was in view of this that the ministry was promoting increased fish production through the Aquaculture Value Chain.

This is in pursuance of the goal of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA), he said.

"The Value Chains are to create an enabling environment for increased and sustainable production of over one million tonnes of fish within the next four years, generate employment and pursue gradual reduction of fish imports," he said.

Mr. Adesina said the Aquaculture Value Chain, under the four- year implementation plan, would increase the annual production of fingerlings in the country by 1.25 billion tonnes.

He said it would also produce 400,000 tonnes of fish feed, generate additional 250,000 tonnes of table fish and 100,000 tonnes of Value Added fish products.

"Fish farming is a business venture with lots of potential investment opportunities and a veritable tool for increased fish production, poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihoods," the minister said.

The minister noted that the Aquaculture Value Chain had already been included in the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme for 2013.

Under the scheme, inputs such as fish and other sea foods would be distributed to many Nigerian fish farmers, he said.

The minister commended President Goodluck Jonathan's initiative in transforming agriculture into a serious business venture as well as in ensuring adequate food security for Nigerians.

He announced that in an effort by government to protect local fish farmers operating in the country, measures had been put in place to curb illegal importation of fish.

Mr. Adesina said that the ministry was collaborating with officers and men of the Nigeria Customs Service in this regard, adding that the Federal Department of Fisheries had also been directed to ensure the stoppage of importation of the banned fish inputs.

In his speech, Governor Kayode Fayemi, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Ganiyu Owolabi, thanked the Federal Government for its benevolence.

He said the state government would support its policies and programmes on agriculture.

via http://tinyurl.com/qb3byjy

Did Kremlin Arrange Snowden's Trip to Russia?

June 21 was the hottest day of the year in Hong Kong: a sweltering 34 degrees Celsius. But it was also a hot day for Edward Snowden, the leaker of U.S. secrets, hiding out in China's special administrative region.

On that day in Washington, U.S. federal prosecutors officially brought charges against Snowden for unauthorized communication of classified and national defense information, both of which fell under the U.S. Espionage Act.

On that day in Hong Kong, Snowden received a one-way ticket to Moscow on Aeroflot, Russia's state-controlled flag carrier. As Kommersant reported Monday, citing Russian sources, Snowden also celebrated his 30th birthday in the safety of his new refuge, the Russian consulate in Hong Kong.

Located on the 21st floor of a steel and glass skyscraper, the Russian consulate offered more than a stunning view of Victoria Harbor. It also offered Snowden refuge from a U.S. arrest warrant.

For two days, Snowden stayed at the 17-room Russian consulate before being whisked away by car in the early morning hours June 23 for the 10-hour Aeroflot flight to Moscow.

From the start of Snowden's saga, Russian officials have always claimed that they were surprised by Snowden's arrival June 23 at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.

"It is true that Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow, and it really came as a surprise to us," President Vladimir Putin told reporters in Finland on June 25. "Any accusations against Russia [of aiding him] are rubbish." Later, Putin called Snowden "an unwanted Christmas present."

Sources in Moscow differ on how Snowden ended up in Russia's care. Some say the Chinese wanted to get rid of him and suggested that he turn to the Russian consulate. Others say Russian officials themselves contacted Snowden at The Mira, the luxury hotel where he was staying in Hong Kong. Another version is that Snowden went to the consulate on his own.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said June 24 that WikiLeaks paid Snowden's hotel bill in Hong Kong and bought the Aeroflot ticket for him with a Hong Kong-Moscow-Havana itinerary.

Assange has a special relationship with RT, the Kremlin-funded television channel. Last year, RT hired Assange to host a political talk show. The channel gives heavy and generously favorable coverage to Assange, Snowden and the other U.S. leaker in the news, Bradley Manning.

Kommersant and other Russian media dwelled on why Snowden never used the second half of his Aeroflot ticket, from Moscow to Havana. The Russian media said Moscow got stuck with Snowden because Washington pressured Havana to refuse him.

To be sure, Havana has been conspicuously quiet on the Snowden affair. Soviet-generation Russians remember Cuba as the nation that gave refuge to hijackers of U.S. airlines well into the 1980s.

But change comes even to Cuba, ruled for the last half century by the Castro brothers. In June, President Raul Castro turned 82. Apparently, Cuba's new generation wants a fresh start with Washington. For Havana, giving refuge to the United States' most-wanted man is a throwback to the 1960s.

Snowden spent almost six weeks in Sheremetyevo, Moscow's busiest international airport, reportedly in the transit area. Snowden's stay there was handled very professionally. There were no leaks, no e-mails to reporters and no late-night telephone calls to his parents or his girlfriend in Hawaii. About 3.5 million passengers flowed in and out of the airport during that time, and, amazingly, there were no credible Snowden sightings.

His legal limbo apparently dragged on because Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service, hinted to Washington that a spy trade might be possible..

The only time Snowden was sighted was July 12 during a carefully choreographed meeting with directors of several nongovernmental organizations, a few lawyers and pro-Kremlin politicians. Reporters were not invited.

Anatoly Kucherena was one of the lawyers invited to the meeting. Several days later, Kucherena announced that he was selected by Snowden to become his lawyer and spokesman. Kucherena advised Snowden to drop his 20 or so asylum requests to other countries and focus on Russia.

Kucherena has an interesting background. Two years ago, Putin picked Kucherena to serve on the Public Chamber, a pro-Kremlin government oversight body. Putin also chose Kucherena to serve on a board that oversees the FSB.

On the Snowden case, Kucherena's legal advice proved solid. On Aug. 1, Snowden was granted a year's temporary asylum in Russia. That day, he and Sarah Harrison, his WikiLeaks traveling companion, left the airport and have not  been seen in public since.

Within hours after Snowden's departure, WikiLeaks issued a statement thanking the Russian government. Assange added: "This is another victory in the fight against Obama's war on whistleblowers. This battle has been won, but the war continues."

