organization:department of state

Erythrée et la #liberté_religieuse...

The Eritrean government continues to repress religious freedom for unregistered, and in some cases registered, religious communities. Systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations include torture or other ill-treatment of religious prisoners, arbitrary arrests and detentions without charges, a prolonged ban on public religious activities of unregistered religious groups, and interference in the internal affairs of registered religious groups. The situation is particularly grave for Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The government dominates the internal affairs of the Orthodox Church of Eritrea, the country’s largest Christian denomination, and suppresses the religious activities of Muslims, especially those opposed to the government-appointed head of the Muslim community. In light of these violations, USCIRF again recommends in 2016 that Eritrea be designated a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). Since 2004, USCIRF has recommended, and the State Department has designated, Eritrea as a CPC, most recently in July 2014.

▻http://www.refworld.org/docid/57307cf84d.html

“Henry Kissinger’s famous question about ‘Who do I call in Europe?’ has now been settled. The answer is that we call the German chancellor’s office. That means we have to invest in the relationship with Germany,” said Nicholas Burns, a former senior State Department official in the George W Bush administration, who is now advising Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
▻http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c71dc88-3b8b-11e6-9f2c-36b487ebd80a.html #brexit #Germany #USA #Allemagne

FBI criminal investigation emails: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says - Salon.com
▻https://www.salon.com/2016/06/10/fbi_criminal_investigation_emails_clinton_approved_cia_drone_assassinations_w

http://media.salon.com/2016/06/hillary-clinton-phone.jpeg

The FBI has been conducting a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information for months.

An explosive new report reveals just what it is that the FBI is looking to: emails in which then-Secretary of State Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations in Pakistan with her cellphone.

From 2011 on, the State Department had a secret arrangement with the CIA, giving it a degree of say over whether or not a drone killing would take place.

The U.S. drone program has killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and other countries.

Under Sec. Clinton, State Department officials approved almost every single proposed CIA drone assassination. They only objected to one or two attacks.

The emails that are at the heart of the FBI’s criminal investigation are 2011 and 2012 messages between U.S. diplomats in Pakistan and their State Department superiors in D.C., in which the officials approved drone strikes.

Clinton’s aides forwarded some of these emails to her personal email account, on a private server in her home in suburban New York.

These are the revelations of a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on information provided by anonymous congressional and law-enforcement officials who were briefed on the FBI’s probe.

Exclusive: North Korea restarts plutonium production for nuclear bombs - U.S. official | Reuters
▻http://in.reuters.com/article/northkorea-nuclear-usa-exclusive-idINKCN0YT2IU

North Korea has restarted production of plutonium fuel, a senior U.S. State Department official said on Tuesday, showing that it plans to pursue its nuclear weapons program in defiance of international sanctions.

The U.S. assessment came a day after the U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had “indications” that Pyongyang has reactivated a plant to recover plutonium from spent reactor fuel at Yongbyon, its main nuclear complex.

The latest developments suggest North Korea’s reclusive regime is working to ensure a steady supply of materials for its drive to build warheads, despite tightened international sanctions after its fourth nuclear test in January.

The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Washington is worried by the new plutonium reprocessing effort, but he offered no explicit word on any U.S. response.

“Everything in North Korea is a cause for concern,” the official told Reuters.

“They take the spent fuel from the 5 megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and let it cool and then take it to the reprocessing facility, and that’s where they’ve obtained the plutonium for their previous nuclear tests. So they are repeating that process,” the official said. "That’s what they’re doing.”

Syrian rebel whose group is linked to #al_Qaida visited U.S.
▻http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article78962527.html

Labib al Nahhas, foreign affairs director for the Islamist fighting group Ahrar al Sham, spent a few days in Washington in December, according to four people with direct knowledge of the trip and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of U.S. relations with Syrian rebels.

His previously undisclosed visit is a delicate matter for both sides – the conservative Salafist insurgents risk their credibility with even perceived ties to the United States, and the U.S. government risks looking soft on screenings by allowing entry to a member of an Islamist paramilitary force.

