Geopolitical thread

[Singha]

Russia grants one year shelter to Snowden...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/world ... rechp&_r=0

unlike munna 'singh' , russia knows how to needle people and extract concessions. and their political elites dont crave for GCs , harvard schols and UN postings.

[abhishek_sharma]

The Killing Machines: How to think about drones

[svinayak]

General Question?

Where is the drone testing ground?

[abhishek_sharma]

Eight Horrific and Uplifting Stories About Being Gay in the New Russia

[abhishek_sharma]

Rotter, Andrew J. Hiroshima:The World's Bomb (Making of the Modern World) Oxford University Press.

Despite losing dozens of distinguished scientists as refugees from Naziism, Germany in the 1930s retained some of the best theoretical and experimental physicists in the world. Otto Hahn remained. Kurt Diebner led physics research at the Army Weapons Bureau and in the early years of the war took charge of uranium research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Dahlem. Paul Harteck, the physical chemist who predicted a powerful nuclear explosive in 1939, was at Hamburg; Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, whose father, Ernst, was the second-ranking official in the German Foreign Office, was at KWI, as were Erich Bagge and Horst Korsching (both of whom specialized in isotope separation), and the Nobel Prize winner Max von Laue, famous for his work on X-rays—though, as it turned out, someone who would evade weapons research during the war.14 Above all, Germany had Werner Heisenberg. He was one of the world’s great theoretical physicists, the man James Chadwick had called ‘the most dangerous possible German in the field because of his brain power’.

...

The researchers lacked neither imagination nor enthusiasm for their task. In the years following the war—in fact, from the moment German physicists learned of the bombing of Hiroshima—Werner Heisenberg, assisted by his colleague Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, cultivated a myth that he and others had conspired to subvert research toward a German atomic bomb. Opposed to Hitler’s murderous regime and to the moral enormity of nuclear weapons in Hitler’s hands or anyone’s, Heisenberg had slowed his work deliberately and pointedly failed to pursue leads that he suspected might provide breakthroughs in decoding the science of the bomb. In a September 1941 meeting in Copenhagen with the revered Niels Bohr, Heisenberg claimed he had asked, albeit somewhat clumsily, whether Bohr thought it possible that physicists everywhere might refuse to work on the bomb, as he implied he himself would do. Heisenberg also passed Bohr a drawing of the reactor he was working on. According to Heisenberg’s subsequent, rueful account, Bohr misunderstood him to say that he hoped Bohr would use his influence to get the Allies alone to cease bomb research. Bohr in any case bridled, concluded that Heisenberg was, wittingly or otherwise, promoting Naziism, and thereafter refused to trust the man who had once been his closest scientific confidant. Heisenberg returned in frustration to Leipzig.24

Already primus inter pares among German nuclear scientists, Heisenberg was to become even more central after July 1942, when he replaced Diebner as director of the KWI Institute of Physics. Thus, his ethical position on nuclear weapons, and on a German bomb in particular, has undergone exacting historical scrutiny and has generated enormous controversy since 1945. Mark Walker has divided commentators into two camps: the ‘apologists’, who accept Heisenberg’s version of the meeting with Bohr and thus proclaim his innocence, even his nobility in quietly resisting the demands of the Nazi state; and the ‘polemicists’, who insist that Heisenberg’s version whitewashes the truth of his own complicity with Naziism—that the German failure to build an atomic bomb had nothing to do with deliberate subversion and everything to do with Heisenberg’s incompetence.

...

The lack of coordination among laboratories was never remedied by the German government, which had its own disjointed relationship with nuclear science, and here is a second reason why the German program failed. Some in the regime were suspicious of nuclear physics because of its association with Einstein and other prominent Jews. Hitler wanted weapons, certainly, but he never understood the science and technology that produced them. When the distinguished Max Planck, president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, approached the Führer in May 1933 to argue that Jewish scientists could contribute to the state and should not be driven off, Hitler became so apoplectic that Planck simply got up and left. (Einstein reported that Hitler had threatened during his tirade to throw Planck, who was 75, into a concentration camp.)

...

The work began with a largely unprofitable probe into Italy, then the dispatch to Switzerland of an extraordinary mission by the OSS agent Moe Berg, an enigmatic, multilingual, former baseball catcher with a creditable throwing arm and a deep knowledge of the game. Berg also had a basic understanding of nuclear physics. Berg’s assignment—given to him, apparently, by the OSS rather than by Groves directly—was to attend a physics lecture to be given in Zurich by Heisenberg in late December 1944. Berg carried a pistol in his suit pocket. If Heisenberg uttered a single sentence indicating that Germany was close to having an atomic bomb, Berg was to render him ‘hors de combat’, then and there, with a well-aimed gunshot or two. Heisenberg’s lecture proved to be sufficiently general in scope as to save his life.29

...

The Alsos mission revealed perhaps the single most important reason why the Germans failed to build an atomic bomb. For all the manifest brilliance of Heisenberg and his fellow scientists, and notwithstanding the limits of German resources and heightened pace of Allied attacks on German facilities after 1942, the Germans lost the first nuclear arms race because they did not fully grasp the science and technology required to build an atomic bomb. It was Heisenberg, the most eminent of the atomic scientists, who made two fundamental miscalculations. First, misunderstanding the fission process, he dramatically overestimated the amount of enriched U-235 needed to sustain a chain reaction, believing it to be a ton or several tons, rather than the 56 kilograms actually needed. As Jeremy Bernstein has demonstrated, even after the Farm Hall Germans got word of the Hiroshima bombing, Heisenberg failed to understand the physics of U-235.

Attempts to refine enough uranium to produce its readable form in the amount Heisenberg thought necessary proved time-consuming and frustrating. Second, the equally frustrating pursuit of many gallons of heavy water was the result of Heisenberg’s belief that it was the only possible moderator of a nuclear chain reaction. The Germans had tried experiments using graphite as a moderator; these had proved unavailing. But this was because the Germans had used industrial graphite contaminated with boron, a substance that, as Bernstein puts it, ‘soaks up neutrons like a sponge’. The Allies would understand the problem and demand pure graphite from their manufacturers. It was graphite that worked perfectly as a moderator in the atomic pile superintended by Enrico Fermi in a University of Chicago squash court in 1942.32

German scientists got a good deal of the bomb’s physics right: they experimented, for example, with creating a transuranic element that might be easier to use for a chain reaction than U-235 (plutonium, element 94, would be the basis for the Nagasaki bomb), seemed at times to grasp the proper scale of the bomb (Heisenberg may have told Albert Speer and others, in June 1942, that a bomb the size of a pineapple would be sufficient to destroy a city), and appeared to understand the difference between running a reactor and constructing a bomb (principally the speed of the chain reaction). But the miscalculation of the chain reaction’s critical mass and mistakes made in choosing a moderator for the reaction fatally undermined the Germans’ bomb project. These errors offer the simplest, and in this case the best, explanation of the German failure.

[pankajs]

Japan's New Military Buildup Seen as Response to North Korea, China

Japan plans to acquire more-capable weapons and establish a marine force because of the perceived security threat posed by North Korea and China, the Korea Herald reported.

After decades of hewing to a strictly self-defensive military posture, Japan in recent months has indicated it plans to acquire offensive military capabilities such as ballistic missiles that could be used to carry out advance attacks on North Korea's strategic assets.

Some of Japan's space-program activities have applications in the development of strategic weapons. On Tuesday, the island nation is slated to fire its solid-fueled Epsilon rocket, which could potentially be adapted to power an ICBM.

These armament plans have raised regional concerns that Tokyo may be shedding its post-World War II pacifist defense posture.

"What is worrisomely ... is that Japan's rearmament would be met with China's reaction, which could cause regional instability," Korea National Defense University Japan researcher Park Young-june said.

The United States, however, is seen as supportive of Japan taking on a more assertive regional role, as it could be useful in meeting the challenge of China's growing military might.