Several days before Snowden arrived in Moscow, the South China Morning Post published an interview that had taken place earlier in Hong Kong. In the interview, Snowden said he joined Booz Allen Hamilton, the contractor with the National Security Agency, with the sole purpose of using his security clearance to steal the U.S. government's cyber spying secrets.

Now that Snowden and his four NSA laptop computers are in the safekeeping of the Kremlin, one question begs an answer: When exactly did the Kremlin enter Snowden's life?

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/did-kremlin-arrange-snowdens-trip-to-russia/485140.html#ixzz2dHn1PI8d
The Moscow Times

Eritrea - An African Country

Eritrea - An African Country from Zulfir Sadat

Crossing red line on Syria will have severe consequences, Iran warns U.S.

Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri

An Iranian general has warned the United States against crossing the red line on Syria, saying any military intervention by Washington will have severe consequences. 


"The United States knows the boundaries of the red line of the Syrian front and any crossing of the red line on Syria will have severe consequences for the White House," the deputy chief of the general staff of Iran's armed forces, Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, said on Sunday in reference to recent hawkish remarks on Syria by U.S. officials. 

The war which is raging in Syria is the result of a plot hatched by the United States and certain countries in the region to undermine the resistance front against the Zionist regime, he said, adding that the Syrian government and people have achieved major victories in spite of the fact that a large bloc of enemies have launched a massive offensive against them.

"The Syrian government and people have the upper hand in the imposed war (waged by) terrorists (and backed by) the global arrogance (forces of imperialism) and reactionaries, and the propaganda campaign mounted by Western media outlets is due to Syria's achievements in dealing with its enemies," he said.

According to AFP, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Sunday the U.S. military was ready to take action against the Syrian government if ordered, but stressed that Washington was still evaluating claims of a chemical weapons attack.

"President Obama has asked the Defense Department to prepare options for all contingencies. We have done that," Hagel told reporters in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

"Again, we are prepared to exercise whatever option, if he decides to employ one of those options."

He said the U.S. and its allies were assessing intelligence on allegations that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons in an attack against armed rebels near Damascus last week.

"I would not go further than that, until we have more intelligence based on facts," Hagel said. 
via http://tinyurl.com/ltxh54s

Freed Indian fishermen cross border from Pakistan

Released Indian fishermen prisoners cross over the India-Pakistan Wagah border post on August 24, 2013. In a goodwill gesture to boost the peace process with India, Pakistan released 362 Indian fishermen, prisoners imprisoned for fishing in Pakistan territorial waters, officials said.
© AFP Narinder Nanu

LAHORE, Pakistan  – Nearly 340 Indian fishermen held by Pakistan for violating territorial waters crossed the border on Saturday after they were freed amid high tensions over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

The move is part of an understanding between the nuclear-armed rivals to release those who mistakenly stray into each other’s waters.

It came after weeks of cross-border firing in Kashmir, with the two countries’ military forces blaming each other for the unrest.

“All 337 Indian fishermen including seven juveniles crossed the border into India from Wagah crossing point near Lahore,” Rizwanullah Jamili, a senior official of an aid group facilitating prisoners’ release, told AFP.

The release had been sped up by Pakistan as a goodwill gesture to India amid increasing tensions.
Sporadic firing in recent weeks across the heavily militarised Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border in Kashmir, has sent tensions between the neighbours soaring.

Kashmir has been in dispute since India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947, with both sides claiming it in full but controlling only part, and violence flares there from time to time.
The latest round was triggered by a raid on August 5 that left five Indian soldiers dead, with the incident blamed by Delhi on the Pakistani military. Islamabad has denied the claims and struck a conciliatory tone, urging restraint and dialogue.

Fishermen from both countries are frequently held for straying across the disputed and poorly defined maritime boundary in the Arabian Sea.

There are still 97 Indian fishermen and three other Indian nationals, including a juvenile, languishing in jails in Karachi.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/kghohax

President of the Hindu Mahasabha Kashinath slams VHP

File Photo: Babri Masjid Demolition - 2002

VHP's proposed 84-Kosi Yatra, voices of criticism from saffron organizations and seers grew louder on Saturday. The yatra is finding it difficult to garner popular Hindu support.

Criticizing the move, UP president of the Hindu Mahasabha Kashinath said, "VHP and RSS start activities to polarize Hindu votes in favour of the BJP whenever elections are round the corner. However, soon thereafter they put Hindutava on the back-burner." Similarly, he said, they are using the Yatra for political gains and would throw away seers once their purpose is solved. "If VHP really cares about Hindus, it must tell people what it has done for other places of Hindu worship," he said.

Mahasabha state coordinator Rita Rai said, "We will only support VHP's Yatra if it is organised after LS elections."

In Ayodhya, Mahant Gyandas, head of the committee of seers which organizes parikrama every year, said, "Parikramas, be it 14-kosi or 84-kosi, are performed during the Chaitra month of the Hindu calendar, which this year was in April. Holding yatra in the Bhadon month is neither a tradition, nor mentioned anywhere in religious scriptures."

Similarly, chief priest of Ram Janmabhumi temple Acharya Satyendra Das said, "The parikrama has already been performed between Chaitra Purnima to Baisakh Navami (April-May) as per Hindu calendar.."

Mahamandaleshwar Swami Kailashanand Brahamchari, the seer of Dakshin Kali Temple, Haridwar, also came out in support of the SP. Kailashanand said that "the government should respect views of Hindu seers but also see that communal harmony is not disturbed".

Earlier, Shankaracharya of Govardhan Peeth in Mathura, Swami Adokhshajanand Teerth Saraswati, had written to chief minister Akhilesh Yadav asking him not to allow Sangh Parivar to turn a religious yatra into a political one. Accusing the VHP of using the Ram temple issue to divide the nation on religious grounds, he had also demanded VHP to furnish the detailed account of the funds it received through donation for construction of the Ram temple.