#farce #Etats-Unis

محاولة لتحويل معركة الفلوجة لحرب طائفية ضد السعودية - العربية.نت | الصفحة الرئيسية
▻http://www.alarabiya.net/ar/arab-and-world/iraq/2016/05/25/محاولة-يائسة-لتحويل-معركة-الفلوجة-لحرب-طائفية-ضد-السعودية.html

صور نمر النمر على صواريخ موجهة ضد داعش

https://www.shasha.ps/gallery/tmp/8NiFTcjIrPgJcgvgBFaRiqvqjUK9Ki0HrVoJV1lg/wedstr-jpg-1713444245364607.jpg

Un portrait d’al-Nimr, le religieux chiite (non violent !) exécuté par la « justice » saoudienne au début de l’année, fait son apparition dans certaines des unités qui combattent à Fallouja contre l’EI. La presse saoudienne se déchaîne, accusant l’Iran de confessionnaliser la lutte contre le terrorisme.

#clichés_arabes #confessionnalisation

Friendly Fuedalism - The Tibet Myth
▻http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Many Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La.
...
Old Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation.” 5 In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet.

His two previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers. 6
...
An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. 9 This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
...
Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas.
...
Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.”

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” 13 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries.
...
In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation—including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation—were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs.
...
What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. ... Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. ... No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants.
...
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.
...
What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.

The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.

Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs.
...
As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.
...
Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.” The official 1953 census—six years before the Chinese crackdown—recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.
...
If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves—of which we have no evidence.
...
The authorities do admit to “mistakes,” particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls “and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.”38

In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration.
...
By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, “restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there.”
...
For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama’s annual payment from the CIA was $186,000.
...
Whatever the Dalai Lama’s associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet’s ancien régime, having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile.
...
But he also sent a reassuring message to “those who live in abundance”: “It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past.” And to the poor he offers this admonition: “There is no good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune... It is better to develop a positive attitude.”
...
Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world—even by a conservative pope—as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: “The Iraq war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong.” Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.
...
It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly placed lama chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. ... In 1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of their own choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma Kagyu leaders (and with the support of the Chinese government!) backed a different boy. ... What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile community, punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical attacks, blacklisting, police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the looting and undermining of the Karmapa’s monastery in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa faction.
...
Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La theocracy. Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk’s building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis assumed that their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful “not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,” or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women “were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naïve [about Tibet].”

The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their grandmothers’ ordeals with monks who used them as “wisdom consorts.” By sleeping with the monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained “the means to enlightenment” — after all, the Buddha himself had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment.
...
Notes:

Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (University of California Press, 2000), 6, 112-113, 157.
Kyong-Hwa Seok, “Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf,” San Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998.
Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006.
Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205.
Erik D. Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today (Alaya Press 2005), 41.
Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (University of California Press, 1995), 6-16.
Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, 50.
Stephen Bachelor, “Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden,” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998. Bachelor discusses the sectarian fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill fit the Western portrait of Buddhism as a non-dogmatic and tolerant tradition.
Dhoring Tenzin Paljor, Autobiography, cited in Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, 8.
Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
See Gary Wilson’s report in Worker’s World, 6 February 1997.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.
Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.
Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.
A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.
Waddell, Landon, O’Connor, and Chapman are quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.
Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29.
See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, “Secret Mission to Tibet,” Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.
On the CIA’s links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and Faber, 1989).
Leary, “Secret Mission to Tibet.”
Hugh Deane, “The Cold War in Tibet,” CovertAction Quarterly (Winter 1987).
George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Communist China and Tibet (1964), quoted in Deane, “The Cold War in Tibet.” Deane notes that author Bina Roy reached a similar conclusion.
See Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance, 248 and passim; and Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet, passim.
Harrer, Return to Tibet, 54.
Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 36-38, 41, 57-58; London Times, 4 July 1966.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 29 and 47-48.
Tendzin Choegyal, “The Truth about Tibet,” Imprimis (publication of Hillsdale College, Michigan), April 1999.
Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet, 52-53.
Elaine Kurtenbach, Associate Press report, 12 February 1998.
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 47-48.
Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, 8.
San Francisco Chonicle, 9 January 2007.
Report by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril (Berkeley Calif.: 2001), passim.
International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, A Generation in Peril, 66-68, 98.
im Mann, “CIA Gave Aid to Tibetan Exiles in ’60s, Files Show,” Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1998; and New York Times, 1 October, 1998.
News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 3.
Heather Cottin, “George Soros, Imperial Wizard,” CovertAction Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002).
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 51.
Tendzin Choegyal, “The Truth about Tibet.”
The Dalai Lama in Marianne Dresser (ed.), Beyond Dogma: Dialogues and Discourses (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1996)
These comments are from a book of the Dalai Lama’s writings quoted in Nikolai Thyssen, “Oceaner af onkel Tom,” Dagbladet Information, 29 December 2003, (translated for me by Julius Wilm). Thyssen’s review (in Danish) can be found at ▻http://www.information.dk/Indgang/VisArkiv.dna?pArtNo=20031229154141.txt.
“A Global Call for Human Rights in the Workplace,” New York Times, 6 December 2005.
San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 2007.
San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005.
Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti’s report, Reuter, 17 June 1994; Amitabh Pal, “The Dalai Lama Interview,” Progressive, January 2006.
The Gelders draw this comparison, The Timely Rain, 64.
Michael Parenti, The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006).
John Pomfret, “Tibet Caught in China’s Web,” Washington Post, 23 July 1999.
Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, 3.
Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, 13 and 138.
Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, 21.
Curren, Buddha’s Not Smiling, passim. For books that are favorable toward the Karmapa appointed by the Dalai Lama’s faction, see Lea Terhune, Karmapa of Tibet: The Politics of Reincarnation (Wisdom Publications, 2004); Gaby Naher, Wrestling the Dragon (Rider 2004); Mick Brown, The Dance of 17 Lives (Bloomsbury 2004).
Erik Curren, “Not So Easy to Say Who is Karmapa,” correspondence, 22 August 2005, www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=22.1577,0,0,1,0.
Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 15 July 2004.
Kim Lewis, correspondence to me, 16 July 2004.
Ma Jian, Stick Out Your Tongue (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).
See the PBS documentary, China from the Inside, January 2007, KQED.PBS.org/kqed/chinanside.
San Francisco Chronicle, 9 January 2007.
“China: Global Warming to Cause Food Shortages,” People’s Weekly World, 13 January 2007

#Tibet #Chine #religion #bouddhisme

Dans la famille des « #experts », David L. Phillips,
▻https://mideastwire.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/columbia-universitys-david-phillips-thinks-some-lebanese-fact

Columbia University’s David Phillips thinks some Lebanese factions didn’t used to ask for US intervention

ce qui ne l’empêche pas du tout (au contraire semble-t-il même) d’avoir une impressionnante carte de visite,
▻http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/17/opinions/lebanon-stability-phillips

He served as a senior adviser and foreign affairs expert for the State Department during the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

Western Officials Walk Out of Ugandan President’s Inauguration | TIME
▻http://time.com/4328968/uganda-president-inauguration-yoweri-museveni-international-criminal-court

Several Western officials walked out of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s swearing-in ceremony Thursday, after he mocked the International Criminal Court (ICC) in his inaugural speech.

Museveni called the court “a bunch of useless people” during his welcoming remarks as he was sworn in for a fifth term, extending his rule to 35 years, Reuters reports.

Among those in attendance was Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur between 2003 and 2008. Al-Bashir denies the court’s authority and has flouted arrest warrants in the past when he traveled to South Africa last year.

“In response to President Bashir’s presence and President Museveni’s remarks,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said at a Thursday press briefing, “the U.S. delegation, along with representatives of the E.U. countries and Canada, departed the inauguration ceremonies to demonstrate our objection.”