[abhishek_sharma]

The New German Question

[abhishek_sharma]

Kafka: The Years of Insight

A definitive biography of a writer as transcendent as Franz Kafka might be unattainable, but in his massive trilogy, Stach comes as close as one can. This is the third volume, devoted to Kafka’s final, tempestuous years (1916–24), opening as World War I begins and ending with Kafka’s death in a sanatorium near Vienna. In portraying Kafka, Stach winds together and then cuts deeply into his subject’s intense personal relationships, his turbulent twists of mind, the dramas of his daily life, and the darker consequences of war. Viewing the events of these years -- the emotional tensions the war produced in Prague and its crushing impact on the people caught in its wake -- through the life of a supremely vexed, historic literary figure, this book stretches history in a way that more conventional histories cannot.

[Philip]

This is an intriguing report,which is too long to post here.It is a MUST read though.

U.S. spy network’s successes, failures and objectives detailed in ‘black budget’ summary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat ... _headlines

The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees.

The summary describes cutting-edge technologies, agent recruiting and ongoing operations. The Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online.

●U.S. intelligence officials take an active interest in friends as well as foes. Pakistan is described in detail as an “intractable target,” and counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel.” The latter is a U.S. ally but has a history of espionage attempts against the United States.

Other blank spots include questions about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear components when they are being transported, the capabilities of China’s next-generation fighter aircraft, and how Russia’s government leaders are likely to respond to “potentially destabilizing events in Moscow, such as large protests and terrorist attacks.”

The NSA is planning high-risk covert missions, a lesser-known part of its work, to plant what it calls “tailored radio frequency solutions” — close-in sensors to intercept communications that do not pass through global networks.

Even the CIA devotes $1.7 billion, or nearly 12 percent of its budget, to technical collection efforts, including a joint program with the NSA called “CLANSIG,” a covert program to intercept radio and telephone communications from hostile territory.

The agency also is pursuing tracking systems “that minimize or eliminate the need for physical access and enable deep concealment operations against hard targets.”

[svinayak]

The Decline of the West: Why America Must Prepare for the End of Dominance

[abhishek_sharma]

Maxim D Shrayer on Vasily Grossman

He was a Ukrainian Jew who became one of the Soviet Union's most prominent writer-journalists. His mother and 20,000 others in his hometown were massacred in 1941, he reported from the front of the Soviet-German war and documented the horrors of Stalingrad and Treblinka.

[abhishek_sharma]

Hiding in N. Virginia, a daughter of Auschwitz

[RamaY]

What could be the geo-political circles of influence for BRICS?

Can it be like

Brazil - South America
Russia - Former USSR & eastern Europe
India - Indian sub-continent + Middle-east + South-east Asia
China - China + East Asia + Australia
South-Africa - Africa

The remaining geopolitical centers would be
Germany - Europe
USA - North America

[ramana]

Brazil is Portuguese speaking country in rest of Spanish speaking South America. That has been a hinderance in the past. South America needs to have Argentina and Chile develop more economically to push ahead.

US has Australia also. After Gallipoli in WWI, Australia looks towards the US and was justified in that trust in WWII.

[Philip]

India has to decide what it wants as a member of BRICS,to be a robust global nuclear and economic power,which has millennia of cultural,religious and trade influence across the Asia-Pacific region, networking with the other BRICS powers who have their own spheres of influence, to bring about a more equitable and egalitarian multi-polar world,or to be confined to play that of a subservient lackey in a US led military bloc aimed at continuing a 21st century version of the Cold War against Russia and China.

[ramana]

Gp in Pioneer

ReDrawing the map of Greater Middle East

It looks like greater Israel.

Redrawing the map of a Greater Middle East
Friday, 27 September 2013 | G Parthasarathy |

In the 1980s, Israeli analyst Oded Yinon argued that the entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution. Current developments in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Turkey show that he may have been eerily right

Israel’s Armed Forces invaded Lebanon in 1982, with the aim of creating a buffer for the security of its northern borders. Within months, the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat and his armed cadres were forced to leave Lebanon, the Syrian Air Force was virtually wiped out in air battles with the Israeli Air Force, and Syrian forces had to be withdrawn from Lebanon. In the years following the Israeli action, Lebanon was engulfed by ethnic and sectarian conflict. Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon was not without its costs. The invasion saw the emergence of Hezbollah as a powerful Iranian-backed militia, which has in subsequent conflicts, seriously challenged the might and avowed invincibility of Israel’s Armed Forces.

Virtually coinciding with the Israeli attack on Lebanon, Oded Yinon, an Israeli Government analyst came out with a plan for redrawing the boundaries of what the Americans were to later describe as the ‘Greater Middle East’, extending from Pakistan to Turkey. While advocating a long-term plan for the annulment of Israel’s Camp David Accord with Egypt and its destabilisation, Yinon envisaged “total dissolution of Lebanon” as a precedent for the dissolution of Syria and Iraq. Syria, he argued, would fall apart into a Shia Alawite dominated state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state near Damascus, hostile to the Sunni north, and the Druzes with a state in “our Golan” and in the Hauran and northern Jordan.

With the bloody Iran-Iraq conflict triggered by Saddam Hussein and encouraged by the Reagan Administration then gathering momentum, Yinon held: “In Iraq, a division into Provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria, in Ottoman times, is possible. So, three or more states will exist around the three major cities of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad. Shia areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish North. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarisation. The entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures”. In the years that have followed the Yinon analysis, the Greater Middle East has witnessed traumatic and bloody conflicts and internal turmoil, as civilisational, religious and sectarian rivalries have torn societies and nations apart.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein brought misery and suffering to his own people after his ill-advised invasion of Kuwait, which followed the war he imposed on Iran with American support. After fellow Arabs, notably Syria and Egypt, joined the Americans to pulverise his armed forces and impose crippling economic sanctions in 1991, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was torn apart in a second American-led invasion. This invasion in 2003 ended minority Sunni domination of Iraq and replaced it with a Shia- dominated Government. No less than 1,33,000 Iraqis perished in this second invasion. The new Shia-dominated dispensation is, however, not only facing de facto Kurdish separation in the north, but also a bloody insurgency by the Sunni-minority, duly backed by its Gulf Arab neighbours.

Libya was, thereafter, invaded by Nato forces from France and the UK, backed by the Americans, for regime change, getting the erratic but secular Muammar Gaddafi replaced by Islamist-oriented leaders. Libya has not only become a focal point for Al Qaeda activity, but also appears headed towards being administered virtually as two separate entities — Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.

The much touted Arab Spring which was supposed to usher in a new era of democratic change exposed the harsh reality that countries with no experience of democratic traditions and institutions cannot be transformed overnight into vibrant democracies, merely because of demonstrations by an urbanised and educated middle class. Nowhere has this emerged more clearly than in Tunisia and Egypt, where elections produced rulers with Islamist inclinations, who are not exactly votaries of pluralism and modernism. In Egypt, an elected Islamist President has since been overthrown by a largely secular military, which has a tradition of not only dominating political life, but also wielding vast economic clout. It is noteworthy that the monarchies in the Gulf, Morocco and Jordan, with long-standing administrative and traditional political structures, were able to not only survive demonstrations, but emerge more confident of being able to deal with public discontent, than those authoritarian rulers who were forced to succumb to pressures for democratic transformation.

The Arab Spring, however, has had the most destabilising impact caused by demonstrations against the secular and modern minded, but brutally authoritarian regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. An estimated 1,20,000 Syrians have perished in the conflict, which has not only widened the Shia-Sunni rift across the Muslim world, but has also unexpectedly led to the beginnings of Russian-American cooperation, to moderate the American propensity for regime change through military intervention. Syria has been forced to forego its chemical weapons — a development pleasing to the heart of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Air Force had earlier effectively destroyed Syria’s clandestine nuclear weapons-related facilities. The bloody civil war in Syria, however, continues.

Sunni elements in Syria remain divided between the ‘moderate’ Free Syrian Army which is being armed and backed by the US and its Nato allies, while more extremist Islamist elements are being backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The Assad regime, which depends heavily on Russian diplomatic and military support, continues to receive steadfast backing from key Shia allies — Iran, Iraq and the Hezbollah. Unless a UN-brokered peace can be arranged, which presently appears unlikely, Syria appears inevitably headed for a partition along sectarian, ethnic and religious fault lines.