Following feedback that the Yatra has not been able to evoke desired response for the VHP , chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is believed to have directed SP leaders to tell people that the SP is not anti-Hindu. For this, they should publicize the work done by the government for the Hindus, such successfully condicting the Mahakumbh which was acknowledged all over the world.

The CM has also reportedly directed the officials not to take any step which may provide the opposition an opportunity to polarize votes. He feels that if the state administration is able to contain the VHP move without any untoward incident, it will help in refurbishing UP's image which is suffering because of poor law and order situation and communal riots after SP came to power.

It will also help the SP strengthen its Muslim vote bank without incurring dislike of Hindus, he reportedly maintained. This will help the party in 2014 Lok Sabha polls as it did in 2012 assembly elections.

Pakistan released 337 Indian fishermen

In an extraordinary gesture aimed at reducing border tensions between the South Asian neighbours, Pakistan released 337 Indian fishermen on Friday who were detained for violating maritime territory.

The Pakistani government had initially planned to release 340 fishermen, but one had expired in prison, another was released before the scheduled time on humanitarian grounds as he had cancer, and a third one had a documents problem.

The released fishermen boarded buses for Lahore. They will be later handed over to the Indian authorities at the Wagah border on Saturday.

Pakistan and India regularly release fishermen detained by both sides for violating maritime limits, but the latest release is of greater significance keeping in view the increasing tensions between the two countries because of the accusations of ceasefire violations along the Kashmir border in recent days.

Sami Memon, the spokesperson for the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, told The News that there were 97 more Indian fishermen detained in Pakistani prisons over the same charges.

“These fishermen have been released after a long struggle by the PFF and other civil society groups,” he added.

“At the end of last month, 14 Pakistani fishermen were released from Indian prisons when they had completed their prison terms there.”

Memon appealed to the Indian government to release around 150 fishermen detained in different prisons of the Indian city of Gujarat. Most of them belong to the coastal belt of Sindh.

“It is unfortunate that there are more than 66 Pakistani fishermen languishing in Indian jails for the past 13 to19 years. It has not even been declared that they are fishermen,” rued Memon.

“These fishermen considered missing here but my organisation believes that they are in Indian prisons. These ignored workers need amnesty on humanitarian grounds. In many cases, cyclones push their boats into the other country’s maritime territory.”

Memon said the Indian government had released three “civilians” who were actually fishermen from Ibrahim Hyderi when it had recently released 14 detained Pakistani fishermen.

“As they were not declared fishermen, they were left in Lahore. Later, they were taken to Karachi when the authorities learnt about their actual whereabouts,” he exlained.

“It is a common practice that when prisoners are released on the border, they are separated as civilians and fishermen.”

These fishermen, Memon said, were part of a crew of five and the remaining two - Hussain and Hanif – were still in Indian prisons as they had to pay the imposed fine.

“Generally, the Fishermen Cooperative Society which is a semi-government organisation does not know about the whereabouts of the missing fishermen.”

Memon demanded that the government should facilitate the PFF and provide opportunity to it for arranging the release of detained Pakistani fishermen and to pay the fine if it had been imposed on them in India.

Pakistani and Indian civil societies have been playing an active role for the release of fishermen from both countries’ prisons. Their common demand has been to issue identity cards to the crew of both sides, allowing them to enjoy fish catch within 100-nauticial miles of agreed territory of both sides without any fear.

Compliance report

The Sindh High Court chief justice directed the interior ministry on Friday to submit a compliance report after repatriating the detained Indian fishermen who had completed their sentence periods in Pakistani prison, adds Jamal Khurshid.

The release of the 340 Indian fishermen became possible on the directives of the SHC. SHC Chief Justice Mushir Alam had taken up the cases of four Indian fishermen - Mewar, Manooj, Ramesh and Vipol - in June who had submitted that they were not being released by the authorities despite serving their sentences.

The court had sought a report from jail authorities regarding the status of foreign prisoners who had served their sentences but were not being repatriated and ordered their immediate release.

SHC CJ had directed the interior ministry and the Sindh home department to pursue the process of the repatriation of the convicts who had completed their sentences or acquitted by the court.

Justice Alam had observed that because of the non-repatriation of these prisoners, the prisons were overcrowded.

In compliance with the court order issued on July 20 for the release of 395 Indian prisoners, the interior ministry had submitted that the national status of 340 Indian fishermen had been confirmed by the Indian High Commission while that of the remaining 50 fishermen was still pending.

Zurghan Shahzad, the interior ministry’s section officer, had submitted that two civil prisoners, Latiful Haq and Mohammad Hanif, had already been released on July 9 whereas the confirmation of the national status of two remaining prisoners, Sonu Singh and Danesh Chander, was still to be confirmed by the Indian authorities.

He said the national status of one civil prisoner, Rafiq Jatt, had been confirmed by the Indian High Commission, but his sentence had not completed yet.

The ministry had assured the court that 340 Indian prisoners would be repatriated on August 24 through the Wagah border while the remaining 50 fishermen and three civil prisoners would be freed after confirmation of their national status and completion of their sentence term.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/mkfblgv

Science and politics make for a poisonous mix

Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of such popular science books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right, he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision.

Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpose of their own, and the intrusion is resented. Far from deriding science as a campaign to diminish and oversimplify — to reduce beauty to brain chemistry, say, or ethics to natural selection — the humanities should welcome science as a source of new inspiration: “Surely our conceptions of politics, culture, and morality have much to learn from our
best understanding of the physical universe and of our makeup as a species.”

