Category: East Asia & Pacific

  • MI6 Believes Syria Ready to Break Ties With Iran

    MI6 Believes Syria Ready to Break Ties With Iran

    By Gordon Thomas
    Special to The Epoch Times

    Nov 14, 2008

    A Shavit rocket carrying the Ofek 7 satellite is launched in June 2007 in Palmachim, Israel. The new satellite will be able to keep track of Iran

    London—MI6 has established that secret backroom meetings at the Mediterranean Nations summit in Paris early in July could lead to a dramatic shift of power in the Middle East.

    At the meetings attended by Syrian, Spanish, Italian and Israeli intelligence chiefs, it emerged that plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will fail to destroy them because no Western intelligence service–including Mossad– knows where every facility is located.

    Gaps in the intelligence on the precise location and vulnerability of the Iranian nuclear complexes emerged during the outside-of-conference meetings between the intelligence chiefs.

    At the end of one meeting, Alon Liel, a former director of Israel’s foreign ministry, confirmed Israel had been engaged in “low-key second-track discussions for many months” with Syria.

    Key to the progress of those talks was whether Syria was ready to break its close ties with Iran in return for the U.S. giving Damascus financial and military backing.

    Liel made it clear that any deal with Syria would require its ending support for military groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah–both backed by Iran.

    It was also made clear that any deal with Syria would probably not come until there was a new president in the White House.

    An indication of how far the backroom meetings had progressed came from the Turkish foreign minister, Ali Babacan, who said there had been “real progress in formal talks between Tel Aviv and Damascus”.

    Both the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni–herself a former Mossad officer–sat alongside their Syrian counterparts, President Assad and his foreign minister, Walid al-Muallim.

    Publicly, Olmert acknowledged that the time was “fast approaching for direct talks”.

    What prompted this dramatic change between two old enemies was that at the backroom meetings the intelligence chiefs learned for the first time precise details of the raid in September last year on Syria’s factory processing weapons grade plutonium.

    The hitherto untold story of that raid is as dramatic as any of Israel’s previous daring and successful military strikes.

    Israeli agent

    It began on September 3, 2007, when the early morning sun caught the rust-stained hull of a 1,700-ton cargo ship as it slowly steamed into the busy Mediterranean port of Tartous in Syria.  From its mast flew the flag of South Korea and the stern plate identified the al-Hamed as being registered in Inchon, one of the country’s major ports.

    Watching the ship manoeuvring into its berth from a distance was a man with the swarthy skin of a Kurd or one of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.  He was fluent in both their languages as well as some of the dialects of Afghanistan.  He was, in fact, a Turkish-born Jew who had eschewed the life of a carpet seller in the family business in Istanbul to go to Israel, serve in its army as a translator and finally achieve his life’s ambition to work in Mossad.

    Fifteen years later, he was recognised as one of its most brilliant operatives.  In that time, he had operated in a dozen countries under as many aliases, using his linguistic skills and chameleon-like characteristics to observe and be absorbed into whichever community he had been sent.

    Now, for the moment, he was code-named Kamal with a perfectly faked Iranian passport in his pocket.  Mossad’s chief, Meir Dagan, had stressed to him the importance of his mission: to confirm the role of al-Hamed in the dangerous relationship which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad had formed with North Korea.

    Kamal had known before he left Tel Aviv that the ship had sailed from Nampo, a North Korean port in the high security area south of the capital, Pyongyang.  A NSA satellite image had shown it steaming out into the Yellow Sea on a journey which had taken it across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, up the Atlantic and through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and finally into Tartous harbour.

    At some stage of its voyage, it had re-flagged itself at sea and the crew had painted on the stern plate the port of registration as Inchon.  The newness of their work was still apparent against the drab grey of the rest of the hull.

    Through a contact in the Tartous harbourmaster’s office, he had managed to check the al Hamed’s manifest and all day had watched trucks being loaded with the cement it listed.  Then, as the sun began to set, military trucks arrived at the dockside and from the ship’s hold, cranes lifted crates covered in heavy tarpaulin which soldiers guided into the trucks.  Using a high resolution camera no bigger than the palm of his hand, Kamal photographed the transfer.  When he had finished, he pressed a button on the camera to transmit the images to a receiving station inside the Israeli border with Lebanon.  In an hour, they were in Mossad headquarters.

    Kamal knew then his trip had achieved all Meir Dagan had hoped.  Though he could not see inside the crates, the spy intuitively knew the steel-cased containers were holding weapons-grade plutonium, the element which had fuelled the American atomic attack that destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.  In his mission briefing, Kamal had been told by Professor Uzi Even, who had helped to create Israel’s own nuclear facility at Dimona, that the plutonium would, in its raw form, be easily transported as nuggets in lead protective drums, and the shaping and casting of the material would be done in Syria.

