Dreams Into Lightning 2

Morning Report: 2013-01-01

Pakistan: Gunmen kill seven charity workers. Fox: 'Gunmen killed five female teachers and two other people on Tuesday in an ambush on a van carrying workers home from their jobs at a community center in northwest Pakistan, officials said. The van was transporting teachers and aid workers from the center in conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Two health workers, one man and one woman, were also killed and the driver was wounded.' BBC has more, with a map. Workers at the center say they suspect its vaccination program is the target of the attacks; last month nine health workers were killed during a national polio vaccination drive.

India: Delhi gangrape protests continue. Hindustan Times: 'The capital on Tuesday continued to witness protests against the Delhi gangrape, with a modest gathering at Jantar Mantar demanding strong law against sexual offences. Some people continued their fast demanding stringent punishment for the culprits involved in the gangrape of the 23-year-old paramedic student, who died last Saturday.' Via Rantburg, The cops stated that after throwing the victim out of the moving bus, the accused had tried to crush her under the bus.

Syria: Fighting continues near Aleppo airport, throughout country. Fierce clashes have erupted near the international airport in Syria's second city of Aleppo, officials say. Syrians woke on New Year's Day toc ountrywide aerial bombardment, while President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels fighting to topple him clashed on the outskirts of the capital.

Saudi Arabia: Women refuse to segregate. A group of conservative man who wanted to attend the “Saudi Elite and Alienation Issues” lecture this week at the Jeddah Literary Club protested against the presence of women in the same room as men and threatened to leave if they were not moved to another room. However, the women refused to move room and insisted on remaining in the main hall to listen to the lecture.

Azerbaijan: Rent hike prices Russian radar out. Strategy Page:

January 1, 2013: Russia has decided to shut down its Daryal type long range missile detection radar in Azerbaijan after the Azerbaijanis demanded that a new lease increase annual rent from $7 million to $300 million. Russia refused to pay and will shut down the Azerbaijan radar and dismantle it. The ten year lease ended on December 24, 2012. This radar went operational in 1983 and was supposed to be one of seven. But the end of the Cold War halted that project and only one other Daryal radar was built (on the north coast of Russia). That one detected missiles coming in over the North Pole from North America. The radar in Azerbaijan covered all of the Middle East and India. Its role will be assumed by a more recent radar design that recently went into service on the Black Sea coast. Russia had offered to upgrade the Azerbaijan radar and pay more rent, but not $293 million more a year more. In addition, Russia has always paid Azerbaijan $5 million a year for electricity and $10 million a year for other services. About 500 Azerbaijanis were employed at the radar station, in addition to 1,100 Russians.

Morning Report: 2012-10-31

USA: Sandy aftermath. 'New York power company Consolidated Edison Inc said Wednesday it had restored power to over 160,000 of the 930,000 total customers knocked out by Hurricane Sandy, leaving about 764,000 still without power,' reports Reuters. CNN has pictures.

Georgia: Russian cyberspook nabbed. Volokh: 'And now the government of Georgia has landed an even bigger fish, seizing control of a cyberspy’s computer and taking screen shots of him. Adding insult to injury, the Georgians also managed to steal files from his computer that strongly suggest ties to Russia’s intelligence service. ...' Full story at the link.

Morning Report: 2012-08-21

Ethiopia: PM Meles dies. 'Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has died, Ethiopian state television said on Tuesday. Meles had not been seen in several weeks. The government said in July that he was taking a break to recover from an unspecified condition. State television said Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn will be acting prime minister. ...'

Syria: FSA bans torture, prisoner killings. 'The Free Syrian Army issued new orders Aug. 20 forbidding the torture and killing of prisoners following criticism by U.N. investigators, Reuters reported. ...'

Russia / Israel: Gazprom eyes Leviathan. 'Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom is studying opportunities to participate in the development of Israel's Leviathan offshore natural gas field, Bloomberg reported Aug. 20 ...'