No doubt that’s true. And while we’re praising science, let’s agree that Pinker is right to call it a force for enormous social good in all the indisputable ways he mentions. Fine. Intelligent critics of “scientism” — the term they’ve adopted for science gone wrong — wouldn’t deny any of this.
Their most valid complaints are different — and Pinker ignores them, perhaps because he hasn’t understood them. Put simply, science is a force for good so long as it’s done well and its limits are recognized. But science isn’t always done well, and its limits aren’t always recognized. When it’s done badly or pushes past its proper bounds yet still expects to command respect, that’s scientism.

The most important limit to science arises from the distinction between facts and values. This isn’t to deny that science can shed light on values — lately an active area of research. Science can make moral values intelligible in physical terms. It can reveal what’s happening in the brain when a person wrestles with a moral dilemma; it can explain how certain moral instincts might confer an evolutionary advantage, or why they might persist. It can show that the supposed empirical basis for some moral values is simply false — for instance, as Pinker puts it, that “there is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution or answered prayers.”

“Though the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values,” Pinker goes on, “they certainly hem in the possibilities.” He’s right about this — but the second point, though interesting, is much less important than the first. Science can’t dictate values. That’s what matters. And because it can’t dictate values, it can’t dictate courses of action.

Pinker forgets this almost as soon as he’s said it: In combination “with a few unexceptionable convictions — that all of us value our own welfare and that we are social beings who impinge on each other and can negotiate codes of conduct — the scientific facts militate toward a defensible morality, namely adhering to principles that maximize the flourishing of humans and other sentient beings.”

This emerging “de facto morality of modern democracies” provides “the moral imperatives we face today.”

Really? Perhaps Pinker needs to widen his circle of acquaintances. Ideas of what constitutes human flourishing vary a lot even within relatively homogeneous societies. Variation from society to society, or culture to culture, is far bigger. How to combine the principles that maximize the flourishing of humans is disputable — and always will be. The conflicting demands of individual liberty, family loyalty and social solidarity (to name just three of many such principles) can’t be resolved by means of facts. There’s no one right formula.

Claiming otherwise isn’t a harmless error. It’s politically toxic. If Pinker believes that the facts are militating toward a scientific morality, what does that say about the people who take a different view of human flourishing? You no longer have a good-faith disagreement between people with different values — you have a clash between scientific enlightenment and intellectual backwardness. That’s not the basis for friendly interaction. It’s no accident that the more aggressive kinds of scientism — the so-called New Atheism springs to mind — are bullying and intolerant. Intolerance isn’t conducive to human flourishing.

If science expects to command respect, it should not only be aware of its own limits, but it also should be practiced to a high standard. Pinker seems to take for granted that it will be. He applauds the scientific temperament. The defining practices of science “are explicitly designed to circumvent the errors and sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable.”

Science is modest, you see — intent on testing itself. Any movement that “fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs” does not qualify as scientific, he says.
Quite right. But you’d be hard-pressed to argue that all parts of the climate-science community, for instance, had nurtured opportunities for the falsification of their own beliefs. The e-mails published during the Climategate scandal suggest that was not a priority. Groupthink, getting with the program and extreme impatience with dissent seem more to the fore in some climate-science quarters than zealous self- criticism.

Climate science, a far-flung family of loosely related disciplines, is unusual because it has become closely aligned with a set of costly and controversial policy proposals. This political orientation raises a question: Which comes first — the science of climate or the art of persuasion?

Many climate scientists believe global warming requires urgent measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. They look despairingly at governments unable or unwilling to respond and campaign all the more aggressively. They have a case (I’m for a gradually increasing carbon tax, if you’re wondering), but their standing as advocates and activists has undermined their authority as disinterested scientists.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will release its fifth assessment report on global warming next year, is likewise seen by many as an advocacy organization rather than a neutral compiler of scientific evidence.

This has done great harm: The scientist-advocates overreached and diminished their own effectiveness.

What to do about climate change is indeed a political question. Good science, along with good economics, is needed to inform the political judgment, but to claim that the science is settled and that the right policy is dictated by undisputed facts is false. The science isn’t settled, and even if it were, it wouldn’t dictate the policy.

Voters know this, which is why the tactic didn’t work. Science, for its own sake and everybody else’s, should keep a cautious distance from politics.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/n5xfasn

Govt says Aadhaar card is not mandatory to avail of subsidies

Aadhaar card is not mandatory to avail of subsidies under government schemes including on domestic cooking gas, the government today said in the Rajya Sabha.

“Aadhar card is not mandatory for availing subsidies. If any public sector undertaking is doing it, we will correct it,” Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajeev Shukla said.

He was responding to members’ concerns that despite giving an assurance that the card was not a must for availing of services like opening bank accounts, admission in school and obtaining passport, some public sector undertakings were forcing the people to do so.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, MP Achuthan (CPI-M) said that in Kerala public sector oil companies had made it mandatory for people to get Aadhar-linked bank accounts for getting subsidy on LPG.

Achuthan questioned that when the government had already made it clear that the card was not mandatory for availing subsidies, “who gave power to public sector oil companies to ask for Aadhar-linked bank accounts” for providing subsidies.

He lamented that there are thousands of people who could not get the card despite registration.
Several members from CPI, CPI-M, BJP and other parties associated themselves with the demand that non-availability of Aadhar numbers should not be made an excuse to deny subsidy and benefits to people under various schemes.

Sri Lankan External Affairs Minister calls on Pakistan Prime Minister

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has said that Pakistan values its relations with Sri Lanka which are characterized by cordiality and friendship and expressed the desire to further deepen and broaden these ties through regular contacts and exchange of visits.

The Prime Minister expressed these views in a meeting with Sri Lanka s Minister for External Affairs Prof. G. L. Peiri and High Commissioner of Sri Lanka Air Chief Marshal (R) Jayalath Weerakkody who called on him at the Prime Minister s Office on Friday.