    Now, on that warm September day almost fifty-two years after Nagasaki had been destroyed, sufficient plutonium had been delivered to Syria to devastate an entire country, its neighbour, Israel.

    Intelligence briefing

    Shortly before noon on September 4, 2007, a number of cars drove past the concert hall of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv and entered the heavily guarded headquarters of Major General Eliezer Shkedy, the country’s air force commander.  As a fighter pilot he had won a deserved reputation for daredevil tactics coupled with a cool analytical mind.  His speciality had been flying dangerously close to the ground, manoeuvring past peaks and rocky outcrops, then hurtling skywards to ten thousand feet, nearing the speed of sound, before diving on the target, his weapons system switched on, his eyes flitting between the coordinates projected on his hood screen to the bombsight and the target.  Weapons released, he would turn radically, the screech from the strain on the airframe like a banshee wail, and he would once more hurtle skywards.  From dive attack to his second climb would take him only seconds.

    For the past week Shkedy had prepared for an unprecedented operation which would require those tactics to be carried out by pilots he had hand-picked because their flying skills matched his own.  But they would be flying not the F-16 fighter plane he had once commanded, but Israel’s latest jet, the F-151.  Flying at almost twice the speed of sound and capable of delivering a 500-pound bunker-busting bomb, it was the most formidable fighter plane in the Israeli air force.

    For weeks the pilots had practised the flesh-flattening G-force of right-angle turns, diving and evading, to hit a small circle, the IP, aiming point, carrying out bombing runs at an angled dive of thirty degrees.  They had practised all this in the pitch black of night in the Negev Desert.  At first many of the dummy bombs had fallen wide of the IP, but soon they were landing inside, a number scoring the required bullseye.

    Shkedy called them “my Top Guns”– though they were far removed from the Hollywood version of Top Gun pilots.  His fliers were sober-sided, led quiet lives, rarely partied and had trained day and night for when they would finally be given the order to fly tactical strikes against Iran.  Those attacks, they had been told, would take place at dawn or dusk.  But all they knew so far about the mission they were spending weeks training for, was that it would take place in the dead of night.  No one had yet told them when or where and they were content it should remain so.  Curiosity was not one of their traits.

    While F-151 twin afterburners glowed over the desolate night landscape and the pilots dropped their dummy bombs which exploded white phosphorous smoke on the ground’s IP to determine the accuracy of the drops, in Shkedy’s Tel Aviv complex his staff studied the approach to the target and discussed the precautions each F-151 must take from the moment its pilot pressed the red button on the control stick to release his bomb.

    The time they would spend over the actual target, TOT, would have to be between two and four seconds.  In that period with its bomb released, an F-151 would sink dangerously towards the ground, giving the pilot a second to fire his afterburner to climb and avoid the “frag pattern”, the deadly metal fragments of spent explosive which would follow the detonation.  A bomb’s shrapnel would rise to three thousand feet in seven seconds and unless the aircraft was clear of the target area, it could be blown up and other pilots already at various stages of their bomb runs would fly into a curtain of lethal fragments which could destroy them.  To avoid this, each pilot would have to endure body-crushing pressure of eight Gs while negotiating a radical ninety-degree turn away from the IP after bombing and climb to thirty thousand feet from the target zone to avoid ground missiles.

    To calculate the precise distance from take-off to target and the exact angle for the attack, the planners pored over computer graphs, satellite images and physics tables to check and re-check figures.  The targeters calculated that because the bombs would pierce the target roof before exploding inside, the roof would momentarily serve as a shield, reducing the frag pattern by between thirty and forty percent.  To help further protect the lead aircraft over the target, it would have its laser-guided bomb fitted with a delay fuse, providing a precious two-seconds lead time before the detonation.

    Given the distance to the target, it was clear the F-151s would each have to carry two external fuel tanks, one under each wing.  Filled with five hundred gallons of fuel, each tank added three thousand pounds to the aircraft weight.  That required further complex calculations to be made: the exact point at which the bombing dive would start and the altitude at which the ordnance would be dropped.

    In late August, while the al-Hamed was entering the Straits of Gibraltar, General Shkedy flew to the base of 69th Squadron in the Negev; the squadron was the Air Force’s frontline air assault force trained to attack Iran.  Waiting for Shkedy in the airfield briefing room were the five pilots whom he had selected to carry out the raid.  With an average age of twenty-six, many came from families who were Holocaust survivors, like Shkedy himself.

    For him the pilots had a kind of nobility to their youth; behind their relaxed and open manner was a steelness.  Once before he had flown to speak to them at the start of their special training and had begun by saying they had been selected for an air-to-ground mission, military speak for bombing a ground target.  He had looked into their faces, glad to see they showed no emotion.  No one had looked at the huge wall map of the Middle East.  Nevertheless he anticipated each would be creating in his mind the potential mission profile: a low level flight to the target, then a high level return very possibly into headwinds.  In the Middle East the winds are always easterly, blowing in from the Mediterranean.  It could be Iran.  But they had not asked him then and they did not do so on that late August morning when Shkedy once more met them in the briefing room.