Iraqi Kurds Build Washington Lobbying Machine to Fund War Against ISIS - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/us/politics/iraqi-kurds-build-washington-lobbying-machine-against-isis.html?ref=todaysp

Amitiés kurdo-israéliennes... Il s’agit des Kurdes d’Irak. Leurs liens avec Israël sont malheureusement connus depuis longtemps. (Via Angry Arab.)

To bolster the effort, the Kurdistan government has sent a stream of top officials to Washington, including Mr. Talabani, as well as Sherzad O. Mamsani, who was recently named as Kurdistan’s first director of Jewish affairs in an open appeal to build support in Israel for the Kurdish effort.

Already, the Kurds have started to receive some behind-the-scenes support from political consultants who work on Israel’s behalf in Washington and who see the Kurds — a minority group that like the Jews have at times been targeted for persecution by Arabs in the Middle East — as an unusual but potentially important ally.

It is a delicate relationship, Ms. Abdul Rahman agreed, because the Kurds cannot appear to be too closely aligned with Israel without causing tensions with neighbors like Iran.

“Here in Washington, if the pro-Jewish and pro-Israel interests see the Kurds are a friend of the Jewish community, it could lead to Congress being even more forceful in its support of the Kurdish Regional Government,” said Zach D. Huff, a political consultant who traveled to Washington from Israel in April to help the Kurdish lobbying effort, a visit that included a meeting with the powerful, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to ask for its assistance.

Just last month, two House lawmakers — Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, and Brad Sherman, Democrat of California — both known as strong supporters of Israel, introduced their own resolution, asking the State Department to send military assistance to the Kurds.

#Kurdistan #Israël #Irak

Syrie : qui sont les « casques blancs », héros anonymes de la guerre ? - L’Express
▻http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/proche-moyen-orient/syrie-qui-sont-les-casques-blancs-heros-anonymes-de-la-guerre_1739792.html

http://static.lexpress.fr/medias_10685/w_605,h_350,c_fill,g_north/v1448541539/les-casques-blancs-volontaires-de-la-defense-civile-syrienne_5470884.jpg

Syrie : qui sont les « casques blancs », héros anonymes de la guerre ?

Documents à l’appui (mais en arabe) Al-Akhbar (▻http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/257163) montre que ces « héros ordinaires » sont une énième invention des communicants chargés de vendre à l’opinion occidentale la guerre de Syrie. En arabe dans le texte, ces sauveteurs sont nettement moins photogéniques...

#syrie

Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved Sending Libya’s Sarin to Syrian Rebels
Eric ZUESSE | 28.04.2016 | WORLD
▻http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/28/seymour-hersh-hillary-approved-sending-libya-sarin-syrian-rebels.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/images/news/2016/04/28/or-37252.jpg

In an interview with Alternet.org, the independent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was asked about Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi Libya consulate’s operation to collect sarin from Libyan stockpiles and send it through Turkey into Syria for a set-up sarin-gas attack, to be blamed on Assad in order to ‘justify’ the US invading Syria, as it had invaded Libya.

He said: «That ambassador who was killed, he was known as a guy, from what I understand, as somebody, who would not get in the way of the CIA. As I wrote, on the day of the mission he was meeting with the CIA base chief and the shipping company. He was certainly involved, aware and witting of everything that was going on. And there’s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel».

This was, in fact, the Syrian part of the State Department’s Libyan operation, Obama’s operation to set up an excuse for the US doing in Syria what they had already done in Libya.

The interviewer then asked: «In the book [Hersh’s The Killing of Osama bin Laden, just out] you quote a former intelligence official as saying that the White House rejected 35 target sets [for the planned US invasion of Syria] provided by the Joint Chiefs as being insufficiently painful to the Assad regime. (You note that the original targets included military sites only – nothing by way of civilian infrastructure.) Later the White House proposed a target list that included civilian infrastructure. What would the toll to civilians have been if the White House’s proposed strike had been carried out?»

