George W Bush, the former US president, has launched his memoirs and given a series of interviews, which provide fascinating insights into his views on foreign powers, among them Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister.
By Andy Bloxham
On Tony Blair:
He compared Mr Blair to Winston Churchill and disclosed that, on the eve of the war in Iraq, the British PM was willing to risk bringing down the Government to push through a vital vote. He cites Mr Blair’s “wisdom and his strategic thinking as the prime minister of a strong and important ally”, adding: “I admire that kind of courage. People get caught up in all the conventional wisdom, but some day history will reward that kind of political courage.”
On British and European public opinion:
The former president was frank about the lack of weight he attached to how he was thought of in the UK both while he was in power and since he left it, saying: “It doesn’t matter how people perceive me in England. It just doesn’t matter any more. And frankly, at times, it didn’t matter then.” He said: “People in Europe said: “Ah, man, he’s a religious fanatic, cowboy, simpleton.” All that stuff… If you believe that freedom is universal, then you shouldn’t be surprised when people take courageous measures to live in a free society.”
On Saddam:
“There were things we got wrong in Iraq but that cause is eternally right,” he said. “People forget he was an enemy, he had invaded countries, everybody thought he had weapons of mass destruction, it became clear that he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction. What would life be like if Saddam Hussein were [still] in power? It is likely you would be seeing a nuclear arms race.” He also adds that Saddam disclosed his reasons for pretending to have WMDs when he could have avoided war were because “he was more worried about looking weak to Iran than being removed by the coalition.”
On Afghanistan:
“Our government was not prepared for nation building. Over time, we adapted our stratedy and our capabilities. Still, the poverty in Afghanistan is so deep, and the infrastructure so lacking, that it will take many years to complete the work.”
On Iran:
“A government not of the people is never capable of being held to account for human rights violations. Iran will be better served if there is an Iranian-style democracy. They play like they’ve got elections but they’ve got a handful of clerics who decide who runs it.”
On China:
He believes its internal politics will stop it being a superpower economy to rival the US for many years. “China, no question, is an emerging economy. China has plenty of internal problems which means that, in my judgment, they are not hegemonistic. They will be seeking raw materials.”
On Syria:
Mr Bush recounts an incident when Israel’s then-prime minister Ehud Olmert called him to ask him to bomb what Mossad agents had discovered was a secret nuclear facility in Syria. He said no but Israel destroyed it without warning him. Telling the story appears to signal his displeasure at not being told.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8119227/George-W-Bush-memoirs-foreign-powers-and-Tony-Blair.html, 09 Nov 2010
President Abdullah Gül has said he hoped Turkey’s economic progress would take it into the ranks of emerging BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — although he made it clear Turkey remains committed to joining the European Union.
Gül, in an interview with the Financial Times, said the international order was shifting towards the East. “It wouldn’t be surprising if we start talking about BRIC plus T,” he said. The BRIC countries are considered to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development, and their growing influence in the global scene is seen as an indication of the shift in economic power from the developed West towards the developing world.
Turkey, which has built closer ties with its Middle East neighbors under the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, has been accused in the West of turning away from the Western club and cozying up to countries such as Iran.
Gül, who was on a visit to Britain to receive the prestigious Chatham House Prize, said in the interview that Turkey still saw membership in the EU as a “strategic vision” and wanted to be part of the principles that Europe defends, promising that Ankara would make sure it met all standards required for membership even though large parts of its entry negotiations are frozen.
But Gül, speaking a day before the European Commission criticized Turkey for restrictions on freedom of expression and over Cyprus in an annual progress report released on Tuesday, also complained of political obstacles raised by some EU member countries. “We see certain political issues being included in the process, which have the effect of slowing down and, to a certain extent, hijacking these negotiations. We are not happy about this,” Gül told the Financial Times on Monday.
Speaking in Oxford also on Monday, Gül said some EU member states were creating “artificial problems” in Turkey’s EU membership negotiations but said Turkey would stick to the task. “The injection of some political issues of certain member countries in the negotiating process leads to certain artificial problems that in our point of view are not fair and not acceptable,” he said at an event hosted by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. “But Turkey is determined to move forward in the direction of working on the negotiations,” he said.