    Standing before a plasma screen, he used a zapper to illuminate it.  For the first time the pilots saw the target; a complex deep inside Syria almost one hundred miles northeast of Damascus.  He explained there was “good and sufficient intelligence” to destroy the complex which the Syrians were using to build nuclear bombs.  He waited for the flicker of response then continued.

    Under the cover of being an agricultural research centre, the complex was already engaged in extracting uranium from phosphates.  Soon it would have weapons-enriched plutonium coming from North Korea.  He told them the Israeli satellite Ofek-7, which had been launched only two months before, had been geo-positioned to watch the activities at the complex near the small Syrian city of Dayr az-Zawr.  He indicated its position on the screen.  No bombs must fall on civilians.

    Shkedy then turned to the route in and out of the target area.  The aircraft would fly up along the Syrian coast and enter its airspace at the last moment north at the port town of Samadogi and then follow the border with Turkey.  At the point where the River Euphrates began its long journey south into Iraq, the attack force would swing south to the Syrian desert town of ar-Raqqah beyond which they would begin the bombing run.  The way out would be a high-altitude straight run between the Syrian towns of Hims and Hamah to the Mediterranean.

    Over the coast of Lebanon they would turn south and return to base.  The total mission time would be 80 minutes.  In the event of an emergency, navy rescue launches would be positioned off the Syrian coast.

    He ended the briefing by saying the attack would be in the early hours of the morning and would take place “soon”.  For a moment longer the air force commander looked at the small group of pilots.  Perhaps sensing their one concern, he added that every step would be taken to ensure Syria’s vaunted air defences would be jammed.  He did not say how and no one asked.  It was a mark of the trust and respect they had for General Eliezer Shkedy.

    Massive explosion

    The genesis for the operation was a massive explosion on a North Korean freight train heading for the port of Nampo on April 22, 2004.  Mossad agents had learned that in a compartment adjoining a sealed wagon were a dozen Syrian nuclear technicians who had worked in the Iranian nuclear programme at Natanz, near Tehran, and had arrived in North Korea to collect the fissionable material stored in the wagon.

    Their bodies were flown home in lead-encased coffins aboard a Syrian military plane.  By then a wide area around the crash site had been cordoned off and scores of North Korean soldiers in anti-contamination suits had spent days recovering wreckage and spraying the entire area.  Mossad analysts suspected they were recovering some of the estimated fifty-five kilos of weapons-grade plutonium North Korea possessed.  Since the crash–its cause never established–the intelligence service had tracked Syrian military officers and scientists on a dozen trips to Pyongyang where they met with high-ranking officials in the regime.  The most recent meeting was shortly before the al-Hamed had left Nampo.

    It was Kamal’s report and photographic evidence of the arrival and unloading of the ship that was the focus of the meeting in General Shkedy’s headquarters on September 4, 2007.  The air force commander’s briefing room was dominated by large plasma screens on two walls.  One contained a blow-up of the ship and the covered crates being off-loaded and driven away.  A second screen showed the town of Dayr az-Zawr.  A third screen displayed a satellite image of a large square building surrounded by several smaller ones and a security fence.  The area was identified by the word: “Target”.

    Sunburst

    Sat around the conference table with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were the other key players in the operation, codenamed “Sunburst”.  For Olmert it was further proof of his powers of survival.  A year ago he had been close to being driven out of office after the debacle of the war in Lebanon when he was vilified as the most incompetent leader Israel had ever had.

    He had fought back, appointing Ehud Barak as his new defence minister and Tzipi Livni as foreign minister.  Both now flanked him at the table giving Olmert the political support he needed for Sunburst.  Beside them sat Benjamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and now leader of the Likud Party, having taken over from the stricken Aerial Sharon.  Like Barak, Netanyahu was experienced in the complexities of “black” operations.  Barak had been a leader in Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite commando force who bore the same motto as Britain’s SAS: “Who Dares Wins”.  Netanyahu had approved several Mossad missions while in office.

    The lynchpin of Sunburst was Meir Dagan.  Early in the summer, he had presented Olmert with evidence of what he called “the nuclear connection” between Syria and North Korea that had reached a dangerous level.  Syria already possessed sixty Scud-C missiles, which it had bought from North Korea, and on August 14, when the freighter al-Hamed was already bound for Syria, North Korea’s foreign trade minister, Rim Kyong Man, was in Damascus to sign a protocol on “co-operation and trade in science and technology”.  Afterwards the minister had flown to Tehran, furthering the triangular relationship between North Korea, Syria and Iran.

    Mossad’s analysts had concluded that Syria was not only a conduit for the transport to Iran of an estimated £50 million ($74million) of missiles, but also could serve as “a hideout” for North Korea’s own nuclear weapons, particularly its plutonium, while the regime continued to promise it would give up its nuclear programme in exchange for the massive security guarantees and financial aid the West had promised.