Hersh responded by saying that the US tradition in that regard has long been to ignore civilian casualties; i.e., collateral damage of US attacks is okay or even desired (so as to terrorize the population into surrender) – not an ‘issue’, except, perhaps, for the PR people. (...)

#Seymour_Hersh

Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

#Arabie_saoudite #Etats-Unis

La réponse de Mark Toner, porte-parole du State Department quand un journaliste lui pose une question sur ce qu’il sait de l’utilisation d’armes chimiques par le groupe Jaych al-islam - qui a admis la responsabilité d’un de ses commandants, sachant que ce groupe fait partie des pourparlers de Genève (Mohammed Allouch est le négociateur du HCN) :
▻http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2016/04/255630.htm

QUESTION: What about the reports that Jaysh al-Islam was involved, who have taken responsibility for this, and they’re one of the parties that have a delegation in the intra-Syrian talks?
MR TONER: Yeah, and I apologize. I just don’t have any information on that at this point. I’d have to look into it." This is the same US government which in the past had covered up the use of chemical weapons by its then ally, Saddam Husayn.

Via angry arab (▻http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2016/04/how-us-government-is-covering-up-use-of.html)
Pour un rappel des faits : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/478508

En vidéo, l’intégralité de l’échange (3 minutes). Toner élude une première fois la question en évoquant Da’ich (début de séquence) puis en fin de séquence le journaliste remet le couvert et obtient cette réponse peu crédible : « pas au courant ».
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KruMBzMtYDs

En passant à ma connaissance la presse française n’a absolument pas couvert ceci...

The NSA denied Hillary a Secure BlackBerry like Obama has

Since he became president, Barack Obama has carried a special “secure” BlackBerry, altered by the NSA to make it as difficult as possible for hackers to turn it into a remote spying device.

Now it’s been revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked in 2009 for one of those uncrackable BlackBerries, too, and the NSA denied her request and keeps secret the reasons why.

▻http://www.cbsnews.com/news/emails-show-nsa-rejected-hillary-clinton-request-for-secure-smartphone

Standard smartphones are not allowed into areas designated as approved for the handling of classified information, such as the block of offices used by senior State Department officials, known by the nickname “Mahogany Row” for the quality of their paneling.

Time to Rethink U.S. Relationship With Egypt - OpEd of the editorial board of The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/opinion/time-to-rethink-us-relationship-with-egypt.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=

Administration officials who have cautioned against a break with Egypt say its military and intelligence cooperation is indispensable. It’s time to challenge that premise. Egypt’s scorched-earth approach to fighting militants in the Sinai and its stifling repression may be creating more radicals than the government is neutralizing.

“We are long overdue for a strategic rethink on who are strong American partners and anchors of stability in the Middle East,” Tamara Cofman Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former senior State Department official, said in an interview. “Egypt is neither an anchor of stability nor a reliable partner.”

Mr. Obama and his advisers may conclude that there is little the United States can do to ease Egypt’s despotism during the remaining months of his presidency. That’s not the case. Mr. Obama should personally express to Mr. Sisi his concern about Egypt’s abuses and the country’s counterproductive approach to counterterrorism.

Mr. Obama has been willing to challenge longstanding assumptions and conventions about Washington’s relations with Middle East nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia. But he has been insufficiently critical of Egypt. Over the next few months, the president should start planning for the possibility of a break in the alliance with Egypt. That scenario appears increasingly necessary, barring a dramatic change of course by Mr. Sisi.

Réaction en vidéo du porte-parole du State Department, Mark Toner, lorsqu’on évoque la perte imminente par Da’ich de la ville de Palmyre au profit de l’armée syrienne :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxs7yog_CjM

#Wikileaks / Mails Hillary Clinton.
Mail de juillet 2012 adressé par Sidney Blumenthal à Hillary Clinton (qui a transféré) dans lequel sont rapportés les sentiments de « sources » dans les communautés de renseignement occidentaux et israéliens sur les évènements en Syrie et l’opportunité ou pas d’une attaque israélienne sur l’Iran.
Un de ces avis rapportés fait état du fait que les services français et britanniques sont convaincus que leurs homologues israéliens espèrent la chute d’Assad qui isolerait l’Iran et que ces services israéliens pensent que cela pourrait enflammer une guerre confessionnelle chiites/sunnites qui serait dans l’intérêt d’Israël et de ses alliés occidentaux :
▻https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12172