This would be continuation of a trend where Sudan has been partitioned on religious/ethnic lines and Iraq’s Shia-Sunni-Kurdish fault lines have been accompanied by fears of a tacitly US-backed Kurdish separatism. Moreover, after doors for its entry to the European Union were irrevocably shut, Turkey appears to be adopting a more assertive role in the ‘Greater Middle East’. An autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan absorbing Turkey’s insurgent Kurds, with its American-installed oil pipelines traversing through Turkey, would be welcomed by Ankara.

India has quite rightly frowned on separatism in Iraq and built bridges to the new dispensation there. Stability in its neighbouring Gulf region, with its vast energy resources and where six million Indians reside, remains its key area of interest. India has also opposed American/Nato military intervention in Syria, which could destabilise its Gulf neighbourhood. It is really for the people of the ‘Greater Middle East’ to determine their destinies, without destabilising meddling by outsiders.

The last line is wise words but when the locals ally with outside powers to gain dominiance over other locals its colonialism redux.
This is exactly how the British EIC came ot meddle in India. If you take the long view the Greater Muddle East fracturing along religious and ethnic lines is to break the facade of Nasserite Arab unity that stared at Israel since its founding. The big boy still left standing will be Persia which has its ethnic Kurds.

[Philip]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qa ... d=all&_r=0

Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence
By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: September 29, 2013

WASHINGTON — As the nation’s spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August has caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

Since news reports in early August revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack, analysts have detected a sharp drop in the terrorists’ use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring. Since August, senior American officials have been scrambling to find new ways to surveil the electronic messages and conversations of Al Qaeda’s leaders and operatives.

“The switches weren’t turned off, but there has been a real decrease in quality” of communications, said one United States official, who like others quoted spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence programs.

The drop in message traffic after the communication intercepts contrasts with what analysts describe as a far more muted impact on counterterrorism efforts from the disclosures by Mr. Snowden of the broad capabilities of N.S.A. surveillance programs. Instead of terrorists moving away from electronic communications after those disclosures, analysts have detected terrorists mainly talking about the information that Mr. Snowden has disclosed.

Senior American officials say that Mr. Snowden’s disclosures have had a broader impact on national security in general, including counterterrorism efforts. This includes fears that Russia and China now have more technical details about the N.S.A. surveillance programs. Diplomatic ties have also been damaged, and among the results was the decision by Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, to postpone a state visit to the United States in protest over revelations that the agency spied on her, her top aides and Brazil’s largest company, the oil giant Petrobras.

The communication intercepts between Mr. Zawahri and Mr. Wuhayshi revealed what American intelligence officials and lawmakers have described as one of the most serious plots against American and other Western interests since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. It prompted the closing of 19 United States Embassies and consulates for a week, when the authorities ultimately concluded that the plot focused on the embassy in Yemen.

McClatchy Newspapers first reported on the conversations between Mr. Zawahri and Mr. Wuhayshi on Aug. 4. Two days before that, The New York Times agreed to withhold the identities of the Qaeda leaders after senior American intelligence officials said the information could jeopardize their operations. After the government became aware of the McClatchy article, it dropped its objections to The Times’s publishing the same information, and the newspaper did so on Aug. 5.

In recent months, senior administration officials — including the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr. — have drawn attention to the damage that Mr. Snowden’s revelations have done, though most have been addressing the impact on national security more broadly, not just the effect on counterterrorism.

“We have seen, in response to the Snowden leaks, Al Qaeda and affiliated groups seeking to change their tactics, looking to see what they can learn from what is in the press and seek to change how they communicate to avoid detection,” Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a security conference in Aspen, Colo., in July.

American counterterrorism officials say they believe the disclosure about the Qaeda plot has had a significant impact because it was a specific event that signaled to terrorists that a main communication network that the group’s leaders were using was being monitored. The sharpest decline in messaging has been among the Qaeda operatives in Yemen, officials said. The disclosures from Mr. Snowden have not had such specificity about terrorist communications networks that the government is monitoring, they said.

“It was something that was immediate, direct and involved specific people on specific communications about specific events,” one senior American official said of the exchange between the Qaeda leaders. “The Snowden stuff is layered and layered, and it will take a lot of time to understand it. There wasn’t a sudden drop-off from it. A lot of these guys think that they are not impacted by it, and it is difficult stuff for them to understand.”

Other senior intelligence and counterterrorism officials offer a dissenting view, saying that it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the impact of the messages between the Qaeda leaders from Mr. Snowden’s overall disclosures, and that the decline is more likely a combination of the two.

“The bad guys are just not going to talk operational planning electronically,” said one senior counterterrorism official. Moreover, that official and others say, it could take months or years to fully assess the impact of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures on counterterrorism efforts.

Over the past decade, the N.S.A. has invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, according to documents provided by Mr. Snowden.

The government’s greatest fear concerning its counterterrorism operations is that over the next several months, the level of intercepted communications will continue to fall as terrorists most likely find new ways to communicate with one another, one senior American official said. It will likely take the government some time to break into that method and monitor communications.

One way the terrorists may try to communicate, the official said, is strictly through couriers, who would carry paper notes or computer flash drives. If that happens, the official said, terrorists will find it very difficult to communicate as couriers take significant time to move messages.

“The problem for Al Qaeda is they cannot function without cellphones,” said one former senior administration official. “They know we listen to them, but they use them anyhow. You can’t run a sophisticated organization without communications in this world. They know all this, but to operate they have to go on.”

A senior intelligence official put it this way: “They are agile, we are agile. When we see a change in behavior, our guys are changing right along with it, or we’re already seeing it and adapting to it. Our capabilities are changing in hours and days, versus weeks and months like we used to.”

To be sure, Qaeda leaders and their top lieutenants use other secure electronic communications as well as old-fashioned means — like couriers, as Bin Laden did — that pose major challenges to American intelligence services.

In the past few months, the Global Islamic Media Front, the propaganda arm of Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups, has released new software that allows users to encrypt communications for instant-messaging and cellphones. Officials say these new programs may pose fresh challenges for N.S.A. code breakers.

Jihadists have been working on camouflaging their communications through encryption software for years.

Al Qaeda’s use of advanced encryption technology dates to 2007, when the Global Islamic Media Front released the Asrar al-Mujahedeen, or so-called “Mujahedeen Secrets,” software. An updated version, Mujahedeen Secrets 2, was released in January 2008, and has been revised at least twice, most recently in May 2012, analysts said.

The program was popularized in the first issue of Inspire, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s quarterly online magazine, in a July 2010 post entitled “How to Use Asrar al-Mujahedeen: Sending and Receiving Encrypted Messages.”

Since then, each issue of Inspire has offered a how-to section on encrypting communications, recommending MS2 as the main encryption tool.

Shortly after Mr. Snowden leaked documents about the secret N.S.A. surveillance programs, chat rooms and Web sites used by jihadis and prospective recruits advised users how to avoid N.S.A. detection, from telling them to avoid using Skype to recommending specific online software programs like MS2 to keep spies from tracking their computers’ physical locations.

A few months ago, the Global Islamic Media Front issued new software that relies on the MS2’s “Asrar al-Dardashah, or “Secrets of Chatting,” which allows users to encrypt conversations over instant-messaging software like Paltalk, Google Chat, Yahoo and MSN, according to Laith Alkhouri, a senior analyst at Flashpoint Global Partners, a New York security consulting firm that tracks militant Web sites.

In early September, the Global Islamic Media Front said it had released an encryption program for messages and files on mobile phones running the Android and Symbian operating systems.

According to the group, the software can encrypt text messages and files and send them by e-mail or between cellphones with different operating systems. The software also lets users securely check e-mail and prevents users from receiving nonencrypted messages, the group claimed.

[ramana]

Philip, The above i internal US politics issue as to who was more damaging to US interests? As such its not geopolitical worthy.

[abhishek_sharma]

Forms of Delirium: Peter Pomerantsev circles the Kremlin

[Philip]

More than jihadism or Iran, China's role in Africa is Obama's obsession
Where America brings drones, the Chinese build roads. Al-Shabaab and co march in lockstep with this new imperialism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -obsession

Countries are "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world", wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed.

John Pilger
The Guardian, Wednesday 9 October 2013
Hu Jintao, who stepped down as Chinese president last year, in Tanzania on a tour intended to cement China's ties with Africa. Photograph: STR New / Reuters/REUTERS

Countries are "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world", wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.