    Until recently, Meir Dagan had remained uncertain whether this was the case.  Now, the latest intelligence from his agents in the country showed that Syria was determined to create its own nuclear weapons.

    The meeting had been called to discuss the matter.  Dagan began by saying the crates unloaded from the al-Hamed had been tracked by Israel’s satellite to the complex.  Dagan continued the meeting with his usual succinct analysis.  The building was now almost certainly to be where the crates had been delivered.  Inside its main structure was the machinery to cast the warheads for housing the weaponised plutonium.  Scientists at Dimona had concluded that a small quantity of polonium and beryllium would be used to create the chain reaction for the plutonium, after the pellets were machined in “glove boxes”, sealed containers accessed only by special laboratory gloves to protect the technicians at the site.  Dagan had concluded with a final warning: the longer Israel waited to destroy the site, the closer the technicians in the building would come to creating their weapons.

    Within minutes the decision was taken to eliminate the complex.

    In the late evening of September 5, 2007, Israeli commandos from the Sayeret Matkal dressed in Syrian army uniform, crossed into Syria over its northern border with Iraq.  They were equipped with a laser guidance system designed to guide aircraft on to the target.  With them were specialists from the Israeli Defence Force. In their backpacks was equipment linked to IDF electronic counter-measure jamming technology designed to disrupt Syria’s formidable air defences.  When they were forty miles from the target the men hid and waited.

    At their airfield in the Negev, the five mission pilots sat down to a large dinner; even though they were not hungry, they knew they would need all the nutrients for the sheer physical energy and mental skills they would expend in the coming hours.  Afterwards they went to the briefing room where Shkedy was waiting with other senior officers.  The briefing officer once more ran through the mission procedure: radio frequencies, radio silence protocols and individual call signs.

    Take-off time would be at 23.59 with twenty seconds separating each plane.  There would be a dogleg out to sea at 500 knots, over eight miles a minute, then, with Haifa to their right, they would drop to sea level and head up the coast of Lebanon, past Beirut and continue into Syrian airspace.  From there it was on to the IP.

    When the officer had ended, Shkedy walked to the front of the room and paused to look at each pilot.

    “You all know the importance of your target.  It must be destroyed at all costs.  This is the most important mission any of you have taken or probably will ever take.  Every step has been taken to protect you.  But if anything does happen, we will do everything to rescue you.  That I promise you.  But I am confident that surprise is on our side.  You will be in and out before the Syrians realise what has happened”, said General Shkedy.

    No one in the room doubted him.  They all knew the mission was a pivotal point in the protection of Israel.  The silence was broken by Shkedy’s final words: “God be with you!”  Then he stepped forward and shook the hand of each pilot.

    The mission

    By eleven-forty-five in the evening, the ordnance technicians had checked the bombs, ensuring each was securely positioned in its release clip beneath the wings of each F-151.  After his check, the technician removed the metal safety pin from each bomb.

    A minute later, the runway crew had reported the strip was clear of small stones or any other obstruction that could be sucked into the engine and destroy it.

    From the twin tailpipes of the first aircraft, followed by the others, came the scalding heat from the afterburners.

    In each cockpit the pilots had gone through the same drill: activating the computerised checks of the navigation, mechanical, communications and finally the firing systems.

    Each pilot wore two suits: his flight suit and, over it, the G-suit, a torso harness, survival gear and a helmet.  Clipped to each harness was a small gadget that would send a homing-signal if he was forced to abandon the mission.

    At one minute to midnight the first F-151, with a roar and a plume of exhaust marking its progress, sped down the runway.  Shortly after midnight the last of the planes had retracted its wheels.  ‘Sunburst’ had begun.

    The mission was a total success. Satellite images showed the complete destruction of the complex and, next day, Syrian bulldozers covering the blitzed area with earth to avoid the spread of radiation.  It would be ten days before the country’s vice-president, Farouk al-Sharaa, would only say: “Our military and political echelon is looking into the matter”.  In Tel Aviv Ehud Olmert, not quite able to conceal his smile, said: “You will understand we naturally cannot always show the public our cards”.

    But to play them, in the early hours of the morning of September 6, 2007, those pilots had carried out one of the most daring air strikes ever.

    In January 2008, three days after President Bush had left Israel, where he had been privately briefed on the mission, the Israeli Defence Force released a satellite image that showed Syria had commenced rebuilding the destroyed site.

    Gordon Thomas is the author of a new edition of Gideon’s Spies: The Inside Story of Israel’s Legendary Secret Service, The Mossad, by JR Books of London and available on Amazon Books.

