The United States, Dreyfuss argues, has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, “sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly,” and is thus “partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon.

” To flesh out this interpretation, he writes of U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood against Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, the U.S. role in lining up religious radicals in the coup ousting Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddeq in Iran, the decades-long ties between Washington and the House of Saud, the U.S. backing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and even the Reagan administration’s tentative ties with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic, illuminated by the Iran-contra affair.

(Dreyfuss even criticizes the Bush administration for working with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in post-Saddam Iraq.) The cases cited in this very different take on U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East since the 1940s seem, however, slightly askew when set in a broader context. The United States has often supported those opposed to the Islamists (such as Hosni Mubarak and Saddam Hussein) and has taken forceful positions in many other instances in which Islam or Islamism was not a major factor.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran is best explained by U.S. ties to the shah’s regime. Dreyfuss would have a more cogent case if he had simply faulted U.S. diplomacy for its excessively intrusive, regime-changing approach to the Middle East. Ironically, that is the thrust of his remarks on pages 15-17 of the introduction.

source

The conviction of an activist in Algeria after he distributed leaflets about unemployment in the country is a worrying sign that a new law regulating associations is being used to restrict civil society groups’ activities, Amnesty International said.

On 6 May, Abdelkader Kherba, a member of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) and the National Committee for the Defence of the Rights of the Unemployed (CNDDC) was sentenced to a two-month suspended prison term and a fine of 20,000 Algerian dinars (about USD 250) for distributing leaflets on unemployment in Algeria in June 2011.

He had been previously harassed by the authorities because of his work on behalf of unemployed people or in support of trade-unionists.

“The latest court case against Abdelkader Kherba is yet another example of how the authorities in Algeria are misusing the law and the judicial system to intimidate those who advocate for social and economic rights,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“If this sentence is not quashed, it will send the message that the new law on associations will be used to further restrict activists and groups who peacefully campaign on issues the authorities may regard as a threat.”

Abdelkader Kherba told Amnesty International: “This conviction is an attempt to prevent me and other activists to continue our peaceful actions. It is a way to increase pressure on us.”

The Appeal Court of the city of Médéa (about 80 km south-west of the capital Algiers) convicted Kherba under Article 46 of Law 12-06 relating to Associations, which came into force in January 2012.

Article 46 exposes active members of non-registered associations to prison terms ranging from three to six months and hefty fines.

Algeria has seen protests over poverty, unemployment and corruption increase during the past two years and a number of activists and trade unionists have faced judicial harassment and prosecution simply for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly.

In April 2012 Kherba was fined and received a suspended prison sentence of one year after a court convicted him of “direct incitement to a gathering” for joining and filming a sit-in protest by judicial clerks.

He was again arrested, detained and prosecuted in August 2012 after attempting to film a demonstration against water cuts at Ksar El Boukhari, Médéa. Charged with insulting and committing violence against an official, he was acquitted and released on 11 September.

Although Algeria lifted its 31-year state of emergency in 2011 amid region-wide anti-government demonstrations, civil society groups and human rights activists continue to suffer threats and harassment from the authorities, and the government has introduced new laws restricting the media and NGOs.

Law 12-06 relating to Associations tightens controls on civil society groups and gives the authorities the power to deny them registration or funding and suspend or dissolve them. Many articles in the new law contravene Algeria’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which enshrines the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.

In May 2012, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association stated that persons involved in unregistered associations should be free to carry out activities, including the right to hold and participate in peaceful assemblies, and should not be subject to criminal sanctions.

In March 2013, the Algerian authorities prevented a delegation of trade unionists and civil society activists, including members of the LADDH and the CNDDC, from crossing the border into Tunisia to attend the World Social Forum, violating their right to freedom of movement, also provided for by the ICCPR.

source

The African desert is hot. It gets a lot of sun. These are facts that we all know, even if we have no personal experience (and for those of you who haven’t been there, let me assure you, it’s true). It seems intuitive that the intensity of the sunlight pressing down on that desert makes the area ideal for generating solar power, and indeed – such plans were conceived in 1913 (by American engineer Frank Shuman), and again explored in 1986 (by German particle physicist Gerhard Knies).

What is Desertec?

Desertec is a set of plans for a massive network of solar and wind farms stretching across the Mena region and intended to connect to Europe via high voltage direct current transmission cables (which are supposed to only lose 3% of their electricity per 1000km, or 620 miles).