Turkey: Gaziantep bombing kills 8. CNN: 'Eight people were killed in a bombing in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, an official in the Interior Ministry said Monday. A spokesman for the Gaziantep governorship said 66 people were wounded in the blast. ...' Bianet - English: 'An explosion that took place near the Karşıyaka Police Station in the southeastern province of Gaziantep killed eight people and injured 61 at around 20:00 on Monday. The blast occured after someone detonated the explosives loaded inside a vehicle, Gaziantep Governor Erdal Ata told the broadcasting station NTV. The victims of the blast were passengers inside a nearby automobile and a minibus, according to reports. Two buses also caught fire in consequence of the explosion ...'

Gaziantep, previously and still informally called Antep; ʻayn tāb [ʕajn tæːb] is a city in southeast Turkey and amongst the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The city is located 185 kilometres (115 miles) northeast of Adana and 127 kilometres by road north of Aleppo, Syria. The city has two urban districts under its administration, Şahinbey and Şehitkamil. It is the sixth most populous city in Turkey.

USA / terrorism: Hezbollah funds seized. BBC: 'The US authorities say they have seized $150m (£95m) from a bank allegedly linked to a money-laundering scheme of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Last year, US officials accused the Lebanese Canadian Bank (LCB) of helping the group launder profits from drug trafficking and other crimes. The funds were allegedly used to ship cars from the US to West Africa, with the proceeds smuggled back to Lebanon. ...'

Analysis: Benjamin Kerstein on Chomsky, NPR. Michael Totten interviews Benjamin Kerstein on Noam Chomsky:

Benjamin Kerstein: There are a couple of main points that should be made. First, Chomsky is an absolutely shameless liar. A master of the argument in bad faith. He will say anything in order to get people to believe him. Even worse, he will say anything in order to shut people up who disagree with him. And I’m not necessarily talking about his public critics. If you've ever seen how he acts with ordinary students who question what he says, it's quite horrifying. He simply abuses them in a manner I can only describe as sadistic. That is, he clearly enjoys doing it. I don't think anyone ought to be allowed to get away with that kind of behavior.

Second, Chomsky is immensely important to the radical left. When it comes to American foreign policy he isn't just influential, he's basically all they have. Almost any argument made about foreign affairs by the radical left can be traced back to him. That wasn't the case when he started out back in the late '60s, but it is now.

Third, he is essentially the last totalitarian. ...

Go read the rest. Now via a Facebook friend here's Kerstein in 2010 on NPR:

Put simply, NPR is for coastal liberals what Rush Limbaugh is for heartland conservatives: a means of relating to the world from within the confines of a specific subculture. The difference, of course, is that Limbaugh’s admirers do not force others to pay for it.

Nor, I imagine, are Limbaugh’s listeners laboring under the same illusion as NPR’s. Most of them probably understand that Limbaugh is giving opinions based on his political point of view, which is, to say the least, well known to his listeners. NPR’s listeners, on the other hand, are quite convinced that they are receiving nothing less than the pure, unvarnished, objective truth from the network. They believe themselves to be smart and informed, and thus the network they love must also be, perhaps by definition, smart and informative. ...

Ingushetia Bombing Kills 7 Police

BBC: 'At least seven police officers have been killed in a suicide bomb blast in the Russian Caucasus region of Ingushetia, investigators say. The explosion took place at the funeral of a fellow officer who was shot dead on Saturday. ...'

Al-Jazeera:

"In a private house where the funeral was taking place for a neighbourhood policeman, a suicide bomber triggered an explosive device on his body," the committee, which investigates major killings, said in a statement on Sunday.

"As a result of the explosion, according to preliminary information, seven people died including the suicide bomber, and there are also wounded whose number is being clarified," the statement said.

The RIA Novosti news agency cited Akhmed Kotiyev, the secretary of the regional security council, as saying that 11 people were wounded in the attack.