    Source: en.epochtimes.com, 14 November 2008

  • Baron David de Rothschild: Economic Crisis Will Bring New World Order, Global Governance

    Baron David de Rothschild: Economic Crisis Will Bring New World Order, Global Governance

    The first barons of banking

    Last Updated: November 06. 2008 7:11PM UAE / November 6. 2008 3:11PM GMT

    Nobleman: Baron David de Rothschild, the head of the Rothschild bank. The Rothschilds have helped the British government since financing Wellington

    Among the captains of industry, spin doctors and financial advisers accompanying British prime minister Gordon Brown on his fund-raising visit to the Gulf this week, one name was surprisingly absent. This may have had something to do with the fact that the tour kicked off in Saudi Arabia. But by the time the group reached Qatar, Baron David de Rothschild was there, too, and he was also in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

    Although his office denies that he was part of the official party, it is probably no coincidence that he happened to be in the same part of the world at the right time. That is how the Rothschilds have worked for centuries: quietly, without fuss, behind the scenes.

    “We have had 250 years or so of family involvement in the finance business,” says Baron Rothschild. “We provide advice on both sides of the balance sheet, and we do it globally.”

    The Rothschilds have been helping the British government – and many others – out of a financial hole ever since they financed Wellington’s army and thus victory against the French at Waterloo in 1815. According to a long-standing legend, the Rothschild family owed the first millions of their fortune to Nathan Rothschild’s successful speculation about the effect of the outcome of the battle on the price of British bonds. By the 19th century, they ran a financial institution with the power and influence of a combined Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and perhaps even Goldman Sachs and the Bank of China today.

    In the 1820s, the Rothschilds supplied enough money to the Bank of England to avert a liquidity crisis. There is not one institution that can save the system in the same way today; not even the US Federal Reserve. However, even though the Rothschilds may have lost some of that power – just as other financial institutions on that list have been emasculated in the last few months – the Rothschild dynasty has lost none of its lustre or influence. So it was no surprise to meet Baron Rothschild at the Dubai International Financial Centre. Rothschild’s opened in Dubai in 2006 with ambitious plans to build an advisory business to complement its European operations. What took so long?

    The answer, as many things connected with Rothschilds, has a lot to do with history. When Baron Rothschild began his career, he joined his father’s firm in Paris. In 1982 President Francois Mitterrand nationalised all the banks, leaving him without a bank. With just US$1 million (Dh3.67m) in capital, and five employees, he built up the business, before merging the French operations with the rest of the family’s business in the 1990s.

    Gradually the firm has started expanding throughout the world, including the Gulf. “There is no debate that Rothschild is a Jewish family, but we are proud to be in this region. However, it takes time to develop a global footprint,” he says.

    An urbane man in his mid-60s, he says there is no single reason why the Rothschilds have been able to keep their financial business together, but offers a couple of suggestions for their longevity. “For a family business to survive, every generation needs a leader,” he says. “Then somebody has to keep the peace. Building a global firm before globalisation meant a mindset of sharing risk and responsibility. If you look at the DNA of our family, that is perhaps an element that runs through our history. Finally, don’t be complacent about giving the family jobs.”

    He stresses that the Rothschild ascent has not been linear – at times, as he did in Paris, they have had to rebuild. While he was restarting their business in France, his cousin Sir Evelyn was building a British franchise. When Sir Evelyn retired, the decision was taken to merge the businesses. They are now strong in Europe, Asia especially China, India, as well as Brazil. They also get involved in bankruptcy restructurings in the US, a franchise that will no doubt see a lot more activity in the months ahead.

    Does he expect governments to play a larger role in financial markets in future? “There is a huge difference in the Soviet-style mentality that occurred in Paris in 1982, and the extraordinary achievements that politicians, led by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, have made to save the global banking system from systemic collapse,” he says. “They moved to protect the world from billions of unemployment. In five to 10 years those banking stakes will be sold – and sold at a profit.”

    Baron Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a new world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance. “But you have to be careful of caricatures: we don’t want to go from ultra liberalism to protectionism.”

    So how did the Rothschilds manage to emerge relatively unscathed from the financial meltdown? “You could say that we may have more insights than others, or you may look at the structure of our business,” he says. “As a family business, we want to limit risk. There is a natural pride in being a trusted adviser.”

    It is that role as trusted adviser to both governments and companies that Rothschilds is hoping to build on in the region. “In today’s world we have a strong offering of debt and equity,” he says. “They are two arms of the same body looking for money.”

    The firm has entrusted the growth of its financing advisory business in the Middle East to Paul Reynolds, a veteran of many complex corporate finance deals. “Our principal business franchise is large and mid-size companies,” says Mr Reynolds. “I have already been working in this region for two years and we offer a pretty unique proposition.

    “We work in a purely advisory capacity. We don’t lend or underwrite, because that creates conflicts. We are sensitive to banking relationships. But we look to ensure financial flexibility for our clients.”

    He was unwilling to discuss specific deals or clients, but says that he offers them “trusted, impartial financing advice any time day or night”. Baron Rothschilds tends to do more deals than their competitors, mainly because they are prepared to take on smaller mandates. “It’s not transactions were are interested in, it’s relationships. We are looking for good businesses and good people,” says Mr Reynolds. “Our ambition is for every company here to have a debt adviser.”