Although Desertec has been widely regarded as nothing more than an unattainable dream for most of its history, it’s been gaining some momentum over the past two years. A number of significant German corporations – including E. ON, Munich Re, Siemens, and Deutsche Bank – have all signed on with the project, forming the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii). Germany’s decision to speed up the schedule to dismantle its nuclear power plants earlier this year has also helped generate more German support for Desertec, and the first phase of construction is set to begin in Morocco next year.

The Dii isn’t entirely German, although half the corporate representatives at its annual conference in Cairo last month hailed from that country, and the main component of the current technology (glass troughs, see below) are only made by German companies. Paul Van Son, Dii’s CEO, claims the project is international in nature. According to the Guardian, he said:

“Yes, the initiative came from Germany. But there are 15 different nationalities involved, including companies such as HSBC and Morgan Stanley. This is just the start.”

As noted in one of our roundup posts last month, the French (a big energy player, of course) are also getting on board the Desertec project now.

How It Works

Most of the solar energy would come from “concentrated solar power” plants, or CSP plants. The CSP plants use both natural gas and solar panels when generating electricity. Each plant holds a number of parabolic troughs – several yards tall – containing receiver tubes above a parabolic mirror and filled with an oil-like heat transfer fluid.

The fluid is heated to 400C (750F) and then used to heat steam in a standard turbine generator. The fluid is then cooled before it is returned to the receiver tubes. During the day, the energy to heat the fluid is all solar; natural gas may be used at night to continue the process. However, the amount of energy produced by fossil fuels is legally limited to 27% of total output.

So What’s the Problem?

One of the difficulties in maintaining CSPs is the harsh desert itself; while damaging sandstorms are relatively rare, the troughs must be tilted away from the wind if it reaches a certain speed. Bodo Becker, operations manager at a German company specializing in building CSP plants designed for desert use, says that if the troughs are not moved away from high winds, they act like giant sails. (That’s definitely not good for the equipment.)

Keeping the troughs clean isn’t easy, either; dry cleaning technology is being developed, but it doesn’t quite work yet. Currently, water is used both to cool the heat transfer fluid and clean the array. It’s a lot of water, according to Becker, as reported by the Guardian:

“Due to the dusty conditions, we are witnessing about 2% degradation every day in performance, so we need to clean them daily. We use about 39 cubic meters [10,300 gallons] of demineralized water each day for cleaning across the whole site.”

The total cost of completing the project is a barrier, too – it’s currently estimated at over $500 billion USD. A number of recent climate conference attendees focused on the question of how Desertec could be financed; EU subsidies, tariffs added to European energy bills, and bank loans were all the subject of speculation.

What Does Africa Think?

There’s a pretty clear idea – particularly in Germany – of what Europe wants from Desertec, and even the beginnings of a plan to get there. The final question – which should perhaps be the first – is how Africa stands on the project. Specifically, those countries making up the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region – as that’s where the solar plants would be located – should have their say.

Daniel Ayuk Mbi Egbe of the African Network for Solar Energy is skeptical of the project in general, fearing that it smacks of exploitation. He is not alone in this reaction, as other MENA-based speakers at the conference raised similar concerns. According to the Guardian, Egbe said:

“Many Africans are skeptical [about Desertec]. [Europeans] make promises, but at the end of the day, they bring their engineers, they bring their equipment, and they go. It’s a new form of resource exploitation, just like in the past.”

Another concern is how much of the energy will be available locally and how much will be sent abroad. Most of the MENA region lacks universal access to electricity, and the need is expected to grow in the near future. The electricity available now is largely foreign, which is an unpalatable situation.

Obaid Amrane, a board member of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy, said that 42% of the electricity should be from renewable sources by 2020. “We will build extra capacity beyond what Morocco needs if someone wants us to,” he said, “but we will need a big share of the electricity produced by these projects.”

At Least We’re All Focusing on Renewable Energy This Time

While Desertec and its plants are moving along, other sources of green energy are also gaining momentum in Africa (and Europe, and the United States, and Asia…). Wind turbines and photovoltaic panels both have their supporters in countries such as Jordan, as both are less water-intensive than Desertec’s SCP plants, and solar towers with hundreds of pivoting mirrors also have staunch supporters.

Whichever way it goes, the move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy is heartening. Let us know what you think of the push for green energy from Africa, in the comments, below.