Gül declined to name any country when he complained that certain, unnamed, “short-sighted” EU countries had hidden behind the Greek Cypriots to pursue their own objective of delaying Turkey’s membership bid in interviews with the British media. But Turkish officials say some EU countries, such as France, are using the impasse over Cyprus to stall Turkey’s accession bid.
He also said one cannot say for sure that Turkey will eventually join the EU because there will be public votes in several EU countries on Turkish membership after conclusion of accession talks with Turkey. “When the time comes, those countries will decide whether or not Turkey would be a burden on them. Maybe Turkish people would say, ‘although we concluded the negotiation process successfully, let us not be a member’,” Gül told the BBC’s “HARDtalk.”
Responding to a question on Turkey’s position regarding a planned NATO-wide missile defense system, Gül was hopeful that the alliance’s upcoming summit in Lisbon will produce a consensus on the issue. “The NATO Summit will convene in Lisbon next week. I think everybody will reach a consensus in the end,” he said.
Turkey insists that no country should be named as a potential threat in relevant NATO documents, a reference to Turkey’s neighbor, Iran.
When it was pointed out that US President Barack Obama addressed Muslim countries and relayed messages about peace and dialogue when he first came to power and he was asked whether Obama has caused disappointment since then, Gül said: “No, I think he is kindhearted. He does good things sincerely. However, maybe he could not succeed. Not only Muslims but others should listen to Obama. He should also persuade others, not just one party, to achieve peace in the region.”
via Today’s Zaman, your gateway to Turkish daily news.
WTF? This is just another sign that we are facing some major changes in the strategic balance of power. China is on the move and so is Turkey, and the move is away from the US.
The Turkish and Chinese air forces secretly participated in a military drill in Konya as part of the “Anatolian Eagle” war games, prompting a reaction from Washington, daily Taraf reported Thursday.
It’s even better when you look at the route they took to get to the party.
The Chinese fighters flew to Turkey, after stopping in Pakistan and Iran.
Gee there is just a lovely chain of bad actors all in a row. Anyone who thinks the Chinese are not about expanding their reach ought to explain the blue water navy and 5th generation fighters they are building, or those troops in Kashmir, or the manufactured beef w/ Japan. They are in a very advantageous position vis a vis America and they are damn sure taking advantage of it.
Time to deploy Hillary. Seriously turn her loose. Get Some!
via BLACKFIVE: Turkey invites China over for wargames & chai.
* Turkey plans to make decision on plant by end-Dec
(Adds quotes, details, background)
By Orhan Coskun
ANKARA, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Turkey may assess bids from Europe and other countries to build a nuclear power plant on the Black Sea if it fails to reach a deal with South Korea on the project, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said on Wednesday.
He said talks on the planned plant at Sinop in northern Turkey would continue at the G-20 meetings in Seoul, but that a deal with South Korea would not be possible if that country failed to take the necessary action in negotiations.
Yildiz said that issues such as shareholdings, investment volumes and guarantees needed to be clarified.
“As Turkey, we have reached the final possible point in talks with South Korea on a nuclear power plant. In our contacts, South Korea must take a step for there to be an agreement,” Yildiz told Reuters.
via UPDATE 1-Turkey may eye alternative to S.Korea nuclear plant | Energy & Oil | Reuters.
Turkey, with its strong economy and links to Asia, may not need to be part of the European Union.
IS IT European? Asian? Both? Neither? It’s a millenniums-old question; culturally, religiously, geographically and economically. And one that could be posed more and more of Australia and its embrace, if that’s what it is, of booming Asia.
The answer is elusive and multilayered. But spend a day marvelling at the retail phenomenon that is Kanyon in Istanbul’s gleaming new Levent financial district – to merely describe the massive Kanyon as a mall would be a major commercial undersell – and you’d have to think that question again. Judging from its glamorous tenants, Kanyon’s sensibility is high-end Euro-chic certainly, but the vibe is also LA at its modish funkiest. There are no Kaths or Kims at Kanyon.