    Baron Rothschild is reluctant to comment on his nephew Nat Rothschild’s public outburst against George Osborne, the British shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nat Rothschild castigated Mr Osborne for revealing certain confidences gleaned during a holiday in the summer in Corfu.

    In what the British press are calling “Yachtgate”, the tale involved Russia’s richest man, Oleg Deripaska, Lord Mandelson, a controversial British politician who has just returned to government, Mr Osborne and a Rothschild. Classic tabloid fodder, but one senses that Baron Rothschild frowns on such publicity. “If you are an adviser, that imposes a certain style and culture,” he says. “You should never forget that clients want to hear more about themselves than their bankers. It demands an element of being sober.”

    Even when not at work, Baron Rothschild’s tastes are sober. He lives between Paris and London, is a keen family man – he has one son who is joining the business next September and three daughters – an enthusiastic golfer, and enjoys the “odd concert”. He is also involved in various charity activities, including funding research into brain disease and bone marrow disorders.

    It is part of Rothschild lore that its founder sent his sons throughout Europe to set up their own interlinked offices. So where would Baron Rothschild send his children today?

    “I would send one to Asia, one to Europe and one to the United States,” he said. “And if I had more children, I would send one to the UAE.”

    [email protected]

    Source: www.thenational.ae, November 06. 2008

  • Luminious Movement of the Dialog Universe

    Luminious Movement of the Dialog Universe

    The dark Islam image on Occident infuriates and infuriates Eastern-Muslims. When I went to Mecca . I said to the Muslims who were angry about that image that they were the guilty of the things like that. Because, as they haven’t explained Islam enough, unfortunately the ones who listens to these made up things can think that they are true. The looseness , even quietness, of Eastern Muslims about explaining the real Islam has created such a blank of knowledge that in Occident a religion explaiter can come out and lead our people to a wrong way.

    Fourty years before that Malcolm X who had reflected the dark Islam image to us had explained the deterioration of reputation which Islam was going to experience and he had warned us at that time and adviced us, Muslims, to show the real Islam to the Occident by creating a close dialoge with them.

    Malcolm X was the asistant of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of Nation of Islam, who told that the real religion of black race was Islam and he was the most renowned one to explain Islam in United Nations. But the Islam which Elijah presented to Americans was wholly untrue and it was presented to people as a religion interpereted by himself. As there han’t been any religious leader, any Muslim country or any Muslim communty to explain Islam to America until that time, Elijah, who told that he could adjust an imported religion , was consedering himself a savior who was sent by Allah to Occident and was stating this as a condition to be accepted by people who are converting to Islam.

    Working hard in the way of his religion by aiming Allah, even without being in the right way, Malcolm X had learned that only truth from Elijah: “Black race is superior to the other races, white people are the Devil, and Islam is peculiar to them, the African black people.”

    After years, Malcolm X goes to Mecca for the duty of piligramage and when he sees that people white,blonde,reddish and black from every color, from every race come together and perform the namaz in the same order and have meal on the same dinner table, he experiences a great shock. From then on, his opinions,his beliefs and point of view on the world nations had exactly changed. In such a conditin he realizes the Islam spreading in America is in a wrong style and in interviews he reproaches not to the ones spreading Islam in a wrong style in America but to the Islam community:

    The dark Islam image on Occident infuriates and infuriates Eastern-Muslims. When I went to Mecca . I said to the Muslims who were angry about that image that they were the guilty of the things like that. Because, as they haven’t explained Islam enough, unfortunately the ones who listens to these made up things can think that they are true. The looseness , even quietness, of Eastern Muslims about explaining the real Islam has created such a blank of knowledge that in Occident a religion explaiter can come out and lead our people to a wrong way.

    Due to the people trying to impose their own ideologies by using Islam in first half of 20th century the spreading of Islam had become harder, a wall of prejudice had been erected and that important happening had got late until years later. Constitutions with wrong mentality have a share of guilt but biggest share of guilt is the Islam community’s in this situation.

    When we look at the world thoroughly the religion dominating the Continent of America is christianity. In these territories the proclamation of Islam hasn’t been achieved, contrary to that the ideology of “the dislike of Islam” has spread out from here. As to the Far-East, by Europeans a hundred years ago priests were sent by ships to the Far-Easterns who were already in an emptiness and to fill that empitiness with critianity was aimed. As a matter of fact official numbers show that cleary: In Japon and South Korea %25 of people are christian. But there is such a strange situation that, when we look at the history books, in this direction, last century we will come across an opportunity which shouldn’t have been missed. In short, in the times we priests were sent to the Far-East… In the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid IInd Japan wants hodjas from us to learn Islam. Japan’s prince says that “You send seven persons for us to learn Islam and we shall send officers to you to be assigned in your defence.” Sultan Abdulhamid who was extremely sorry for not being able to response positively to this dialoge says this: “I would send not seven persons but seven hundred persons if it wasn’t for the matters of Anatolia which is full of disorder like a den of gossip.”