Source: The Guardian | Images: Wikimedia Commons

By Chris Hedges

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.

Leslie Gelb, in the magazine Foreign Affairs, spelled it out after the invasion of Iraq.

“My initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility,” he wrote. “We ‘experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we ‘perfect’ the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common—often wrong—wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.”

The moral cowardice of the power elite is especially evident when it comes to the plight of the Palestinians. The liberal class, in fact, is used to marginalize and discredit those, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, who have the honesty, integrity and courage to denounce Israeli war crimes. And the liberal class is compensated for its dirty role in squelching debate.

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take,” wrote the late Edward Said. “You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.”

“For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence,” Said went on. “If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”

Julien Benda argued in his 1927 book “The Treason of Intellectuals”—“La Trahison des Clercs”—that it is only when we are not in pursuit of practical aims or material advantages that we can serve as a conscience and a corrective. Those who transfer their allegiance to the practical aims of power and material advantage emasculate themselves intellectually and morally. Benda wrote that intellectuals were once supposed to be indifferent to popular passions. They “set an example of attachment to the purely disinterested activity of the mind and created a belief in the supreme value of this form of existence.” They looked “as moralists upon the conflict of human egotisms.” They “preached, in the name of humanity or justice, the adoption of an abstract principle superior to and directly opposed to these passions.” These intellectuals were not, Benda conceded, very often able to prevent the powerful from “filling all history with the noise of their hatred and their slaughters.” But they did, at least, “prevent the laymen from setting up their actions as a religion, they did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as they carried out these activities.” In short, Benda asserted, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.” But once the intellectuals began to “play the game of political passions,” those who had “acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as its stimulators.” And this is why Michael Moore is correct when he blames The New York Times and the liberal establishment, even more than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for the Iraq War.

“The desire to tell the truth,” wrote Paul Baran, the brilliant Marxist economist and author of “The Political Economy of Growth,” is “only one condition for being an intellectual. The other is courage, readiness to carry on rational inquiry to wherever it may lead … to withstand … comfortable and lucrative conformity.”

Those who doggedly challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who question the reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their integrity to serve the cult of power, are pushed to the margins. They are denounced by the very people who, years later, will often claim these moral battles as their own. It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive. They alone name the crimes of the state. They alone give a voice to the victims of oppression. They alone ask the difficult questions. Most important, they expose the powerful, along with their liberal apologists, for what they are.

source

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was “active”, “growing” and “up and running”.

A special BBC Panorama programme aired on Monday night details how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had “virtually nothing” in terms of WMD.

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was “totally fabricated”.

However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002.

Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been.

Butler says of the use of intelligence: “There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.”

When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: “Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.”

The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable.

One unidentified MI6 officer has told the Chilcot inquiry that at one stage information was “being torn off the teleprinter and rushed across to Number 10″.

Another said it was “wishful thinking… [that] promised the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow”.

The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French.

It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated.

Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was “too busy”.

source

————————————————

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of one of the most contentious and divisive wars in living memory, Peter Taylor forensically investigates how key aspects of the secret intelligence used by Downing Street and the White House to justify the invasion of Iraq, were based on fabrication, wishful thinking and lies.

Using remarkable first hand testimony, this one-hour Panorama special reveals the full story of how two very highly placed sources, both close to Saddam Hussein, talked secretly to the CIA via an intermediary and directly to MI6 in the build-up to the war and said Iraq did not have an active Weapons of Mass Destruction programme. But both were ignored.

In a compelling story of spies and intrigue, deception and lies, key players reveal how sparse British and American intelligence was and how none of the handful of human sources had direct knowledge of WMD production. The former CIA Paris Station Chief, Bill Murray, explains how he used an intermediary to recruit Iraq’s Foreign Minister and his frustration when he found crucial intelligence from this source was rejected because it didn’t fit in with the White House’s agenda. The intelligence from Iraq’s Foreign Minister was confirmed four months later, when an MI6 officer met Iraq’s Head of Intelligence, who passed on the same message, saying Iraq had no WMD.

Lord Butler, author of the 2004 report into the WMD intelligence, says the British public was misled.

With a series of revelatory interviews, including a shocking exchange with the Iraqi spy and self-confessed fabricator ‘Curveball’, Panorama sheds new light on the spies who fooled the world.

source

For many years now the American foreign policy has been characterized by the strong tie between the United States and Israel. Does the United States in fact keep Israel on its feet? And how long will it continue to do so?