The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. "When they are made to hate each other," wrote a British colonial official, "good governance is assured."

Today Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF "structural adjustment" programmes, and saturated with modern weapons – notably President Obama's personal favourite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was "well received by the people in the areas it controlled", reported the US Congressional Research Service, "[but] received negative press coverage, especially in the west". Obama crushed it; and last January Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. "Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government," effused President Hassan Mohamud. "Thank you, America."

The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this – just as the Twin Towers attack and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and injustice. Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with the return of unfettered imperialism.

Since Nato reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last obstacles to Africa have fallen. "Scrambles for energy, minerals and fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity," report Ministry of Defence planners. As "high numbers of civilian casualties" are predicted, "perceptions of moral legitimacy will be important for success". Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a continent, the arms mammoth BAE Systems, together with Barclays Capital and BP, warns that "the government should define its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens". The cynicism is lethal. British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures beckon retaliation at home.

With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games a "soldier to soldier" doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. The British did this in India. It is as if Africa's proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master's black colonial elite – whose "historic mission", warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the subjugation of their own people in the cause of "a capitalism rampant though camouflaged". The reference also fits the son of Africa in the White House.

For Obama, there is a more pressing cause – China. Africa is China's success story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossil fuels. Nato's bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is Washington's obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a "policy" known as the "pivot to Asia", whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.

This week's meeting in Tokyo between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, and their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect of war. Sixty per cent of US naval forces are to be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the rightwing government of Shinzo Abe, who came to power in December with a pledge to build a "new, strong military" and circumvent the "peace constitution".

A US-Japanese anti-ballistic-missile system near Kyoto is directed at China. Using long-range Global Hawk drones the US has sharply increased its provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Both countries now deploy advanced vertical take-off aircraft in Japan in preparation for a blitzkrieg.

On the Pacific island of Guam, from where B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US marines. In Australia this week an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of Sydney is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a hub of US spying in the region and beyond; it is also critical to Obama's worldwide assassinations by drone.

'We have to inform the British to keep them on side," McGeorge Bundy, an assistant US secretary of state, once said. "You in Australia are with us, come what may." Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for Washington. However, China is Australia's biggest trading partner and largely responsible for its evasion of the 2008 recession. Without China, there would be no minerals boom: no weekly mining return of up to a billion dollars.

The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where Rupert Murdoch, the patron of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, controls 70% of the press. Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the "choice" that the US wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve "blinding" Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would "consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption … and a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability". In his address to the nation last month, Obama said: "What makes America different, what makes us exceptional, is that we are dedicated to act."

[akashganga]

More than jihadism or Iran, China's role in Africa is Obama's obsession
Where America brings drones, the Chinese build roads. Al-Shabaab and co march in lockstep with this new imperialism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -obsession

Countries are "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world", wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed.

America and West with strong christian extremism in the background wants africans to follow their religion and culture which will ensure that africa remains under their indirect control. Al-shabaab and other islamist organizations want to islamize africans so that they follow the religion and culture of arabs and remain under arabs indirect control. Both Westerners and Arabs are in a way imperialists and want to control other people. China on the other hand builds real stuff for africans and china's only interests is to ensure that they have access to african markets and can get natural resources.

[habal]

buddhu ka bhai fuddu ..

ab jaag utha imaan ab jaag utha ..

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-0 ... ld-turn-us

[Philip]

Europe moving to the far right and Left.In days of economic crisis,Europe is again displaying the kind of poilitical turmoil that preceded the rise of the Nazis in Germany.Nationalism and Communism and again becoming flavours of the population after the collapse of crony capitalist policies which have beggared ordinary people and massively enriched the already rich.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/o ... -elections

Far-right's surge could paralyse Europe, warns Hollande as NF passes socialists
French president warns of threat from parties such as National Front as poll on EU elections in May puts all extremists ahead

Kim Willsher in Paris and Ian Traynor in Brussels
theguardian.com, Thursday 10 October 2013

Marine Le Pen, National Front leader, and her father and NF founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, to her right, at the NF congress. Photo: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty

The French president, François Hollande, has warned that Europe risks "regression and paralysis" if Eurosceptics and nationalists gain the upper hand in next year's European parliament elections, as an opinion poll for the first time put the anti-immigrant National Front (NF) well ahead of his country's mainstream parties.

The Ifop poll in the newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur gave Marine Le Pen's National Front 24% in the European contest, five points ahead of Hollande's socialists and almost four times what the far-right party achieved in the last European election, in 2009.

The boost to the extreme right in France came amid growing fears among the European Union elite that extreme parties of right and left would make a strong showing in the European elections in May.

Nigel Farage's UK Independence party is tipped to do well, possibly becoming the biggest British party in the European parliament, while Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-immigrant and anti-Islam populist, is also running strongly in the opinion polls.

German analysts and politicians expect the new anti single European currency party, Alternative for Germany, to win its first seats in a national poll. The far-right in Poland, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria would also register gains, on current projections.

"Next May the European parliament could be for a large part composed of anti-Europeans. It would be a regression and a threat of paralysis," Hollande warned.

In remarks clearly aimed at the National Front at home but also pointing to the wider problem in Europe after four years of financial crisis, Hollande warned of the twin threat to Europe from the forces of "nationalism and populism".

He said: "Let's be honest, Europe is associated – wrongly it has to be said – with the opening of borders and thus to immigration. Nationalism springs from a lack of perspective and a collective dynamic, add in the fear of decline, with certain countries painfully living the confrontation with globalisation."

He ascribed the growth of nationalism to "relations with Islam", as well as "working people's fears faced with industrial reorganisation", the "fear of emerging countries", and "conservatism linked partly with ageing of the population".

The president added: "Xenophobia does the rest."

The Ifop pollsters found that 24% of the 1,893 French voters questioned intended to vote for the NF in next year's European elections, while 22% said they would vote for the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, and only 19% for the governing Parti Socialiste.

In the last European elections, in 2009, the National Front took 6.34% of the vote. Pollsters stressed that the new survey reflected voters' intentions rather than a ballot prediction.

"For the first time in a poll on voting intentions in an election of a national character, the NF is clearly ahead," an Ifop spokesperson said.

A former European government minister in close contact with France's socialist leadership said Hollande's entourage was "very scared" and expected Le Pen to emerge as the winner. "This is a wake-up call from Hollande. He is right. The next European elections will bring a big victory for nationalist populists of right and left."

Others cautioned that with the ballot almost eight months away, it was too early to say. The gains for the far-right are also mirrored by gains for the hard-left in parts of Europe. The socialists in the Netherlands could make gains and the communist party in the Czech republic is expected to do well in national elections this month and could enter coalition government for the first time since the collapse of communism in 1989.

In crisis-ravaged Greece, the leftwing Syriza movement is expected to do well. In Germany, following last month's general elections, the far-left Die Linke, composed of disaffected social democrats and former East German communists, is now the third force in parliament, supplanting the Greens.

Other factors combine to suggest a strong opportunity for anti-Europeans of the far-right and hard-left. The European elections often serve as a surrogate mid-term ballot on, and protest against, sitting governments. Voter turnout is extremely low but the fringe parties are more likely to mobilise support. Beyond Germany there is a broad mood of anti-incumbency across Europe.

The boost for the French far-right comes just 10 days before the second round of a cantonal byelection in the town of Brignoles, in the Var region of southern France. The NF candidate took a stunning 40.4% of votes in the first round.

Alain Delon, one of France's most celebrated actors, voiced his support for the NF, saying he approved of the party's rise.

In an interview with the Swiss paper Le Matin, Delon said: "For years Le Pen father and daughter have fought, but they've fought somewhat alone. Now, for the first time, they're not alone. The French are with them."

The NF has been slowly gaining political ground in France since 2011 when Marine Le Pen took over at the helm of the party founded in 1972 by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and known for its xenophobia and Holocaust-doubting rhetoric.

Steeve Briois, the NF secretary general, said: "The French are showing a wish to take their destiny into their hands and give back their country its sovereignty." He promised an "unprecedented earthquake" in the European elections.

Jean-Yves Camus, who is based at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations, in Paris, and is an expert on the European far-right, said: "All the ingredients are coming together for the NF to achieve a higher score than ever before in both the municipal and the European elections next year.