Amid the ocean-going retail therapy being performed here, the one vibe Kanyon doesn’t much express is Islam, though most of the shoppers flashing wads of euros are indeed Muslims, even the 20-somethings in kitten heels and fleshy spaghetti-strapped summer slips dragging delighted, covered grandmas into L’Occitane, Oliver Peoples and Agent Provocateur. Immersed in Kanyon’s designer heaven, its easy to forget that Turkey is 98 per cent Islamic, with all the cliched preconceptions that suggests. Moreover, Turkey is governed by a party that doesn’t baulk at being described as Islamist, but on whose eight-year watch places like Kanyon have arrived and thrived.
Since the rule of Gallipoli hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk through the 1920-30s, modern Turkey has aspired to formally and politically be regarded as European. It first applied to the EU’s predecessor bodies in 1959, just two years after the Treaty of Rome that unified modern Europe. But it’s been a struggle endured in vain. Today, Turkey’s still waiting, miffed as lesser former communist states have jumped the queue into the EU.
Economically, it seems a no-brainer. The IMF measures G-20 member Turkey as the world’s 17th biggest economy, its $US1 trillion output larger than all but five of the European Union’s 27 member states. Measured by GDP per capita, Turkey is bigger than five-year EU members Bulgaria and Romania and alongside its three former Soviet Baltic states.
Greater Istanbul provides about half of Turkey’s GDP and were it a separate state, its economy would be bigger than that of nine EU members, its GDP per capita up there with Germany and France. And there is serious money here too. In 2008, Forbes ranked Istanbul as fourth on its billionaires-by-city list, behind Moscow, London and New York.
Turkey stumbled last year in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis but few European economies rebounded with its vigour, following the 11.7 per cent GDP expansion in this year’s March quarter, with 10.3 per cent growth in the June second quarter. As Turks impatient to enter Euroland remind, its not Turkey that’s giving the EU the wobbles to threaten Europe’s economic raison d’etre but Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, the so-called PIGS economies.
Indeed, there is a strong argument that far from Turkey waiting patiently to be officially deemed European, its entry would greater advantage the EU than it would Turkey, that Turkey would become Europe’s easterly emerging market, to recapture its mojo, rather as the American ”New Economy” that took off in the late 1990s helped shield the US from meltdowns in Asia, Russia and Mexico and street ahead of Japan. This is the view of industrialists like Suzan Sabanci Dincer, the stylish 45-year-old heiress of her family’s banking-to-cars-and-chemicals conglomerate. “The EU should have Turkey as a new member because it will add excitement and growth,” she says.
That the EU, ostensibly an Atlantic idea, adds new members to its east makes that argument all the more compelling. Turkey is arguably the only ”European” entity that makes any meaningful claim to being Asian, where the global economic axis is fast tilting. Turkish is even spoken in China. It’s an ancient country that, like many thrusting parts of Asia, feels new and invigorating.
Because Turkey has long been dancing to a European tune in its efforts to enter the EU, it virtually functions as a de facto EU state. Just as Asia is for Australia, about 75 per cent of Turkey’s trade is with Europe. Its financial sector adheres to European standards, unsurprising given that about half its banking assets are controlled out of European financial capitals. Multilingual and democratic, its laws, infrastructure, regulations and its democracy tilt more and more European.
So, if you’re Brussels, what’s not to like? The truth that dare not speak its name seems to be religion.Though ostensibly an economic entity, the EU is a very Christian club.Were it to enter, Turkey would be its only Muslim member, its 74 million people second only to Germany’s 82 million by population. That spooks a lot of Europeans, particularly in places like the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark whose voters are lashing back at liberal immigration and welfare policies. Through an Asia-Pacific prism, this seems narrow and short-sighted. Immigrants tend to follow prosperity and if Turkey booms and develops while western Europe is mired in post-GFC ennui, it would seem more logical that the longer-term movement might be eastward, not westward.
That could also be true of the Turks themselves. The popular and impatient Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is gently hardening his line on EU entry.
This week, his President and former PM, Abdullah Gul, suggested in a BBC interview that since Turkey is becoming European administratively by stealth anyway, it’s finding more in common linking into the roaring economies of the Middle East and Asia than obsessing too much about joining the EU.