In March 2006 the American political scientists John Mearsheimer (University of Chicago) and Steve Walt (Harvard) published the controversial article ‘The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy’. In it they state that it is not, or no longer, expedient for the US to support and protect present-day Israel. The documentary sheds light on both parties involved in the discussion: those who wish to maintain the strong tie between the US and Israel, and those who were critical of it and not infrequently became ‘victims’ of the lobby.

The question arises to what extend the pro-Israel lobby ultimately determines the military and political importance of Israel itself. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Colin Powell’s former chief-of-staff) explains how the lobby’s influence affects the decision-making structure in the White House.

With political scientist John Mearsheimer, neocon Richard Perle, lobby organization AIPAC, televangelist John Hagee, historian Tony Judt, Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Democrat Earl Hilliard, Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy and investigative journalist Michael Massing.

Research: William de Bruijn
Director: Marije Meerman

http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/34338524/

source

The prosecutor wants 64 life sentences without parole for 64 of country’s intellectuals including rectors of universities, professors, writers, journalists, members of parliaments, high ranking officers including the chief of staff.

Some of these intellectuals are terminally ill and in desperate need of proper medical care.. Instead they are kept in prison and sent to psychiatric hospital for general evaluation of their health!! Not to a proper fully equipped hospitals. Some of those imprisoned are professors who are fourth stage cancer patients. The life without parole sentence is a death sentence in effect. Some of those intellectuals and high ranking officials died in prison, some consider those deaths as not natural deaths. Some officers, when faced with such accusations could not accept the dishonor and committed suicide – later on they were found not guilty of what they were indicted for.

Do something, put a stop to this deliberate and inhuman acts which makes a mockery out of any decency, any law, any human rights..

Serap

————————————

Retired chief of general staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ was among 275 defendants, 67 currently under arrest, in a case that has gone on for nearly four-and-a-half years, in which prosecutors are accusing the suspects of attempting to stage a coup as part of the “Ergenekon organization”. Prosecutors summed up their case on Monday, requesting aggravated life sentences for 64 defendants including former chief of general staff İlker Başbuğ, CHP Deputy Mustafa Balbay, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Haberal and Sinan Aygün. The defendants include academics, politicians and journalists, as well as former army officers. State prosecutors also requested the release of six detained suspects and issued warrants for the arrests of 20 others who had previously been released pending trial. However, the court rejected any requests for releases or further arrests and postponed the trial to April 8.

Prosecutors presented their final opinion at yesterday’s hearing in a 2,271-page summary which was read aloud by three prosecutors in turns over a total five hours. “It has become clear that the Ergenekon terrorist group exists,” state prosecutor Mehmet Ali Pekguzel told the court located within a huge prison complex at Silivri, west of Istanbul. The statement drew wide reaction from attorneys and defendants in the courtroom. Attorneys argued it was too early to be reading out the final opinion; however Court Chairman Hasan Hüseyin Özese announced that the text would be read aloud in court. While some attorneys chose to evacuate the courtroom, defendants were prohibited from leaving.

The existence of Ergenekon, its structure and activities were detailed in the 2,271 written opinion, which also listed the events of progression from the uncovering of evidence to their connections to the defendants on trial. The defendants will now have the opportunity to make their final defenses, a process which could take another couple of months, before a verdict is announced. Ergenekon is accused of being at the heart of political violence, extra-judicial killings and bomb attacks which scarred Turkey in recent decades – an embodiment of anti-democratic forces which Erdoğan says he has fought to stamp out.

COUNCIL OF STATE ATTACK

The final opinion also concludes that the Ergenekon terrorist organization was responsible for both the Council of State attack and the bombing of Cumhuriyet newspaper. In connection to the Council of State attack, two life sentences each were requested for perpetrator Alparslan Arslan, retired Brigadier General Veli Küçük and retired Yüzbaşı Muzaffer Tekin.