The Prime Minister said that Pakistan deeply admired Sri Lanka s unremitting endeavours for promoting economic independence, human dignity and social justice for the people of Sri Lanka.
The Prime Minister also appreciated Sri Lanka s commendable efforts in rehabilitation of the IDPs and reconstruction of the war affected areas.

The Prime Minister said that Pakistan has always supported Sri Lanka in its endeavour to defeat terrorism and expressed Pakistan s commitment to continue extending support to Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council and UN Security Council.

The Prime Minister conveyed Pakistan s desire to deepen economic ties between the two countries and to conclude an early bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Sri Lanka. It would help broadening and deepening of economic and commercial relations by including key elements of investment, services, customs cooperation and standardization, the Prime Minister added.

The Prime Minister said that both the countries should work together for frequent and easier people to people contacts by promoting tourism.

With New Nuke Team, Iran Raises Status of P5+1 Talks

In what should be read as an overture to the U.S., Iran announced this week that it was placing the Foreign Ministry in charge of negotiations with the P5+1.

Since 2003, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has handled the nuclear file, with the Secretary of the SNSC serving as Iran’s de facto lead nuclear negotiator (before then, Iran viewed its nuclear program as purely a technical matter and consequently the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran handled most of what was an unorganized nuclear policy-making system).

The SNSC was created by the 1989 constitution revisions in Iran, and its membership consists of:

“[The] heads of three branches of the government, chief of the Supreme Command Council of the Armed Forces, the officer in charge of the planning and budget affairs, two representatives nominated by the Leader, ministers of foreign affairs, interior, and information, a minister related with the subject, and the highest ranking officials from the Armed Forces and the Islamic Revolution's Guards Corps.”

The constitution dictates that all SNSC decisions be approved by the Supreme Leader before becoming official policy.

In some ways, placing the nuclear dossier with the Foreign Ministry doesn’t change much. After all, Iran’s president already appointed the secretary of the SNSC. In the past, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has given Iran’s presidents a large degree of latitude in selecting the secretary. For example, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was allowed to fire Ali Larijani as the SNSC’s secretary, even though Larijani is a close confidante of Supreme Leader. Khamenei was not willing to extend similar latitude to the former president when it came to selecting the intelligence minister.

Moreover, although the Foreign Ministry will handle the nuclear negotiations with the P5+1, Iran has made it clear that the SNSC will still be in charge of making the strategic decisions involving the nuclear program and negotiations about it. Because decisions by the SNSC have to be approved by the Supreme Leader, this means that the ultimate authority in guiding the negotiations will remain with Khamenei.

Still, the decision to have the Foreign Ministry handle the nuclear negotiations is not entirely inconsequential. Rather, Iran’s decision to move the file to the FM was intended to be a signal to the West in general and the U.S. in particular.

For being irrational Mullahs bent on the destruction of the U.S., Iranian leaders are acute followers of American politics (and in many cases Western literature). Many of the most senior leaders in the country, including the new foreign minister, studied in the United States before the 1979 revolution.

They also closely monitor debates about Iran and the Middle East in the United States, and tailor their actions accordingly. For example, after Khamenei—acting on the advice of all Iran’s factional leaders including the Green Movement— refused to sign onto a nuclear fuel swap agreement Ahmadinejad had worked out with the P5+1 in late 2009, many in the West concluded that the Supreme Leader was adamantly opposed to a deal with the U.S regardless of its contents. When Khamenei later decided he wanted to conclude a nuclear agreement with the P5+1, he took a number of steps to convey this change to the West, including giving the SNSC secretary at the time, Saeed Jalili, the title of personal representative to the Supreme Leader.

The latest decision to have the Foreign Ministry handle Iran’s nuclear negotiations should first be interpreted in a similar light. Since Rouhani’s election as president, skeptics in the West have tried to dampen down expectations about a possible deal with Iran by pointing out that Khamenei could keep Rouhani on a tight leash in handling the nuclear file. By empowering the Foreign Ministry with the delicate task of negotiating, Iran is seeking to convey to the West that Rouhani will have substantial latitude in carrying out the upcoming negotiations. After all, unlike the SNSC, the Foreign Ministry reports directly to Rouhani and the president’s authority isn’t diluted by the presence of other powerful actors, which is the case with the SNSC.

This is further collaborated by other developments in Iran, such as Khamenei’s backing of Rouhani’s “prudent” policy towards the world, Rouhani already appointing a new direct of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and, more recently, the announcement that he is removing Iran’s long-standing permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 

It’s quite possible that Iran has another, complimentary motivation in empowering the Foreign Ministry—namely, raising the profile of the P5+1 talks. This could prove more problematic for the U.S.

Although no announcement has been made yet, by naming the Foreign Ministry as the lead negotiating body, Iran is likely to have its new Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif lead its negotiating team. As other sources have noted, this is in some ways a positive development for the West as Zarif is seen as a pragmatist who has good working relationships with many of his Western counterparts.

But it also puts the U.S. in a difficult place as to whom it should send to the talks. Traditionally, the U.S. has had the fourth-highest ranking official at the State Department, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, handle the P5+1 talks. If Iran sends Foreign Minister Zarif to the next round of talks, reciprocating would require that the U.S. send Zarif’s American counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry.

This would raise the status of the negotiations considerably, and is likely something the Obama administration wishes to avoid. But if the other P5+1 countries respond by sending their own foreign ministers, it will be difficult for Washington to avoid this outcome.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/klglyoy

Latin American leaders love Twitter

BUENOS AIRES – When Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez uses Twitter, controversy often follows. Although tweet discussions range in content and frequency, there is never a lack of debate.
Fernandez, who almost never gives interviews or takes questions from reporters, often uses her official Twitter account, twitter.com/CFKArgentina, which claims more than 2.2 million followers, to engage the people directly.