    The ideal of ancestors was “to enter to the entered place for human” As a matter of fact at the moment when we look at the territories where our ancestors conquered centuries ago and ruled for centuries; it can be seen that the inhabitants of these places weren’t harmed and important protection acts were made and cities have been kept alive until that time, saving their name exactly the same.

    Allah has created human in such a beatiful way that, He tells us in every case of univers(sas) regards human as such an important being that he goes to Ebu Cehil for hundred times, of whose disbeliefs we are sure in order that he would not be in the ones who suffre the sage of Allah. He says that when entering Mecca the ones who enter Kaaba and the hause of Ebu Sufyan will be saved. That means, then, he gives such a value to a person who orders who doesn’t believe, ith the hope that his last would be saluation. We are the community of a Prophet  who orders a companion of him, not to perform a behiviour which will offend his mother who tries to stop his unbelieving mothers hinderings. How meaningful those lines of Ahmet Yesevi are:

    It is Sunna; don’t offend anyone even if he is an infidel

    Allah is complaining about the heartless and offender ones.”

    In this century, in which the humanity is being polorized, in which the anarchy and terrorism has become daily happenings and the value of humanity is being tried to be lost; the acts of tolerance on the way of which Muslims, already realizing some beauties tries hard, has started to blossom and the groud for acting collectively has been completed. Having attended the symposium named “Recontruction of Islam ideology in 20th century and Bediüzzaman” in 1992, Assit. Prof. Visula Spuler states the scene which she sees and wants to see about that subject like this: “Turks in Koln sent a worthy greeting message, the influence of the Pope who is originally Polish, on the liberation of East Black from communism was stated. And as a collective strugle against communism, Muslims getting Russians out of Afghanistan was stated. The massage was continuing like that: “At the same time, we know that our duty hasn’t come to on and after all these happenings. As you have stated humanity needs faith and the new world order.” That Easter greeting was written with the thinking system of Said Nursi sent a very beatiful handwriting work of himself to the Pope of that time in 1951. Spuler, who was grateful for Muslims’ beatiful impessions, continued her speech like that: “Again Bedüizzaman, in his work Munazarat, states that friendships can be achieved with the Jews or Christians by remaining Muslim. He saw christians and Germany, who was shaped with a good christian tradition, as a great friend in, against the all religion enemies troughout the world.

    The explanation of Safa Mursel, who was in the same syposium, will enlighten us about what to do: “if uniting of religions will be thought, Christianity can be firstly expected to need that. These statements are enough to give required opinions:

    The Christianity will either fade out or give up his weapon against the Islam. The Christianity broke up several times, transformed to the Protestantism. Protestantism broke up too. It approached to unification. It prepares to break up again. It will either profit and fade out or see the truth of Islam who is connective for the principal of the Christianity opposite of his himself and surrender. And the real religion of Christians, who converted to Islam and who will give up his superstitions, agree and help to Islam.

    Timely, we are in a very important position. We are in a more important position from the point of view of the happenings which humanity experienced. We have all opportunities, to say shortly by thinking all the world history in the Golden Period of Time” with the all opportunities we have, we can conduct to the integration of all of the subjects that is signed by from our Master to the last savant in a unique way. In the “Golden Period of Time”, Allah removes all obstacles against the people, what they intend to do. As long as our intention is pure. “The intention of Muslim is better than his act.”

    Mehmet Fatih ÖZTARSU

    Qafqaz University – Interes Club

  • KRG confirms South Korea oil deals

    KRG confirms South Korea oil deals

    By United Press International

    South Korea was granted the lead role in two northern Iraq oil projects and increased interest in six others, United Press International has confirmed.

    The Korean National Oil Corp. has also pledged $2.1 billion in infrastructure projects in Iraq’s Kurdish region as part of the deal, but $1.5 billion will be withheld until oil exports begin.

    Iraq’s central government has called most of the 20-plus oil deals signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government illegal and is pledging to confiscate any oil produced.

    The KRG and KNOC have confirmed leaders signed a massive Implementation Agreement for Oil & Gas Infrastructure Projects Thursday in Seoul.

    In exchange for the investment in electricity, water, road and other infrastructure — the remaining $1.5 billion will come from KNOC’s earnings from oil exports — KNOC was granted two production-sharing contracts.

    The state-owned firm will have an 80-percent ownership of the Qush Tappa block PSC and 60-percent ownership of Sangaw South.

    KNOC was also granted interest in existing production contracts: a 15-percent stake in each of Norbest Limited’s K15, K16 and K17 blocks; a 15-percent interest in block K21; and a 20-percent stake in Sterling Energy Ltd.’s Sangaw North block. It also was given 20 percent more of the Bazian block, of which KNOC is the lead company in a consortium that was granted a 60-percent stake last November.