Prosecutors are also requesting aggravated life sentences be served to 29 military members including 13 generals, two of which are currently active. The high level military members for which life sentences are sought are: former Chief of General Staff retired Gen. İlker Başbuğ, Supreme Military Council member Gen. Nusret Taşdeler, retired Gen. Hasan Iğsız, former Gendarmerie General Commander retired Gen. Şener Eruygur, former 1st Army Commander retired Gen. Hurşit Tolon, retired Lieutenant Gen. İsmail Hakkı Pekin, retired Lieutenant Gen. Mehmet Eröz, retired Adm. Mehmet Otuzbiroğlu, Gen. Hıfzı Çubuklu, former Gendarmerie Intelligence Chief retired Brigadier Gen. Levent Ersöz, retired Brigadier Gen. Veli Küçük, retired Adm. Alaettin Sevim, former General Staff Legal Advisor retired Gen. Muhittin Erdal Şenel, colonels Dursun Çiçek, Hasan Atilla Uğur, Fikri Karadağ, Cemal Gökçeoğlu, Fuat Selvi, Hulusi Gülbahar, Ziya İlker Göktaş, Sedat Özüer, Orhan Güçlü, Mustafa Koç, Cihandar Hasanhanoğlu, retired Lieutenant Col. Mustafa Dönmez, retired lieutenants Hasan Ataman Yıldırım, Murat Uslukılıç and retired Sergeant Oktay Yıldırım.

BAŞBUĞ: I CANNOT STOMACH THE ACCUSATIONS

Speaking with Faruk Terzioğlu, President of the Erzurum Bar Association from Silivri prison yesterday, former chief of general staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ stated, “These accusations are toying with my pride. I am the Republic of Turkey’s 26th Chief of General Staff. To be accused of being a member of an armed terrorist organization is a tragicomedy. I know what the verdict will be. I leave it all up to the discretion of the Turkish public and I will not be providing a defense,” said Başbuğ, who also expressed that he was unable to stomach the accusations against him.

source

This website does not suggest that it contains the “truth”. The truth is a combination of all information and all facts relating to a topic. It is therefore unachievable (in my opinion) for anyone to say “I know the truth.” 

If you came to this site in search of “the truth” you will be disappointed. That is also true of CNN, FOX , ABC etc. If you came to gather information you may find it a useful resource.

Gibran says in the “Prophet”  Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”

That brings me to my first point:

John Adams said “Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people” this statement points to the absolute necessity of an informed citizenry if our nation is to remain a functioning free society.

This means that each citizen has a civic responsibility to inform himself and share that information with others. The corporate media pumps information into our homes and does a great job of providing the information that our government wants us to know. It has in my opinion become the propaganda arm of government, and a great number of those who call themselves  journalists are in fact nothing less than presstitutes.

Those who wish to inhibit free access to information are in my opinion a great danger to our nation. Why would any adult interfere with the right of fellow citizens to inform themselves?

There is a war going on for the minds of America, those waging this war are determined to control the American people by taking possession of our minds and by controlling our sources of information.

Truth is indefinable. Information is unlimited.

PUBLIC RELATIONS = PROPAGANDA

 None.

Information Clearing House

“Since big corruption cases are a proven nuisance to the national economy, they will be a priority for the office,” OCRC head Abdelmalek Sayeh said.

Algerian politicians on Monday (March 4th) responded to the inauguration of the headquarters of the Central Office to Combat Corruption (OCRC).

Finance Minister Karim Djoudi at Sunday’s opening expressed the state’s commitment to “stop at nothing to fight corruption or any other type of economic crime”.

The office’s headquarters came at a time where the Algerian press has exposed several financial scandals, the most significant case being state energy giant Sonatrach.

OCRC President Abdelmalek Sayeh said that his organisation was there “to rectify the issue”.

“Since big corruption cases are a proven nuisance to the national economy, they will be a priority for the office,” Sayeh said in a press release.

OCRC is an operational tool to combat the embezzlement of public funds. It was set up in 2011 as a central criminal investigation department responsible for searching and reporting offenses to their relevant jurisdictions.

The office “addresses cases passed down by official authorities, in addition to denunciation letters from the people”, Sayeh said.

The office can refer the case to itself “when cases are exposed by the press and have become international matters”, he added.

National Council President Abdelkader Bensalah emphasised the need “to get to the bottom of corruption”.

“It tarnishes the image of Algeria and overlooks the country’s massive accomplishments in multiple areas,” he added.

Workers’ Party (PT) leader Louisa Hanoune on Saturday pointed out the need to take firm and “coercive measures against the individuals implicated in corruption and the need to initiate an urgent political reform to shed the light on the handling of public funds”.

“It was inconceivable to overlook information that addressed scandals and embezzlement of public funds,” National Republican Alliance head Belkacem Sahli said on Saturday calling on public authorities to “be present in these matters in order to face corruption”.