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05795336 Date: 01/07/2016 7.
One particular source states that the British and French Intelligence services believe that their Israeli counterparts are convinced that there is a positive side to the civil war in Syria; if the Assad regime topples, Iran would lose its only ally in the Middle East and would be isolated. At the same time, the fall of the House of Assad could well ignite a sectarian war between the Shiites and the majority Sunnis of the region drawing in Iran, which, in the view of Israeli commaders would not be a bad thing for Israel and its Western allies. In the opinion of this individual, such a scenario would distract and might obstruct Iran from its nuclear activities for a good deal of time. In addition, certain senior Israeli intelligence analysts believe that this turn of events may even prove to be a factor in the eventual fall of the current government of Iran.

AVERTISSEMENT DR SOURIYAM (diplômé d’Etat en psychiatrie idéologique et en sociologie de la stabulation)
Le fait de s’intéresser aux services secrets constitue bien souvent le 1er signe de l’émergence de troubles paranoïaques. Le fait que vous lisiez ce mail peut signifier que, sans vous en rendre compte, vous soyez déjà atteint du mal. Si celui-ci n’est pas traité, il peut entraîner des complications et s’aggraver en conspirationnisme aigu.
Si vous voyez dans ce mail un signe qu’Israël pourrait chercher à aggraver les tensions communautaires et diviser son environnement régional, c’est que vous avez déjà atteint le stade supérieur de la maladie : l’obsession anti-israélienne et donc l’antisémitisme.
Dans ce cas vous devez contacter au plus vite une cellule de déradicalisation qui vous permettra de bénéficier de soins adéquats prodigués par des spécialistes, et d’éviter ainsi d’être recruté par Daech.

PS : Si vous faîtes partie des services français ou britanniques, ce message ne vous concerne pas. Merci de ne pas en tenir compte.

Charles Glass : La guerre de Syrie, une erreur de calcul - De notre correspondante à New York, Sylviane ZEHIL - L’Orient-Le Jour
▻http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/976345/charles-glass-la-guerre-de-syrie-une-erreur-de-calcul.html

« Les partisans du soulèvement initial en 2011 ont imaginé une victoire rapide... Un ami syrien, qui vit maintenant en exil, m’a dit que l’ambassadeur américain en Syrie, Robert Ford, avait essayé, juste avant qu’il ne quitte Damas en octobre 2011, de le recruter pour prendre part au gouvernement qui devait remplacer prochainement Assad. Lorsque l’ambassadeur de France en Syrie, Éric Chevallier, a quitté Damas le 6 mars 2012, il avait dit à des amis qu’il serait de retour lorsque le gouvernement post-Assad serait "installé" dans les prochains deux mois. Depuis lors, avec Assad encore au pouvoir, le nombre de morts a grimpé à plus de 270 000. D’une population de 22 millions d’âmes avant la guerre, plus de quatre millions de Syriens ont fui le pays, et 6,6 millions sont déplacés à l’intérieur du pays », souligne-t-il. « Robert Ford, qui avait défendu la révolution et encouragé sa militarisation, est l’un des rares fonctionnaires à avoir admis publiquement qu’il s’était trompé », note-t-il.
(...)
Personne n’a tenu compte de l’avertissement de Nietzsche, repris au début de la révolution syrienne par Masalit Mati, écrivain satirique anti-Assad, dans son spectacle de marionnettes : "Soyez prudents lorsque vous vous battez contre les monstres, de peur que vous n’en deveniez un" », poursuit-il.