There was the time when she sent more than 60 tweets in a single day after protests by thousands of Argentines critical of her government. Or the many times she has attacked her political opponents and media outlets, accusing them of twisting the truth and defaming her.

Then, there are lighter tweets: pictures with Pope Francis, a boxing champion and her dogs. Or her recounting of casual conversations with Argentines on the road, the birth of her grandson and even her musings over her favorite TV show. “I’m a fan of the series ‘Games of Thrones.’ I love it,” Fernandez tweeted on April 28. “When the DirecTV people came to see me to announce some investments, I asked them if they could please get me season three. . . . I’m sure that tomorrow someone from the opposition will denounce me for asking and receiving gifts.”

In a major departure from former Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s four-hour speeches, Twitter’s 140 characters or less have become a leading communication tool for presidents throughout Latin America.

An example of this was seen recently when Bolivia’s Evo Morales’ plane was grounded in Vienna amid incorrect suspicions that National Security Agency leader Edward Snowden was on board. The region’s leaders used Twitter to express their disapproval.

“All international immunities that protect heads of state have been violated for the empire’s obsession,” tweeted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, referring to the United States. Maduro’s account, twitter.com/NicolasMaduro, has nearly 1.3 million followers.

Maduro has used Twitter to argue with former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin. He often slams Venezuela’s wealthy and fondly remembers his mentor and predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

For many Venezuelans, monitoring Twitter became a must after Chavez joined the social media platform in late April 2010, according to comScore, an internet monitoring site. Chavez’s account still leads the pack of Latin American leaders, with 4 million Twitter followers.

In a politically divided country like Venezuela, being able to influence the social media space is key. Almost one out of four Venezuelans in the country use Twitter regularly.

Venezuelan officials “don’t communicate first by television, radio or a speech, but through Twitter,” said Javier Pereira, the El Nacional newspaper’s website coordinator. “That has caused us to be alert, monitoring constantly.”

Venezuela, along with Brazil and Argentina, ranks among the world’s top 10 in the use of Twitter. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview why he likes platform so much. With 2 million followers, twitter.com/JuanManSantos ranks third for Latin America leaders — dead or alive — after Chavez and Fernandez.

“I use it sometimes to send messages to clarify certain things, to communicate with the country,” said Santos. “You sent out a tweet and immediately, if it’s something important, it comes out in the media. Instead of making so many press conferences, you use Twitter.”

Almost two-thirds of world leaders have joined the Twitterverse, according to an analysis last year of 264 government accounts in 125 countries that the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller described as the first-ever global study of world leaders using the platform.

The most-followed account of any world leader is www.twitter.com/BarackObama, which has more than 35 million followers. But Latin American leaders continue to gain ground a tweet a time. They have become more adept on the social network than their European counterparts and rank among the world’s top 20 most-followed leaders.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/lehtxbc

IAS must assert itself

Kuldip Nayar, August 23, 2013 :

 

The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is at the apex to run the country’s administration. It replaced the Indian Civil Service (ICS) which was an instrument in the hands of the British to rule over India. After independence, there was serious thinking whether there should be an all-India service at all. The states wanted persons from their own area to administer.

But, then home minister Sardar Patel was particular to have an all-India service to articulate the feeling of unity and to maintain the diversities prevailing in the country. The service would also, Patel asserted, ensure that the Indian constitution remained supreme in the medley of pulls by different states. Two all-India services, Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service (IPS), were constituted. They came to occupy top positions in the states. 

This arrangement worked fairly well till the early ’70s when the rot started due to the Centre’s maniac effort to concentrate power and the states’ ambition to play politics through civil servants. This has practicably nullified good administration. The IAS has become a glorified state service. The rulers use it in the manner they like. In real, the 1975 emergency is the watershed. Then prime minister Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution and used the IAS officers to enforce illegal acts and suppress the critics. This was the time when the thin line between right and wrong, moral and immoral was erased. Only a couple of officers stood up against what was sheer dictatorship.

Fear of punishment for disobedience made the service servile. It was once a steel frame but it has now turned into a seal frame. The Shah Commission, appointed to look into the excesses during the emergency, has deplored how the bureaucracy caved in. The Commission has said: “The ethical considerations inherent in public behaviour became generally dim and in many cases beyond the mental grasp of many of the public functionaries. Desire for self-preservation as admitted by a number of public servants at various levels became the sole motivation for their official actions and behaviour…”
The service has not recovered from its emergency scars. In fact, it is going out of the way to placate the rulers. The latter, in turn, have rewarded those who did what the rulers wanted. The malaise is largely because of two reasons: one, the rulers do not respect the regulations and violate them to reap benefits for themselves and their parties; two, the IAS officers who are allotted to the states, have surrendered because of threat of transfer or posting to an unimportant position.

Therefore, it is heartening to see IAS officers like Durga Shakti Nagpal from UP and Ashok Khemka from Haryana, standing up against the wrongs the rulers wished them to do. She has been suspended because of stopping the illegal mining by sand mafia. The Samajwadi Party, ruling UP and placating the Muslim electorate, has justified her suspension, saying that she had endangered the communal harmony by ordering the demolition of an outside wall of a mosque. One, this is not true. Two, she was within her right to demolish any unauthorized structure on the government land. In a judgment, the Supreme Court has said that a place of worship should be pulled down immediately if the government land had been encroached upon.

Technically correct

It is a pity that the Supreme Court rejected a public interest litigation (PIL) petition challenging her suspension. The court is technically correct that it cannot interfere in matters between the government and the employees. The court had the opportunity to set right the rot. It should have realised the anger which swept through the country following action against the two officials.

In many foreign countries, there is a committee for civil service supervising the suspensions, transfers and promotions of officials. A similar committee can be constituted in India as well. The task can also be entrusted to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), which is also the recruiting authority. The service itself will have to do
introspection if officers were to act only on the basis of self-promotion. Today when the common man does not get even what is rightfully due to him, he is disillusioned with the entire system. True, politicians will continue to keep an eye on the electorate, but the IAS cannot afford to fall prey to their designs. A public functionary must display a degree of vigilance and willingness to sacrifice.