“The state with all its institutions is facing… many challenges that represent urgent demands,” People’s National Assembly (APN) President Mohamed Larbi Ould Khelifa said on Monday.

“There is a great majority of wholesome men and women in Algeria who hold many important positions and who make sure that public funds are protected,” he added.

For his part, accusing everyone could challenge the credibility of all the institutions as well as their leaders and weaken co-operation with Algeria.

Movement of Society for Peace (MSP) head Bouguerra Soltani shed more light on the issue during a recent press conference, saying that it was a complex, international problem.

“Corruption has spread to the point that it’s structured and has become international. Certainly it’s our money that’s been stolen but the crime scene is abroad. And the perpetrator has another citizenship, which makes prosecuting difficult.”

“Algerians are demanding that sanctions be imposed on individuals involved in these corruption matters. It’s not enough to get a news story, you need to go further and judge all the people responsible for the embezzlement of public funds,” customs worker Nadjet Merabet told Magharebia.

source

As the inquiry has heated up, Saipem’s chief executive resigned Wednesday evening, two other Saipem executives were suspended and the chief financial officer of Eni stepped down. None of the executives have been charged with crimes, according to the companies. Eni alluded to the investigation in statements late Wednesday, but provided no details.

But a person close to the investigation said Thursday that prosecutors were focusing on a suspicious payment of $180 million to $200 million in connection with the pipeline project. The person insisted on anonymity because the inquiry is under way.

Saipem, the largest European drilling and engineering contractor for the oil industry, won a $580 million contract to build a 350-kilometer, or 210-mile, pipeline by the state oil company, Sonatrach, in June 2009. The pipeline is known as GK3. It is not yet clear who paid or received the payment at issue, but the person close to the inquiry said the investigation of the inappropriate payment began in 2009 in Algeria and was taken up the following year by Italian prosecutors.

A Saipem spokesman declined to comment.

In statements late Wednesday, Eni said that Saipem’s chief executive, Pietro Franco Tali, was stepping down.

Eni’s chief financial officer, Alessandro Bernini, who held the same position at Saipem until 2008, also resigned Wednesday, although he “considers that his actions were right and proper,” according to an Eni release.

Eni, which holds nearly 43 percent of Saipem’s shares, wrote in its 2011 annual report that it was asked by the Milan Public Prosecutor in February 2011 to supply documentation “in relation to the crime of alleged international corruption” on the GK3 contract, as well as another gas pipeline project called Galsi. The company said it turned over the documents.

An Eni spokeswoman said Thursday that the company had not been aware “of any further development” in the investigation until being notified on Nov. 22 that Saipem had received “a notice of inquiry” from prosecutors. Eni itself is not a subject of the investigation, she said.

Algeria is known as a difficult place to do business. In 2010 most of the top management at Sonatrach, including the chief executive, Mohamed Meziane, departed amid a corruption investigation by the Algerian government.

Algeria, in the 1960s, was the first Middle Eastern country to develop a gas export industry and continues to supply about 10 percent of Europe’s natural gas imports, according to Leila Benali, an analyst at IHS Cera in Paris. Italy is Algeria’s largest customer, mostly through Eni.

Saipem has been key to helping Sonatrach develop the country’s oil and gas infrastructure, over the years working on Algerian oil and gas projects worth billions of dollars. It had about 2,600 employees in the country in 2010.

Rob Mundy, an analyst at Liberum Capital in London, said in a research note that because of the Algeria situation, Saipem’s “ability to competitively bid on future contracts may be affected.”

Trading in Saipem’s shares was suspended in Milan midday Wednesday before Eni publicly disclosed the problems, after being down 4 percent. They resumed trading on Thursday, ending the day down an additional 6.7 percent in heavy volume.

The investigation is a blow to Eni, which under its chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, is working to establish itself as a premier exploration and production company. Earlier on Wednesday, Eni announced a new natural gas discovery off the coast of Mozambique, where the company has become an early leader in staking a position in that country’s promising gas reserves.

Eni’s stake in Saipem has provided the oil company with a steady source of earnings. On Sept. 30, Saipem reported net profits of €722 million for the first nine months of the year, an increase of nearly 9 percent from the comparable period a year earlier.

Saipem also provides Eni with an in-house source of drilling and engineering services, bolstering bidding efforts on oil and gas projects like the proposed South Stream pipeline that will bring gas from Russia to Southern and Central Europe.

source