#syrie

Le tout nouveau président du CNS (opposition en exil, principale composante de l’opposition dite de Ryadh) qui vient d’être élu est Anas al-Abdeh. Celui-ci est le fondateur du Mouvement Justice et Développement :
▻http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20160306-cns-coalition-syrie-anas-al-abdeh-nouveau-chef-opposition-exil
Il a cofondé ce mouvement avec son frère Malik al-Abdeh :
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Justice_and_Development_in_Syria
A la même époque (vers 2006-2011) Malik al-Abdeh, frère du nouveau président du CNS donc, a aussi été le directeur de la chaîne Barada TV, chaîne anti-Bachar et basée à Londres, dont un câble Wikileaks traité par le Washington Post nous a révélé qu’elle, ainsi que le Mouvement cofondé avec son frère, avaient été financés secrètement par le State Department :
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html

The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.
[...] Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria. The channel is named after the Barada River, which courses through the heart of Damascus, the Syrian capital.[...]
It is unclear when the group began to receive U.S. funds, but cables show U.S. officials in 2007 raised the idea of helping to start an anti-Assad satellite channel.People involved with the group and with Barada TV, however, would not acknowledge taking money from the U.S. government.
“I’m not aware of anything like that,” Malik al-Abdeh, Barada TV’s news director, said in a brief telephone interview from London.

Via twitter Pichon

#Hillary_Clinton, ‘Smart Power’ and a Dictator’s Fall - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/02/22/world/22libya8/22libya8-facebookJumbo.jpg

Anne-Marie Slaughter, her director of policy planning at the State Department, notes that in conversation and in her memoir, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly speaks of wanting to be “caught trying.” In other words, she would rather be criticized for what she has done than for having done nothing at all.

“She’s very careful and reflective,” Ms. Slaughter said. “But when the choice is between action and inaction, and you’ve got risks in either direction, which you often do, she’d rather be caught trying.”

#monstrueux #Libye #Etats-Unis

Palestinian shot dead after reported stab attempt on soldiers near Beit El
Feb. 26, 2016 5:22 P.M. (Updated: Feb. 26, 2016 7:18 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=770456

BETHELEHEM (Ma’an) — A Palestinian was shot dead Friday after reportedly attempting to stab Israeli soldiers stationed near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, the Israeli army said.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an: “A Palestinian assailant armed with a knife attempted to stab soldiers stationed at a security crossing.” Forces on site then “thwarted the attack,” opening fire and killing the Palestinian, the spokesperson said.

The death was confirmed by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which identified the Palestinian as Mahmoud Muhammad Ali Shalaan , 17, from the village of Deir Dibwan east of Ramallah.

No Israelis were injured in the incident.

The incident comes shortly after an Israeli security guard was stabbed several times and critically injured inside of the illegal Maale Adumim settlement overnight Thursday by a Palestinian who reportedly fled the scene.

#Palestine_assassinée

Le texte officiel de l’accord de cessez-le-feu en Syrie qui vient être signé entre Américains et Russes et qui doit rentrer en application le 27 février à 0h00 (heure Damas) est lisible en intégralité (en anglais) sur le site du State Department :
▻http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/02/253115.htm

the cessation of hostilities commence at 00:00 (Damascus time) on February 27, 2016.

Cet accord de cessez-le-feu ne concerne ni Da’ich ni Jabhat al-Nousra, ni les organisations listées comme terroristes par l’ONU. Certains font remarquer justement que ce texte qui fait référence à la résolution 2254 du CS de l’ONU en abandonne pourtant la formule « ainsi que le Front al-Nosra et tous les autres individus, groupes, entreprises et entités associés à Al-Qaida » ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/458334#message458473
Une manière de permettre à tous les groupes qui se sont alliés à al-Nousra au sein de la coalition Jaysh al-Fatah, notamment Ahrar al-Cham, de bénéficier du cessez-le-feu.

The nationwide cessation of hostilities is to apply to any party currently engaged in military or paramilitary hostilities against any other parties other than “Daesh”, “Jabhat al-Nusra”, or other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council.