The Gandhi dynasty should draw a lesson from the example of Feroze Gandhi, son-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru. Feroz Gandhi would take up cases of corruption in Parliament, even to the embarrassment of Nehru. He was so upright that he did not even live at the prime minister’s house but had a separate bungalow to which he was entitled as a member of Parliament. It is another matter that Feroze Gandhi’s son, Rajiv Gandhi, got the atmosphere contaminated when, as the prime minister he bought the Bofors guns.

Corruption of the dynasty has not lessened either in tone or tenor. Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, has created a stench.

Coming back to the IAS, its name is in the mud. It must retrieve itself not only for the sake of the Durgas and Khemkas, but also for the public which is still hoping against hope that the service will not dance to the tunes of the rulers. That is how the democratic structure in the country can be made safer.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/mbb6puv

Why is the Global Times Celebrating India’s Aircraft Carrier?

In one of those things that makes you go hmmmm…. The Global Times is celebrating the launch of India’s indigenous aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine. In the GT op-ed, Liu Zongyi of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies writes, “The launch of India's home-built aircraft carrier is indeed worth celebrating, because it marks a firm stride toward the indigenization of arms. The triumphant launch of the hull demonstrated India's progress in building giant surface carriers.”

After further praising India for its launch of a domestically built nuclear submarine so soon after the carrier, the author adds, “While helping boost the ruling Congress Party's election chances next year, they do mark India's achievements in localizing arms production.” Liu then goes on to argue that, “An aircraft carrier, in particular a defensive one like the INS Vikrant, will not cause drastic changes in Asia-Pacific strategic scenario.” Oddly, the headline the GT editors attached to the piece was “Indian carrier hints at regionally dangerous military buildup.” Liu did end the article by saying China should not forget the “existence of war even in a peaceful world.”

India is not sitting content, however. On Wednesday the Indian Air Force landed a C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft at the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) airstrip. The Indian Express makes much of the fact that the DBO is the most-elevated airstrip in the world at about 16,614 feet. More importantly, is the fact that its right along the border with China, which seems to be a lesser focus on the article. Zee News explains the importance of the DBO to India, saying the base is “situated within shouting distance from the Line of Actual Control (LoAC).”

The F-35B completed its first-ever night-time vertical landing this week, even as the estimated operating costs of the F-35 fleet continue to drop to the still astronomic amount of just under $1 trillion.

Meanwhile, CSPAN recently visited Lockheed Martin's F-35 facility, and has an hour long program about the Joint Strike Fighter program to prove it. 

General Fan Changlong, the number 2 under Xi Jinping on China’s Central Military Commission, is apparently urging senior PLA officials to disclose their personal assets. Australia’s The Age has the story.

Over at Information Dissemination, Lazarus argues that the Goldwater-Nichols Act crippled the United States’ ability to conduct strategic planning

Source: http://tinyurl.com/nx9g8sk

In A First, Top Iranian Government Official Admits To Being On Facebook

The U.S.-educated Zarif acknowledged on August 14 that he and his family maintain a fan page on Facebook, the social-media site that the Iranian government blocks. "Following the inquiry of [some of you], this page is being updated by me and my children," wrote Zarif, who has more than 65,000 Facebook "fans."
The post was quickly liked by more than 5,000 Facebook users, some of whom couldn't help asking Zarif what antifiltering software he was using to access the site.
"Aren't you the minister of the same establishment that has filtered Facebook? I don't get this constant contradiction between the comments and actions of Iranian officials," wrote one user, who also welcomed Zarif to "the world of Facebook." (Zarif hasn't answered.)
Zarif's public acknowledgement that he was running his own page surprised many, according to Iranian social-media activist Vahid Online, who notes that even Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Facebook page "has never publicly acknowledged that the page is maintained by its office."
Online notes that "Zarif is the first senior Iranian official to type with his own fingers and write that he is using Facebook, a site that has been branded as a tool of enemies and mentioned in trials of opposition members."
Popular, And Banned
Facebook is the most popular social-media site in Iran and just one of the thousands of websites the government filters, or blocks access to.
Many Iranians access it via a variety of antifiltering tools. Iranian authorities have warned that being a member of a social-media site is not a crime, but bypassing state filtering can be considered criminal. Some officials, and state-controlled television, have labeled social-media platforms "Zionist tools" of Iran's enemies and foreign intelligence services.
Despite that, many officials, including Khamenei, have a presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter, albeit without claims of personal participation. During the summer's presidential campaign, all the main candidates tweeted, maintained Facebook pages, and posted pictures on Instagram. The social-media accounts were said to be maintained by the candidates' supporters.
Mahmood Enayat, who leads the U.K.-based Small Media Foundation, says Iranian authorities have realized the power of social media. "When the highest authority in the country has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and other sites, I don't think anyone would object to Zarif and ask him why he has an official Facebook account," Enayat says.
"The other issue is that social media can't be ignored and officials can't dismiss them as Western tools and say that they'll stay away from them. We saw it during the presidential election, when most of the candidates were present on social media."
Signs Of Easing Restrictions?
Zarif, who joined Facebook in February 2009, had previously not updated his page. He began posting and adding new photos a few days before his confirmation hearing for the post of foreign minister in July. His updates were quickly "liked" by tens of thousands of fans.
Many people thanked Zarif for connecting with them through Facebook and said other Iranian officials should follow his lead. Many of the comments on the page made reference to pledges new Iranian President Hassan Rohani has made, including improving international diplomatic ties and forging a moderate path domestically.
One man wrote, "I hope you can remove the sanctions." Another wrote: "I hope the good feeling people have about you won't be destroyed. I hope you read all these messages that are full of hope and demands for change."
Since Rohani's election in June, Iranian media has speculated that the new government might ease some online restrictions. During his campaign, Rohani criticized state Internet censorship, saying that it widened the gap between the people and the state.
One online activist in Tehran who did not want to be named told RFE/RL that Zarif's presence on Facebook had "created lots of hope" that the site might be unblocked.
Enayat isn't as optimistic. "I think the likelihood that the Islamic republic will unblock Facebook is very slim. [If] more political figures and organizations will join Facebook, the [negative attitude] toward Facebook and Twitter will become more and more meaningless," he says.
"But we have to wait and see whether that would lead to the removal of the filtering."