As Asia booms, Turkey’s millenniums-old question might well be answered yet, at Europe’s loss.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/turks-might-not-wait-20101110-17nto.html, November 11, 2010
Time has made a stranger of a once-thriving Jewish community in China.
by Zvi Hellman
“WELCOME TO Kaifeng, and thanks for coming all the way here,” says Tzur. Charming, with a warm smile, Tzur is an experienced licensed tour guide running the Jewish China Tours Company, which, as the name implies, specializes in Jewish heritage trips through China. He is fluent in Hebrew and English, and is a walking trove of historical knowledge on China’s Jews.
But Tzur is not a transplanted Israeli or American who came for a visit to China and happened to have stayed. Tzur is the Hebrew name he adopted nearly a decade ago in Israel; he is more commonly known by the name he was born with, Shi Lei. His surname, Shi, means “stone” in Chinese, which is why he translated it to “Tzur” in Hebrew. And not only is he a native of Kaifeng, a city of over four million in China’s Henan province, he is a scion of the family that was among the leaders of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng.
When people think of historical Jewish connections to China, the cities that come to mind most often are Harbin and Shanghai. Shanghai’s Jewish community dates from the mid-19th century, when Jews from Iraq and Indiaopened trading offices in that city. They were later joined by European Jews, especially immediately prior to and during World War II, when Shanghai was a protective haven for as many as 18,000 Jews fleeing the Holocaust, assisted by sympathetic Chinese diplomats who issued them passports. At its peak, the Jewish community in Shanghai numbered 30,000, with two synagogues, one Sephardi and the other Ashkenazi.
Harbin, in China’s far northeast, was a major hub on the trans-Siberian railway, when Tzarist Russia occupied China’s Manchuria province in the 19th century, and a sizable community of Russian Jews seeking employment found its way there. The community there was further bolstered by a wave of Jews fleeing the Russian revolution, among them the grandparents and parents of former prime minister Ehud Olmert.
After World War II ended, China became the communist People’s Republic of China and virtually all the Jews in the country left. Many made their way to the new State of Israel. The synagogues in Shanghai were shut down permanently, although they were recently temporarily reopened as part of the celebrations associated with the 2010 World Exposition in Shanghai.
Long before Jews built the first synagogue in Harbin or Shanghai, however – a very long time before, in fact – there was a thriving Jewish community in Kaifeng. But it has almost completely gone lost in the pages of time.
“THE JEWISH COMMUNITY here was founded in the 11th century by Jews from Persia, Central Asia and India, according to our communal history,” explains Shi Lei, who is in his early thirties. “The community’s founders were merchants following the Silk Road. They brought cotton cloth from India, which was considered exotic at the time in China, and sold Chinese silk in the West.”
The Silk Road traditionally ended in Xi’an, far to the west of Kaifeng and there was a Jewish community in Xi’an associated with the Silk Road. But as any visitor to Kaifeng is told repeatedly, Kaifeng in the 11th century was the capital of China, under the Northern Song dynasty. At the time, it may have been the world’s largest metropolis, with an estimated 1.5 million inhabitants.
Jews gravitated to the capital city. There was also a Jewish community in Hangzhou at one time, and perhaps several other cities. Only the Kaifeng community, however, lasted for centuries.
“The community must have been quite wealthy,” says Shi Lei. “There used to be a large synagogue in the old Kaifeng downtown, in an area where land prices were very high, attesting to the wealth of the community. At its peak, in the 14th century, the community numbered well over 4,000.”
With such a glorious history, why is Kaifeng not on the well-trod path of visitors to Jewish sites in China? For one thing, there is almost nothing left. The community once had a synagogue with a Torah study hall, a communal kitchen, complete with kosher butchering facilities, and ritual bath. But Kaifeng is situated near the Yellow River, which, until it was tamed in modern times, was notorious for flooding. There are estimated to be at least six layers of flooded-over remnants of Kaifeng underneath its contemporary, somewhat dusty streets. A flood in 1642 buried Kaifeng, devastating the Jewish community and bringing its golden age to an end.
Although the synagogue was eventually rebuilt, it was assimilation that really put an end to the community. “My great-grandfather’s generation would still place red paint on doorposts in the spring, in place of the lamb or chicken blood that was previously used [to mark Passover],” says Shi Lei. “The community also strictly avoided eating pork products. But most Jewish traditions were gradually lost. Even our Torah scrolls were removed over time.”