Ingushetia's leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, called the bombing as Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan a "terrorist" attack. ...

Go to AJ for more details.

Morning Report: 2012-07-30

Russia: Scientific mission to arctic region. Russia is increasing its arctic presence by sending a scientific expedition to the arctid Franz Joseph Land archipelago.

Syria: Regime steps up assault on Aleppo. 'Syrian government forces have been continuing their assault with artillery, ground forces and helicopter gunships on rebel-held areas of the second city, Aleppo. Officials said one area, Salah al-Din, had been recaptured, but rebels said the battle there was still going on. ...'

Kazakhstan: Shoot-out in Almaty. 'Kazakh police on Monday killed six members of a criminal gang in a shoot-out in an apartment block in the commercial capital Almaty, prosecutors said, in a fresh sign of surging crime in the oil-rich Central Asian nation. The shoot-out with the armed criminals, who had barricaded themselves in an apartment, broke out in broad daylight in one of Almaty's residential areas after the gunmen refused to lay down their arms ...' No casualties were reported among civilians or security personnel.

USA - New York: Big gulp. New York's mayor continues with his fixation on who drinks how much of what: 'The nanny state is going after moms. Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed. Starting Sept. 3, the city will keep tabs on the number of bottles that participating hospitals stock and use — the most restrictive pro-breast-milk program in the nation. ...'

Morning Report: 2012-07-16

Turkey: 46 lawyers on trial for KCK / PKK links. '(Reuters) - Dozens of lawyers went on trial in Turkey on Monday on charges of links to Kurdish militants and foreign jurists rallied outside the court to protest at the latest in a series of cases that have drawn criticism of Ankara's human rights record. All 50 defendants - including 46 lawyers - had been involved in representing the jailed Kurdish militant chief Abdullah Ocalan. ...' They're accused of ties to the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK), which Ankara sees as urban wing of the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ocalan was captured in 1999.

Russia / Syria: Analysis - Putin's realism. Zenpundit posting at IVN:

Russian President Vladimir Putin made a foreign policy speech to Russia’s ambassadors and Foreign Ministry officials that is very much worth reading in context of his dispatch to Syria of a fleet of warships, including a battleship, to the modest Russian naval base in Tartus. Under Putin’s hand, Russian support for the bloody regime of Bashar Assad has consistently been more about safeguarding and expanding Russia’s strategic place in world than about Syria ...

Read the rest at the link.

Russia and Assad

Mehmet Ali Birand at Milliyet, via Al-Monitor:

The naval base at Tartus is not as vital as we think. The base, manned by 50 navy servicemen in a couple of barracks, has no strategic value apart from being a place for Russia to plant its flag on the Mediterranean.

As for the weapons sales to Syria, they only account for 5% of Russia’s total sales. Moreover, Russia has not been selling advanced technology or high-powered weapons for a long time. Furthermore, they just announced that they will not be signing any new weapons contracts.

However, keeping the Syrian regime intact has other significant benefits for Russia. If the West deposes of Bashar al-Assad, as they did with Gadhafi in Libya, it will mean the fall of Russia’s last ally in the Middle East. Perhaps that, symbolically speaking, will also mean the complete erosion of Russia’s superpower status. Moscow does not want this and is struggling to keep Assad out of the West’s reach.

Putin is seriously irritated by the West’s footloose and unchallenged moves in the Middle East. He feels the changes brought about by the Arab Spring and the replacement of secular regimes by Islamists are contrary to Russian interests. For Moscow, an “authoritarian secular regime” is the best defense against Islamists and in that context, Assad is not that bad of a dictator. ...

This sounds like it makes sense. Moscow may be wondering why Americans so easily fall for the mystique and the ungratefulness of radical Islam.