Copyright (c) 2013 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org

Source: http://tinyurl.com/l7kyzzj

Pak to release 365 Indian prisoners

Islamabad , Ministry of Interior is releasing 365 Indian prisoners which include 340 Fishermen and 25 crew members of Indian vessels through the Wagha Border on Saturday .

Representatives of Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Home Department Punjab / Sindh and Indian High Commission shall be present on the occasion.

340 Fishermen will be released from District Jail Malir, Karachi, while 25 crew members will be released from Gaddani Jail, Balochistan.

All these prisoners have completed their sentences and after confirmation of their National Status as Indians they are being released /repatriated to India through Wagha Border on August 24 as per agreement with India.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/kemoqn7

Our last occupation - Gas, chemicals, bombs: Britain has used them all before in Iraq

No one, least of all the British, should be surprised at the state of anarchy in Iraq. We have been here before. We know the territory, its long and miasmic history, the all-but-impossible diplomatic balance to be struck between the cultures and ambitions of Arabs, Kurds, Shia and Sunni, of Assyrians, Turks, Americans, French, Russians and of our own desire to keep an economic and strategic presence there.

Laid waste, a chaotic post-invasion Iraq may now well be policed by old and new imperial masters promising liberty, democracy and unwanted exiled leaders, in return for oil, trade and submission. Only the last of these promises is certain. The peoples of Iraq, even those who have cheered passing troops, have every reason to mistrust foreign invaders. They have been lied to far too often, bombed and slaughtered promiscuously.

Iraq is the product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient history, thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Kurdistan at the end of the first world war. Unsurprisingly, anarchy and insurrection were there from the start.
The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying dogs of war to "police" them. Terror bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers, delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were all developed during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during Britain's League of Nations' mandate. The mandate ended in 1932; the semi-colonial monarchy in 1958. But during the period of direct British rule, Iraq proved a useful testing ground for newly forged weapons of both limited and mass destruction, as well as new techniques for controlling imperial outposts and vassal states.

The RAF was first ordered to Iraq to quell Arab and Kurdish and Arab uprisings, to protect recently discovered oil reserves, to guard Jewish settlers in Palestine and to keep Turkey at bay. Some mission, yet it had already proved itself an effective imperial police force in both Afghanistan and Somaliland (today's Somalia) in 1919-20. British and US forces have been back regularly to bomb these hubs of recalcitrance ever since.

Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence was soon repaid.

An uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen against the British occupation swept through Iraq in the summer of 1920. In went the RAF. It flew missions totalling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines. The rebellion was thwarted, with nearly 9,000 Iraqis killed. Even so, concern was expressed in Westminster: the operation had cost more than the entire British-funded Arab rising against the Ottoman Empire in 1917-18.

The RAF was vindicated as British military expenditure in Iraq fell from £23m in 1921 to less than £4m five years later. This was despite the fact that the number of bombing raids increased after 1923 when Squadron Leader Arthur Harris - the future hammer of Hamburg and Dresden, whose statue stands in Fleet Street in London today - took command of 45 Squadron. Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon troop car riers, Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night "terror" raids. Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 "with excellent moral effect".

Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.

Conventional raids, however, proved to be an effective deterrent. They brought Sheikh Mahmoud, the most persistent of Kurdish rebels, to heel, at little cost. Writing in 1921, Wing Commander J A Chamier suggested that the best way to demoralise local people was to concentrate bombing on the "most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected the attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle."

"The Arab and Kurd now know", reported Squadron Leader Harris after several such raids, "what real bombing means within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out, and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured, by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape."

In his memoir of the crushing of the 1920 Iraqi uprising, Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer L Haldane, quotes his own orders for the punishment of any Iraqi found in possession of weapons "with the utmost severity": "The village where he resides will be destroyed _ pressure will be brought on the inhabitants by cutting off water power the area being cleared of the necessaries of life". He added the warning: "Burning a village properly takes a long time, an hour or more according to size".

Punitive British bombing continued throughout the 1920s. An eyewitness account by Saleh 'Umar al Jabrim describes a raid in February 1923 on a village in southern Iraq, where bedouin were celebrating 12 weddings. After a visit from the RAF, a woman, two boys, a girl and four camels were left dead. There were many wounded. Perhaps to please his British interrogators, Saleh declared: "These casualties are from God and no one is to be blamed."

One RAF officer, Air Commodore Lionel Charlton, resigned in 1924 when he visited a hospital after such a raid and faced armless and legless civilian victims. Others held less generous views of those under their control. "Woe betide any native [working for the RAF] who was caught in the act of thieving any article of clothing that may be hanging out to dry", wrote Aircraftsman 2nd class, H Howe, based at RAF Hunaidi, Baghdad. "It was the practice to take the offending native into the squadron gymnasium. Here he would be placed in the boxing ring, used as a punch bag by members of the boxing team, and after he had received severe punishment, and was in a very sorry condition, he would be expelled for good, minus his job."

At the time of the Arab revolt in Palestine in the late 1930s, Air Commodore Harris, as he then was, declared that "the only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand, and sooner or later it will have to be applied". As in 1921, so in 2003.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/kw826w4