"The European elections will be a chance for people to express their discontent with everything associated with Europe, globalisation, outsourcing and so on."

[devesh]

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/ ... 05510.html

U.S.-Japan Defense Accord Rankles South Korea

The front-page picture in Korean newspapers told the story of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

South Korea's President Park Geun Hye, looking frosty and gazing in the opposite direction, ignored Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe standing next to her at the October 7 APEC in Bali. The two leaders barely exchanged greetings, according to a Japanese news dispatch, and kept their contact to a minimum, "only for a few seconds."

The awkward encounter was emblematic of widening gulf between two crucial East Asian neighbors, unable to settle age-old differences over past history, even as their security environment worsens with China's territorial assertiveness and North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

But it was not just bilateral issues dividing them. Broadening US security ties with Japan is fueling resentment in South Korea that the US is eroding Seoul's strategic options by beefing up Japan. The October 3 US-Japanese agreement to revise their defense cooperation guidelines next year has raised the specter of Washington drastically strengthening Japan's independent military capability. This prompts concerns in Seoul that Japan, an ancient foe, may assume greater responsibility for regional defense on behalf of the United States. South Korea analysts fear that their country might once again become the proverbial shrimp caught between two Asian whales - Japan and China.

Such a prospect evokes unpalatable memories of Japanese invasions, occupation and brutalities - smack in the face of nuclear threats from the North. Increased Japanese responsibility not only augurs negatively for Seoul's independent strategic space but interferes with Seoul's attempt to forge stronger ties with China and use Beijing's leverage in containing North Korea's nuclear capability.

The US is shifting more responsibility to South Korea, too.

During his four-day trip to Seoul for assessment of North Korea's military capability, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced a series of steps that would bolster the bilateral military alliance. His visit came against the backdrop of increasing US commitment for the defense of South Korea, which hosts 28,500 US troops. In their assessment of South Korean capability, Hagel and Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan Jin came close to agreement on delaying the transfer of command authority of the combined forces to a Korean general in 2015. They also signed a new "strategic framework" authorizing what Korean officials described as "preemptive attack" on the North's nuclear facility in the event of a nuclear or missile attack against the South.

Then, Hagel traveled to Tokyo on October 3. Joined by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Hagel signed an agreement calling for revision of the US-Japan Defense Cooperation guidelines next year. The Obama administration did not consult Seoul on the decision to beef up the Japanese military capability. The angst in Seoul was exacerbated by the fact that the agreement came in the midst of the Abe government seeking what it called collective self-defense, which would allow Japan to consider an attack on its ally as attack on itself. That not only would make Japan a significant military force in the region, it would necessarily involve reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution that prohibits its rearmament.

US wants to honorably discharge from its responsibilities. they want a legacy not tarred by clinging on to old power equations when they clearly have been altered over the past 2 decades.

[kmkraoind]

A New View of Asia: 24 Charts that Show What's at Stake for America - heritage.org

[habal]

The birth of the 'de-Americanized' world by Pepe Escobar:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-02-151013.html

[abhishek_sharma]

Confessions of a Drone Warrior

[Prem]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/donaldkirk/ ... -pakistan/

In Asia's New 'Great Game,' China And India Talk Nice Despite Pakistan6 comments, 0 called-out Comment Now Follow Comments Following Comments Unfollow Comments .For a brief time in the 1950s, the catch phrase for relations between the world’s two most populated countries was “Hindi-Chini bhaibhai” — Indians and Chinese are brothers. Nobody’s suggesting the two are about to resume fraternal ties, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a visit to Beijing has gone further than seemed possible a few months ago toward resolving the worst problems between Asia’s two giants.Just when the Chinese appeared sure to go on harassing Indian troops along the cease-fire lines established more than half a century ago after the bloody Sino-Indian war, Singh and China’s President Xi Jinping have agreed on a raft of measures for soldiers on either side to get along with each other.

No more will Chinese forces shadow the Indians when they go on patrol on their side of the line. In case of a sudden misunderstanding, officers on either side can communicate on a hotline — maybe more than one, maybe hotlines at sensitive points along the line at India’s northern tip and also across the line in the northeast. Considering that the Chinese have been known to refer to swatches of the northeast as “lower Tibet,” that’s a meaningful advance. And the forces on either side are even supposed to let each other known in advance when they’re about to play war games that might otherwise be misinterpreted as the real thing.The happy talk from Beijing, though, comes with a huge downside that flared up yet again just as Singh and Xi were shaking hands. That’s China’s support of Pakistan, by far the largest recipient of Chinese arms as well as nuclear technology and even components for nuclear warheads.Confident the Chinese won’t stop them, Pakistani forces persist in launching bloody cross-border attacks against India, sniping and sometimes firing artillery rounds , across the LOC, “the line of control.” That’s the ceasefire line in Kashmir, not to be confused with the LAC — the “line of actual control” between Indian and China.Just hours before Singh and Xi signed a “Border Defense Cooperation Agreement,” the Pakistanis opened fire from their side of the line on upwards of 50 Indian positions., killing at least one Indian soldier and wounding several others. No, China isn’t condoning the Pakistani attacks, but the fact is that Pakistan relies primarily on China as the source of its arms. India gets no arms at all from China but imports planes and other heavy weaponry from Russia, where Singh paid a call on President Putin before going on to Beijing.It’s hard to know what to make of the Pakistani attacks since Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, keeps trying to soothe tensions, as if the attacks were almost accidental. Visiting Washington, before seeing President Obama, he even asked if the U.S. could intervene diplomatically, maybe help negotiate a solution. That might have seemed like a great chance for the U.S. to hold sway over both sides in the role of honest broker, but the U.S., worried about its relations with both India and Pakistan, has said it’s up to those two to settle their own dispute.Obviously whatever the U.S. does will upset one side or the other while China seems to hold all the cards — providing arms and nuclear know-how to Pakistan while placating India in in their longstanding confrontation across the northern borders.the issue of Chinese military support for Pakistan does not seem to have merited more than maybe a passing mention while Singh was in Beijing. Instead, the Indians appear overjoyed by Singh’s diplomatic success.Not that negative considerations were far away.”China’s provision of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan can only be interpreted as an act of hostility toward India,” said the Hindustan Times. Still, it was possible to sublimate such concerns. “India and China may never be friends,” the paper editorialized , “but they need not be enemies

[kmkraoind]

Pentagon weighs future of its inscrutable nonagenarian futurist, Andrew W. Marshall

[panduranghari]

The last line is wise words but when the locals ally with outside powers to gain dominiance over other locals its colonialism redux.
This is exactly how the British EIC came ot meddle in India. If you take the long view the Greater Muddle East fracturing along religious and ethnic lines is to break the facade of Nasserite Arab unity that stared at Israel since its founding. The big boy still left standing will be Persia which has its ethnic Kurds.

What makes it scary is the Persians will have oil for prolonged conflict. But do they have the other things needed to wage a war?

[devesh]

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/ ... orway.html

Why Is China Snubbing Norway?

Mainly associated with conflict resolution, foreign assistance and cozy Scandinavian prosperity, Norway makes an odd target for China's ire.

Yet for three years, Beijing has frozen relations with Oslo since a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, deeply embarrassing China's leaders. Diplomatic ties have been gutted, meetings canceled and economic ties hamstrung by an unofficial partial embargo on Norwegian salmon and a freeze on trade talks.

The protracted snit shows the lengths Beijing will go to punish other nations for offenses or perceived slights. It's one of several relentless spats China has maintained with countries as varied as Japan and Lithuania, aimed at winning concessions and discouraging criticism.

China considers such retaliation the best way to draw attention to "issues that they consider core interests that other states do not at first easily grasp," said Andrew Nathan, an expert on Chinese politics at New York's Columbia University.

Yet, such fits of pique also come at a price. Maintaining a grudge against Norway over Liu reminds other countries of China's poor human rights record, even while Beijing is seeking to be taken seriously on international stage. China is seen as defining its interests all too narrowly in a way that upsets the usual give-and-take among nations, said Boston University China scholar Joseph Fewsmith.

"I think China hurts its reputation. China needs to think more about providing the public goods that maintain the international system," Fewsmith said.