Morning Report: 2012-06-27

Iraq: Bombs target Shi'a, kill 7 in Baghdad. 'Bombs planted around a Shi'ite politician's house killed seven people and wounded 21 others in Baghdad on Wednesday, police said, the latest in a string of attacks which have raised fears of a return to widespread sectarian violence. Unknown militants carried out the attack in the al-Wahda district in the south of the Iraqi capital, police said. It was not immediately clear if the politician was one of the victims. ...'

Mexico: Peña Nieto holds lead. 'Mexican presidential front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto goes into Sunday's election with a wide lead over his rivals, opinion polls showed on Wednesday as campaigning wraps up, putting him on track to return the party that ruled for much of the last century to power....'

US / Russia / Israel: Obama's platitudes, Putin's partnership. Breitbart:

Israel rolled out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin and a host of Russian dignitaries this week, showing a desire by both parties to repair strained ties between the two countries. Israel has good reason to be open to strengthening its relationship with Russia. A long series of diplomatic failures in regard to the “Arab Spring” by the Obama administration, and a conspicuous lack of a visit to Israel since Obama’s inauguration, have placed Israel in an increasingly tenuous and isolated position as America’s influence wanes in the region. It is a strategic vacuum that Putin would like to fill.

And while President Obama made Prime Minister Netanyahu come and go through a White House side door and would not deign to have a meal with him, President Putin came to Bibi’s door bearing gifts.

Foremost on the minds of Israelis during Putin’s visit were the Iranian nuclear program and the ever widening sphere of the Syrian civil war. And though no specific agreements were reached on these issues, President Putin did address them, saying, "From my experience, one must think about the consequences of an act before doing it. Look what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. With regard to Syria, one must think carefully whether the opposition that will rise to power will be what the West wants it to be, or whether it will end up being totally the opposite." Regarding Israel in particular he said, "The region in which Israel sits greatly influences the feelings of the entire international community. Russia has a national interest in assuring peace and tranquility for Israel."

While Putin’s words will be considered by many to be empty platitudes on par with Obama’s election year rhetoric, nothing says commitment like investment. President Putin’s gifts came in the form of a raft of Russian dignitaries and businessmen, seeking economic alliances in a variety of areas. ...

Morning Report: 2012-06-22

Turkish military plane disappears near Syria. Reuters - 'Lebanon's Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar television station said on Friday that Syrian air defenses shot down a Turkish military aircraft, quoting Syrian security sources. ...' BBC: 'urkey's military says it has lost contact with one of its aircraft over the sea close to the border with Syria. Turkish media said the plane, an F-4 jet, crashed in Syria or Syrian territorial waters. The two crew-members were found alive, CNN Turk and the Hurriyet daily said. ...'

Pakistan: Raja Pervez Ashraf elected PM. Hindustan Times: 'Raja Pervez Ashraf was elected Pakistan's new Prime Minister on Friday after the Supreme Court dismissed Yousuf Raza Gilani for contempt, the speaker of the lower house of parliament announced. ...'

X-47B moves forward. Via Rantburg, Space Daily:

The first major phase of flight testing the X-47 B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator aircraft came to a successful conclusion on May 15 when Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Navy wrapped up testing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The airworthiness test phase, which comprised 23 flights by two air vehicles, proved that the X-47B will perform properly at all speeds, weights and altitudes associated with the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program. ...

No, not the mystery space plane - that's the X-37B you're thinking of.

Paraguay's president faces impeachment trial. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo faces a trial by his country's senate. He's charged with incompetence that resulted in police and civilian deaths in a June 15 clash over land. The Stratfor analysis discusses the role of possible regional pressure from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in the affairs of landlocked Paraguay, which relies heavily upon good relations with its neighbors.

Meanwhile, in Russia ... First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov says protests are the new norm as Russia joins the developed countries with an active, vocal middle class, while some observers wonder: Who does Putin want to be?

The Empire Never Ended

Claire Berlinski on the enduring influence of the Soviet Union, as described in Behind the Desert Storm by Pavel Stroilov.