Of the 13 Torah scrolls the community once had, none remain in Kaifeng. Ten were sold to Western collectors over the years and three were lost entirely. “I did get to see a Torah case belonging to my ancestors,” notes Shi Lei, “but in Canada, in the Royal Ontario Museum.”
By the mid-19th century, the synagogue in Kaifeng was shut down, and today all that remains of it is a well (presumably part of a mikve), hidden in one of the back rooms of a hospital that was constructed on the site where the synagogue once stood.
There is, in fact, very little that is Jewish-related for a visitor to see in Kaifeng today. An exhibit sponsored by American and Canadian organizations of three stone steles telling the Kaifeng community’s history and dating from the 15th and 16th centuries is locked away in the attic of the local museum. The writing on the stones, in classical Chinese, is largely faded, but experts can read rubbings of it, and the steles are visually impressive. Avisitor wishing to see the exhibit, however, needs to know about its existence beforehand, ask the curators for special permission to enter, and pay 50 Chinese yuan (general admission to the museum is free) before the keys to the room are fetched.
Similarly, the Jewish pavilion at Millennium City Park, a theme park in Kaifeng based on the famous Qing Ming scroll painted by Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan, is locked away and its existence is not even revealed to visitors to the park.
About 20 years ago, the remaining Jewish cemetery was vandalized by grave robbers. It has yet to be restored. “My grandfather’s heart was broken seeing the bones of his fathers removed from their graves,” says Shi Lei sadly.
Despite what may appear to be an attempt on the part of local authorities to keep the Jewish history of Kaifeng out of sight, Shi Lei insists that there is no such active agenda. “There is no desire to hide [anything],” he says. “If tourists want to see any of these things, they only need to ask; tourists never have a problem getting to these things in Kaifeng when I show them around here. To China, it is not worthwhile to hiding this part of the history.”
SHI LEI REVEALS A STUBBORN insistence not to let what remains of the Kaifeng Jewish community die away entirely.
He grew up hearing stories about the glory of the community from his grandfather. “After China opened to the West a few decades ago, scholars started coming to Kaifeng to study the history of the community,” he recalls. “They all came to interview my grandfather, to learn as much as they could from his memories, and the rituals he still preserved. He was perhaps the only person 40 years ago who still remembered the traditions.”
When he came of age, Shi Lei was fortunate enough to receive sponsorship for two years of Jewish study in Israel. “I was the first Kaifeng Jew ever sent to study Judaism in Israel,” he recalls proudly. “In 2001, Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, who was living in the Far East at the time, arranged for me to enroll in a one-year Jewish studies program at Bar-Ilan University. After that, I went on to study at Yeshiva Machon Meir in Jerusalem, with the generous assistance of Michael Freund of Shavei Yisrael [an organization that helps lost tribes and wandering Jews reconnect to their roots and return to Israel].”
Shi Lei returned to China, determined to devote himself to reviving the community. He teaches Hebrew and Jewish traditions in Kaifeng as a service to the community, while supporting himself leading Jewish heritage tours.
The effort is an uphill one, facing many odds. Judaism is not recognized as an official religion in China, nor are Jews listed among China’s 55 minority groups. Only about 500 Kaifeng residents today identify themselves as descended in some way from the Jewish community. They live in one of China’s poorest provinces and have little access to any Jewish ritual objects – not even a Torah scroll.
The Orthodox rabbinic leadership in Israel has determined that they must undergo conversion if they officially wish to rejoin Judaism because of centuries of assimilation and the fact thatthe Kaifeng community implemented patrilineal descent of Judaism as opposed to the matrilineal descent of normative Judaism.
Yet, despite all these obstacles, some 18 members of the Kaifeng community recently agreed to be converted and moved to Israel.
“Please do help spread the word about the Kaifeng community,” Shi Lei asks The Report. “Very few in Israel have heard about it. We need to raise awareness, to give opportunities for more young people from our community to get to Israel, and to learn the traditions.”
George W Bush, the former US president, has launched his memoirs and given a series of interviews, which provide fascinating insights into his views on foreign powers, among them Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister.