The spat with Norway entered the news again this month when the installation of a new Norwegian government offered an opportunity to end the rift. Instead, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman demanded Norway take "concrete action to create conditions for improving and developing bilateral relations."

"Whoever tied the ring around the tiger's neck must untie it," Hua Chunying told reporters, using a familiar Chinese expression to apportion blame.

But China has not said what it wants Norway to do. While the Nobel is awarded in Oslo by the parliament-appointed committee, the Norwegian government has no direct say in who gets it. At the time of the award, Beijing bitterly accused Norway of insulting China by interfering in its internal affairs and glorifying a criminal.

Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison after co-authoring a document calling for sweeping changes to China's one-party political system. His wife has also been placed under illegal house arrest and his brother-in-law jailed on what supporters say are trumped-up fraud charges.

Norway's Foreign Ministry declined to respond to specific questions about China ties, but spokesman Svein Michelsen said Oslo is hopeful of better relations.

"Norway's new foreign minister, Mr. Borge Brende, has confirmed that re-establishing good relations with China is a key priority and will pursue the available opportunities toward this end," Svein Michelsen said.

Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, says China expects some at least symbolic act of contrition, although he didn't say exactly what form that should take.

[Philip]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/o ... om-gas-war

Russia and Ukraine edge closer to 'gas war'
Gazprom demands payment of half a billion pounds in arrears in move seen by some as punishment for aligning with EU

[SSridhar]

Putting out to sea, a new vision - Salman Kurshid, Julie Bishop, Marty Natalegawa - The Hindu

(Salman Khurshid is India’s External Affairs Minister, Julie Bishop, the Australian Foreign Minister, and Marty Natalegawa, the Foreign Minister of Indonesia.)

The 13th meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) was held on November 1 in Perth, Australia’s Indian Ocean capital. At this meeting, Australia took over as Chair of the Association from India, which has been Chair since 2011. Indonesia became the new Vice-Chair. We agreed on a new name for our Association — the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) — and charted out directions for the further development of our cooperation.

Strategic

The Indian Ocean covers about 20 per cent of water on the world’s surface. It is the third largest of the world’s five oceans. The Indian Ocean Rim countries have a population of approximately 2.6 billion, or 39 per cent of the world’s people. The Indian Ocean accounts for 50 per cent of the world’s container traffic and Indian Ocean ports handle about 30 per cent of global trade. Around 66 per cent of the world’s seaborne trade in oil transits the Indian Ocean. Roughly 55 per cent of known oil reserves, and around 40 per cent of gas reserves, are in the Indian Ocean region.

Reflecting diversity

These are important and impressive statistics. They are in part the reason why the nations of this region are members of IORA. At this meeting, Australia took over as Chair of the organisation for the first time in its 18-year history, succeeding India. Indonesia became the new Vice-Chair.

IORA consists of 20 member-states. They reflect the remarkable diversity of our Indian Ocean region. They range from small island-countries, such as Comoros and Seychelles, to G20 members such as India, Indonesia and Australia. What unite this remarkable diversity are the common bond of an ocean and a common commitment to the prosperity and sustainable economic growth of the region.

As global economic power increasingly shifts to the east, maintaining prosperity and stability across the Indian Ocean region becomes more important than ever.

At Bangalore in 2011, the Association agreed on six priority areas: maritime safety and security; trade and investment facilitation; fisheries management; disaster preparedness; academic, science and technology cooperation; tourism and cultural exchange. In Gurgaon in 2012, we set out the broad contours of our Association’s agenda for the next decade. During our meeting on November 1, IORA members committed to a range of initiatives to further develop cooperation in each of our priority areas. Member-states believe that by focussing on these key areas, IORA can make a genuine contribution to the peaceful, productive and sustainable development of the Indian Ocean region.

Challenges

The member-states are also linked by common challenges — the need to keep shipping lanes open, keep fishery stocks viable, forecast and tackle disasters like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and promote trade, education and tourism links across the region. With the combined population of the 36 countries surrounding the Indian Ocean forecast to rise to 3.2 billion by 2030, these challenges can only be expected to exacerbate.

Women’s empowerment

We must work hard together to ensure that the people of the Indian Ocean region have access to the best possible levels of education. The empowerment of women and girls in the region will be a high priority for IORA. During Australia’s chairing of the organisation, the Ambassador for Women and Girls will have an important role in this. We must ensure that, especially for those countries which rely heavily on the resources of the sea, that there are sustainable fisheries management practices in place. The tuna fisheries in the Indian Ocean produce about one-third of the world’s tuna — half of it caught by small-scale vessels in the waters of the coastal states.

Piracy

The common threat of piracy poses a considerable challenge to IORA’s objectives. It was notable during our meeting how many member-states reflected on the impact of piracy in our region. The World Bank estimates that piracy costs the global economy around (U.S.) $18 billion a year in increased trade costs — an amount that dwarfs the estimated $53 million average annual ransom paid. IORA members are integral players in counter-piracy efforts in the Indian Ocean. In addition to combating piracy, there are the challenges of ensuring maritime security and maritime safety across the region and preparing ourselves against the all too tragic consequences of natural disasters.

We are proud as foreign ministers of India, Australia and Indonesia, to have joined our colleagues from the 20 member-states and six dialogue partner countries to have declared our support for the Perth Principles for peaceful, productive and sustainable use of the Ocean and its resources.

These principles recognise the importance of the Indian Ocean’s diversity, including its marine life and ecosystems. They reflect our commitment to the conservation and sustainable use of its fisheries stocks, water and seabed resources, and other marine life. We recognise the important contribution this will make to eradicating poverty, creating sustainable livelihoods and decent work around the region, while helping to sustain economic growth and food security.

India, Australia and Indonesia are committed to working with our fellow IORA members to harness the diverse strengths of our region. We are confident that Indian Ocean regional cooperation is entering a significant, and indeed exciting, new phase. The commitment of member-states during our meeting, reflected in the attendance of foreign ministers from Australia, Comoros, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Yemen is perhaps the most significant demonstration of recognition that in the 21st century, the Indian Ocean region will play a vital strategic and economic role.

[devesh]

http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/03/japan ... ack-force/

Japan’s New (Defensive) Attack Force

Even as Washington tied itself up in knots, the Japan-U.S. Security Consultative Committee (SCC) – the “2+2” comprising the countries’ foreign and defense ministers – was announcing a potentially far-reaching revamp of the Japan-U.S. alliance. As part of their new vision, the Japanese military will shoulder a greater share of the joint security burden, something the U.S. government – and some Japanese conservatives – have wanted to happen for a very long time.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a leading proponent of the more active Japan that is emerging. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal this week, Abe asserted the view that “Japan is expected to exert leadership … in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific,” and warned China that the outcome would not be peaceful if it should try to change the status quo by force – even as Japan scrambled fighter aircraft on three consecutive days in response to Chinese activity.

Against this worrying backdrop, the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) and the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) have both been enhancing their capabilities with a view to protecting the country’s maritime interests. Abe may not have initiated this process, but he is doing what he can to accelerate it, having handed the Ministry of Defense (MoD) its first budget increase in over a decade at the start of the year.

Most eye-catching of all – especially in light of Japan’s disagreements with China – has been Tokyo’s emphasis on the JSDF’s amphibious capabilities. The news this week that the MoD is prepping a major amphibious landing drill that began on November 1 was a restatement of this ambition, and the exercise will be the latest in a long series of moves designed to equip the JSDF with a credible amphibious deterrent.

Japan is on the move again.