Notons en passant que le Parti Islamique du Turkestan en est exclu puiqu’il a été inscrit en 2002 sur la liste des groupes terroristes à l’ONU : ▻https://web.archive.org/web/20121219171112/http://www.un.org:80/sc/committees/1267/NSQE08802E.shtml

Le 26 février au plus tard, tous les groupes prêts à accepter ce cessez-le-feu devront se faire connaître, ainsi que leur localisation :

Any party engaged in military or para-military hostilities in Syria, other than “Daesh”, “Jabhat al-Nusra”, or other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council will indicate to the Russian Federation or the United States, as co-chairs of the ISSG, their commitment to and acceptance of the terms for the cessation of hostilities by no later than 12:00 (Damascus time) on February 26, 2016

On prévoit d’ailleurs d’échanger des informations et même de rédiger une sorte de carte délimitant le territoire de Da’ich, d’al-Nousra et des « autres organisations terroristes listées au CS de l’ONU ». En clair, une carte des endroits où il sera légitime de bombarder :

The Russian Federation and United States will also work together, and with other members of the Ceasefire Task Force, as appropriate and pursuant to the ISSG decision of February 11, 2016, to delineate the territory held by “Daesh,” "Jabhat al-Nusra" and other terrorist organizations designated by the UN Security Council, which are excluded from the cessation of hostilities.

Les points 1 et 2 de l’accord concernent respectivement la rébellion armée et le régime et ses forces associées. Ils sont quasiment symétriques et impliquent de cesser les combats avec toutes les armes, de s’interdire d’acquérir du territoire sur les autres parties liées à l’accord, d’user d’un usage proportionné de la force en cas d’opérations défensives et de permettre l’accès des « agences humanitaires » à toutes les populations dans le besoin.

Ces étranges révélations que l’on minimise...

Turkey’s Erdogan says saddened by U.S. arming of Syrian Kurdish militia
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-erdogan-idUSKCN0VS1GQ

“Months ago in my meeting with him (Obama), I told him the U.S. was supplying weapons. Three plane loads arrived, half of them ended up in the hands of Daesh (Islamic State) , and half of them in the hands of the PYD,” Erdogan told reporters.

... quand on ne les charcute pas purement et simplement,

Turquie : Erdogan accuse les #Etats-Unis d’avoir créé une « mare de sang » en s’alliant avec les Kurdes de Syrie
▻http://www.leparisien.fr/flash-actualite-monde/turquie-erdogan-accuse-les-etats-unis-d-avoir-cree-une-mare-de-sang-en-s-

...ce qui permet plus facilement la surdité sélective...

U.S. has not supplied arms to Syrian Kurdish YPG : State Department
▻http://news.yahoo.com/u-not-supplied-arms-syrian-kurdish-ypg-state-183618130.html

John Kirby, porte-parole du State Department, à un journaliste qui lui demandait comment faire quand un allié (la Turquie) traitait un autre allié (le YPG/PYD) de terroriste, a répondu que l’administration américaine était habituée à gérer cette situation et a rappelé que « nous [les Américains] ne considérons pas le PYD comme terroriste ». Vidéo en lien :
▻https://twitter.com/zaidbenjamin/status/696821344781078528

Cette capacité à gérer la situation, il va falloir continuer à l’exercer, John :
Turquie : l’ambassadeur américain convoqué après des déclarations du Pentagone sur les Kurdes de Syrie AFP / L’OLJ
▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/969432/turquie-lambassadeur-americain-convoque-apres-des-declarations-du-pen

L’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis à Ankara a été convoqué mardi au ministère turc des Affaires étrangères après des déclarations la veille d’un responsable américain affirmant que le principal parti kurde de Syrie n’était pas « terroriste », ont rapporté les médias.
Les autorités turques, qui considèrent le Parti de l’union démocratique (PYD) comme un groupe « terroriste », lui ont fait part de leur « malaise » après un commentaire du porte-parole du département d’Etat américain John Kirby indiquant qu’il ne considérait pas ce parti comme une « organisation terroriste », a précisé le quotidien Hürriyet.

#PYD #YPG #Turquie