[Prem]

http://netindian.in/news/2013/11/07/000 ... lhi-nov-10
Foreign Ministers of Russia, India, China to meet in Delhi on Nov 10

The Twelfth Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Russia, India and China (RIC)will be held in New Delhi on November 10 to discuss the evolving scenario in the Middle East and North Africa as well as concerns relating to terrorism and drug trafficking.This is the third time that the RIC Foreign Ministers are meeting in India. The previous two meetings were held in Delhi and Bangalore.External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid will host his counterparts from the two countries.
Mr Syed Akbaruddin, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, told newspersons here yesterday that, as the meeting is taking place in the backdrop of the evolving scenario in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the upcoming 9th WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali, issues relating to these will figure in the discussion.In addition, they will also address concerns relating to terrorism, to drug trafficking, to discussions on cooperation in different multilateral fora in which all the three countries are participants, and will also cover other global and regional issues of interest to these three countries, he said.
Mr Khurshid will separately meet the Russian and the Chinese Foreign Ministers also for talks on areas relating to bilateral interests of India and each of the two countries

[ramana]

From Ram Narayanan garu from WSJ

EXCERPTS:



Since the middle of the 18th century, the hegemony of the English-speaking peoples has drawn many other nations into a uniquely free, democratic and wealthy world order. The Anglo-American imperium is, by most measures, reaching its twilight. But the values of the Anglosphere, particularly the unique emphasis on individualism, ought to be perfectly suited to the Internet age. And such values can take root anywhere.

As the distinguished Indian writer Madhav Das Nalapat, holder of the Unesco Peace Chair, puts it, the Anglosphere is defined not by racial affinity but "by the blood of the mind."

Perhaps the most important geopolitical question of the 21st century is this: Will India define itself primarily as a member of the Anglosphere or as an Asian power? In the decades after independence, India did what all former colonies do, adopting policies aimed at underlining its differences from the former occupier. Successive governments promoted autarky, the Hindi language and equidistance between the Western and Soviet blocs

But India has long since passed its moment of maximum orbital distance from the other Anglophone democracies. The traits that continue to set it apart from most of its neighbors are, for want of a better shorthand, Anglosphere characteristics.

In India, governments come and go as the result of elections, without anyone being exiled or shot. The armed forces stay out of politics. English is the language of government and of most universities and businesses. Property rights and free contract are secured by a common-law system, which remains open to individuals seeking redress. Shared values lead to shared habits. When, in the aftermath of the tsunami 10 years ago, the U.S., Australian and Indian navies coordinated the relief effort, they found an interoperability that goes beyond even that found among NATO allies.

If India were to take its place at the heart of a loose Anglosphere network, based on free trade and military alliance, the future would suddenly look a great deal brighter. Of course, to join such a free trade area, the U.K. and Ireland would have to leave the EU. But that's another story.





http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 2823363280



THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


THE SATURDAY ESSAY
The World of English Freedoms
It's no accident that the English-speaking nations are the ones most devoted to law and individual rights, writes Daniel Hannan

By

DANIEL HANNAN

Nov. 15, 2013 6:17 p.m. ET



Asked, early in his presidency, whether he believed in American exceptionalism, Barack Obama gave a telling reply. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."



The first part of that answer is fascinating (we'll come back to the Greeks in a bit). Most Brits do indeed believe in British exceptionalism. But here's the thing: They define it in almost exactly the same way that Americans do. British exceptionalism, like its American cousin, has traditionally been held to reside in a series of values and institutions: personal liberty, free contract, jury trials, uncensored newspapers, regular elections, habeas corpus, open competition, secure property, religious pluralism.

The conceit of our era is to assume that these ideals are somehow the natural condition of an advanced society—that all nations will get around to them once they become rich enough and educated enough. In fact, these ideals were developed overwhelmingly in the language in which you are reading these words. You don't have to go back very far to find a time when freedom under the law was more or less confined to the Anglosphere: the community of English-speaking democracies.

In August 1941, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on the deck of HMS Prince of Wales off Newfoundland, no one believed that there was anything inevitable about the triumph of what the Nazis and Communists both called "decadent Anglo-Saxon capitalism." They called it "decadent" for a reason. Across the Eurasian landmass, freedom and democracy had retreated before authoritarianism, then thought to be the coming force. Though a small number of European countries had had their parliamentary systems overthrown by invaders, many more had turned to autocracy on their own, without needing to be occupied: Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain.

Churchill, of all people, knew that the affinity between the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world rested on more than a congruence of parliamentary systems, and he was determined to display that cultural affinity to maximum advantage when he met FDR.

It was a Sunday morning, and the British and American crewmen were paraded jointly on the decks of HMS Prince of Wales for a religious service. The prime minister was determined that "every detail be perfect," and the readings and hymns were meticulously chosen. The sailors listened as a chaplain read from Joshua 1 in the language of the King James Bible, revered in both nations: "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage."

The prime minister was delighted. "The same language, the same hymns and, more or less, the same ideals," he enthused. The same ideals: That was no platitude. The world was in the middle of the second of the three great global confrontations of the 20th century, in which countries that elevated the individual over the state contended for mastery against countries that did the opposite. The list of nations that were on the right side in all three of those conflicts is a short one, but it includes the Anglophone democracies.

We often use the word "Western" as a shorthand for liberal-democratic values, but we're really being polite. What we mean is countries that have adopted the Anglo-American system of government. The spread of "Western" values was, in truth, a series of military victories by the Anglosphere.

I realize that all this might seem strange to American readers. Am I not diluting the uniqueness of the U.S., the world's only propositional state, by lumping it in with the rest of the Anglosphere? Wasn't the republic founded in a violent rejection of the British Empire? Didn't Paul Revere rouse a nation with his cry of "the British are coming"?

Actually, no. That would have been a remarkably odd thing to yell at a Massachusetts population that had never considered itself anything other than British (what the plucky Boston silversmith actually shouted was "The regulars are coming out!"). The American Founders were arguing not for the rejection but for the assertion of what they took to be their birthright as Englishmen. They were revolutionaries in the 18th-century sense of the word, whereby a revolution was understood to be a complete turn of the wheel: a setting upright of that which had been placed on its head.

Alexis de Tocqueville is widely quoted these days as a witness to American exceptionalism. Quoted, but evidently not so widely read, since at the very beginning of "Democracy in America," he flags up what is to be his main argument, namely, that the New World allowed the national characteristics of Europe's nations the freest possible expression. Just as French America exaggerated the autocracy and seigneurialism of Louis XIV's France, and Spanish America the ramshackle obscurantism of Philip IV's Spain, so English America (as he called it) exaggerated the localism, the libertarianism and the mercantilism of the mother country: "The American is the Englishman left to himself."

What made the Anglosphere different? Foreign visitors through the centuries remarked on a number of peculiar characteristics: the profusion of nonstate organizations, clubs, charities and foundations; the cheerful materialism of the population; the strong county institutions, including locally chosen law officers and judges; the easy coexistence of different denominations (religious toleration wasn't unique to the Anglosphere, but religious equality—that is, freedom for every sect to proselytize—was almost unknown in the rest of the world). They were struck by the weakness, in both law and custom, of the extended family, and by the converse emphasis on individualism. They wondered at the stubborn elevation of private property over raison d'état, of personal freedom over collective need.

Many of them, including Tocqueville and Montesquieu, connected the liberty that English-speakers took for granted to geography. Outside North America, most of the Anglosphere is an extended archipelago: Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, the more democratic Caribbean states. North America, although not literally isolated, was geopolitically more remote than any of them, "kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean," as Jefferson put it in his 1801 inaugural address, "from the exterminating havoc [of Europe]."

Isolation meant that there was no need for a standing army in peacetime, which in turn meant that the government had no mechanism for internal repression. When rulers wanted something, usually revenue, they had to ask nicely, by summoning people's representatives in an assembly. It is no coincidence that the world's oldest parliaments—England, Iceland, the Faroes, the Isle of Man—are on islands.

Above all, liberty was tied up with something that foreign observers could only marvel at: the miracle of the common law. Laws weren't written down in the abstract and then applied to particular disputes; they built up, like a coral reef, case by case. They came not from the state but from the people. The common law wasn't a tool of government but an ally of liberty: It placed itself across the path of the Stuarts and George III; it ruled that the bonds of slavery disappeared the moment a man set foot on English soil.

There was a fashion for florid prose in the 18th century, but the second American president, John Adams, wasn't exaggerating when he identified the Anglosphere's beautiful, anomalous legal system—which today covers most English-speaking countries plus Israel, almost an honorary member of the club, alongside the Netherlands and the Nordic countries—as the ultimate guarantor of freedom: "The liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature... and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England."

Freedom under the law is a portable commodity, passed on through intellectual exchange rather than gene flow. Anyone can benefit from constitutional liberty simply by adopting the right institutions and the cultural assumptions that go with them. The Anglosphere is why Bermuda is not Haiti, why Singapore is not Indonesia, why Hong Kong is not China—and, for that matter, not Macau. As the distinguished Indian writer Madhav Das Nalapat, holder of the Unesco Peace Chair, puts it, the Anglosphere is defined not by racial affinity but "by the blood of the mind."

At a time when most countries defined citizenship by ancestry, Britain was unusual in developing a civil rather than an ethnic nationality. The U.S., as so often, distilled and intensified a tendency that had been present in Great Britain, explicitly defining itself as a creedal polity: Anyone can become American simply by signing up to the values inherent in the Constitution.

There is, of course, a flip-side. If the U.S. abandons its political structures, it will lose its identity more thoroughly than states that define nationality by blood or territory. Power is shifting from the 50 states to Washington, D.C., from elected representatives to federal bureaucrats, from citizens to the government. As the U.S. moves toward European-style health care, day care, college education, carbon taxes, foreign policy and spending levels, so it becomes less prosperous, less confident and less free.

We sometimes talk of the English-speaking nations as having a culture of independence. But culture does not exist, numinously, alongside institutions; it is a product of institutions. People respond to incentives. Make enough people dependent on the state, and it won't be long before Americans start behaving and voting like…well, like Greeks.

Which brings us back to Mr. Obama's curiously qualified defense of American exceptionalism. Outside the Anglosphere, people have traditionally expected—indeed, demanded—far more state intervention. They look to the government to solve their problems, and when the government fails, they become petulant.

That is the point that much of Europe has reached now. Greeks, like many Europeans, spent decades increasing their consumption without increasing their production. They voted for politicians who promised to keep the good times going and rejected those who argued for fiscal restraint. Even now, as the calamity overwhelms them, they refuse to take responsibility for their own affairs by leaving the euro and running their own economy. It's what happens when an electorate is systematically infantilized.

The owl of Minerva, wrote Hegel, spreads its wings only with the gathering of the dusk. Since the middle of the 18th century, the hegemony of the English-speaking peoples has drawn many other nations into a uniquely free, democratic and wealthy world order. The Anglo-American imperium is, by most measures, reaching its twilight. But the values of the Anglosphere, particularly the unique emphasis on individualism, ought to be perfectly suited to the Internet age. And such values can take root anywhere.

Perhaps the most important geopolitical question of the 21st century is this: Will India define itself primarily as a member of the Anglosphere or as an Asian power? In the decades after independence, India did what all former colonies do, adopting policies aimed at underlining its differences from the former occupier. Successive governments promoted autarky, the Hindi language and equidistance between the Western and Soviet blocs

But India has long since passed its moment of maximum orbital distance from the other Anglophone democracies. The traits that continue to set it apart from most of its neighbors are, for want of a better shorthand, Anglosphere characteristics.

In India, governments come and go as the result of elections, without anyone being exiled or shot. The armed forces stay out of politics. English is the language of government and of most universities and businesses. Property rights and free contract are secured by a common-law system, which remains open to individuals seeking redress. Shared values lead to shared habits. When, in the aftermath of the tsunami 10 years ago, the U.S., Australian and Indian navies coordinated the relief effort, they found an interoperability that goes beyond even that found among NATO allies.

If India were to take its place at the heart of a loose Anglosphere network, based on free trade and military alliance, the future would suddenly look a great deal brighter. Of course, to join such a free trade area, the U.K. and Ireland would have to leave the EU. But that's another story.


Mr. Hannan has represented South East England in the European Parliament since 1999. This essay is adapted from his new book, "Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World," which has just been published by HarperCollin

[Prem]

From Ram Narayanan garu from WSJ

If India were to take its place at the heart of a loose Anglosphere network, based on free trade and military alliance, the future would suddenly look a great deal brighter. Of course, to join such a free trade area, the U.K. and Ireland would have to leave the EU. But that's another story.

Only if it allow free movement of labor/ people among these nations. This is where we can relocate 1/3of population benefitial to Alll of us.

[svinayak]

If India were to take its place at the heart of a loose Anglosphere network, based on free trade and military alliance, the future would suddenly look a great deal brighter. Of course, to join such a free trade area, the U.K. and Ireland would have to leave the EU. But that's another story.
Only if it allow free movement of labor/ people among these nations. This is where we can relocate 1/3of population benefitial to Alll of us.

THese are all articles and talks. They are nothing to do with reality. The last 50 years Indian economy has not had real trading relations with the sphere.

[brihaspati]

Ireland is not going for any military alliance with India - given the strong anti-nuclear lobby in the country. The connection of the anti-nuclear movement with other geo-political aspects of Ireland, such as its strong Roman Catholic ties and attendant/or otherwise anti-Semitism cloaked within the anti-Israel formal posturing are usually not collectively analyzed. But my sense would be a very strong antipathy towards India as a pagan-not-anti-Israel-nuclear-power to further strengthen military ties, while looking at India in the pseudo-colonial lens as a economic space to benefit from that, it possibly inherited from collaboration with the imperial Brits.

UK would love to have military alliances with India in some formal capacity - so that it had greater handle and access, if possible to infiltrate the Indian security structures. But it would do so not to protect Indian interests from India's viewpoints, but from the racial and insular viewpoint it has always looked at the rest of the world. In that viewpoint, UK looks up to only those nations it had lost wars with, or which it knows can crush it in military confrontations. US interests will come far above any Indian interests in such potential alliances, and of course the basic religious and cultural bias will always work towards UK looking after Pakistani and Bangladeshi interests even within such alliances with India.

[devesh]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ice-change

Why even atheists should be praying for Pope Francis

Only installed in March, Pope Francis has already become a phenomenon. His is the most talked-about name on the internet in 2013, ranking ahead of "Obamacare" and "NSA". In fourth place comes Francis's Twitter handle, @Pontifex. In Italy, Francesco has fast become the most popular name for new baby boys. Rome reports a surge in tourist numbers, while church attendance is said to be up – both trends attributed to "the Francis effect".

His popularity is not hard to fathom. The stories of his personal modesty have become the stuff of instant legend. He carries his own suitcase. He refused the grandeur of the papal palace, preferring to live in a simple hostel. When presented with the traditional red shoes of the pontiff, he declined; instead he telephoned his 81-year-old cobbler in Buenos Aires and asked him to repair his old ones. On Thursday, Francis visited the Italian president – arriving in a blue Ford Focus, with not a blaring siren to be heard.

Some will dismiss these acts as mere gestures, even publicity stunts. But they convey a powerful message, one of almost elemental egalitarianism. He is in the business of scraping away the trappings, the edifice of Vatican wealth accreted over centuries, and returning the church to its core purpose, one Jesus himself might have recognised. He says he wants to preside over "a poor church, for the poor". It's not the institution that counts, it's the mission.

All this would warm the heart of even the most fervent atheist, except Francis has gone much further. It seems he wants to do more than simply stroke the brow of the weak. He is taking on the system that has made them weak and keeps them that way.

"My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost," he tweeted in May. A day earlier he denounced as "slave labour" the conditions endured by Bangladeshi workers killed in a building collapse. In September he said that God wanted men and women to be at the heart of the world and yet we live in a global economic order that worships "an idol called money".

There is no denying the radicalism of this message, a frontal and sustained attack on what he calls "unbridled capitalism", with its "throwaway" attitude to everything from unwanted food to unwanted old people. His enemies have certainly not missed it. If a man is to be judged by his opponents, note that this week Sarah Palin denounced him as "kind of liberal" while the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs has lamented that this pope lacks the "sophisticated" approach to such matters of his predecessors. Meanwhile, an Italian prosecutor has warned that Francis's campaign against corruption could put him in the crosshairs of that country's second most powerful institution: the mafia.

As if this weren't enough to have Francis's 76-year-old face on the walls of the world's student bedrooms, he also seems set to lead a church campaign on the environment. He was photographed this week with anti-fracking activists, while his biographer, Paul Vallely, has revealed that the pope has made contact with Leonardo Boff, an eco-theologian previously shunned by Rome and sentenced to "obsequious silence" by the office formerly known as the "Inquisition". An encyclical on care for the planet is said to be on the way.

The RCC is discovering its own mojo, it seems. it pays to be cool.