    The agreement was seven months in the making, when a memorandum of understanding was reached between the two sides. In June, contracts for oil stakes were agreed to, as well as an investment project. All of the details were negotiated since then and the deals made official Thursday.

    Iraq Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, in a June interview in his Baghdad office, told United Press International all but the four KRG contracts signed before February 2007 would be regarded as illegal.

    “That oil will be confiscated; they have no right to work in that part of the country,” he said. “We’ll use a number of measures to stop any violation of Iraqi law. Those contracts have no standing with us, we don’t recognize them and they have no right to do that.”

    A draft version of a new oil law for Iraq was approved in February 2007 by the Iraqi Cabinet but was scuttled after changes were made and interpretations varied.

    KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani urged Baghdad to concentrate on passing the law instead of condemning the regional government’s contracts.

    Ben Lando, UPI Energy Editor

  • Anwar Ibrahim: rise after the fall

    Anwar Ibrahim: rise after the fall

    The leader of Malaysia’s resurgent opposition has declared that he will take power on September 16

    Anwar has said he will claim power by September 16. Photograph: Ahmad Yusni/EPA

    The Malaysian government has tried its utmost to keep Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of Malaysia’s resurgent opposition, from power ever since he fell out of favour a decade ago.

    In the late 1990s, Anwar looked set to take over from Mahathir Mohamad, who guided Malaysia over 22 years to economic success. But mentor and protege had a bitter falling out over Malaysia’s response to the Asian economic crisis in July 1997.

    Mahathir favoured currency and foreign investment controls. Anwar, who was then deputy prime minister and finance minister, implemented an austerity programme that slashed government spending and deferred infrastructure projects dear to Mahathir.

    The rift became irreparable, when Anwar — named by Newsweek as man of the year in 1998 — went on a campaign against corruption and cronyism that rankled many of the elite, including Mahathir’s son, Mirzan who had myriad business dealings.

    In 1998, Anwar was accused of sodomising his wife’s driver, convicted in 2000 and sentenced to nine years in prison amid widespread international protests. Anwar remains grateful to the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, among others who pleaded his cause and in 2004 Malaysia’s supreme court overturned the verdict, although corruption charges against him stood. He was released later that year but was barred from standing for office until April this year.

    Following his release, Anwar held teaching posts at Oxford University and Georgetown University in Washington and pursued his campaign against corruption through his post as honorary president of AccountAbility, a London thinktank advocating better corporate governance.

    In his capacity as a campaigner against corruption, Anwar strongly criticised Britain’s decision to halt a major corruption investigation into BAE, Britain’s biggest arms company, in its dealings with Saudi Arabia. What signal did that send leaders in developing countries, he argued, as he submitted a letter to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development that was scathing of the government’s decision.

    Even as he spoke out against international corruption, Anwar was plotting a political comeback. In an interview early last year he said was getting round his ban on speaking at public forms by addressing the public at funerals and feasts. He made it clear that he was ready to challenge the Malaysian political elite that sacked and imprisoned him.

    “I am committed to a reform agenda, I believe in a democratic process and a more accountable government,” he said then. “I can’t reasonably expect this to happen without political involvement. If I chose to submit, then I would give credence to the government and support their repressive measures.”

    It was not just brave talk. First he helped the disparate opposition parties make huge inroads in parliamentary elections in March. The Barisan Nasional, a coalition of three racially based parties led by the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) that has dominated Malaysian politics since independence from Britain in 1957, saw its two-thirds majority evaporate. By contrast, the opposition parties saw their seats in the 222-member parliament jump to 82 from 19.

    Anwar’s march back to power seemed unstoppable when he easily won a seat that he had previously held for 17 years. Out of the blue came new sodomy charges, when a 23-year-old aide, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, accused Anwar of sodomising him, a charge that a prison sentence of 20 years in Malaysia, even between consenting adults.

    Despite the accusations, which he maintains are a transparent attempt to stop his political comeback, Anwar has raised the stakes by declaring that he will take power on September 16, Malaysian national day, by persuading enough government MPs to defect to the opposition. The government was rattled enough to send 50 MPs on a trip to Taiwan due to last more than a week to forestall such a move.

    As the government goes into political contortions to keep Anwar at bay, the opposition leader says he can get the 30 MPs he needs to bring down the government. If — and it remains a big if as the ruling party will do all it can to cling on to power — Anwar finally gets to lead Malaysia, what will this multi-racial country look like?

    Raja Petra Kamarudin, fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, wrote on Malaysia Today, a website the Malaysian government is trying unsuccessfully to block: “Anwar has to balance the aims of the parties in his coalition, and we will see compromises being made. That is the reality in Malaysia. But I think a culture of dialogue will be developed under his watch and that will be a great achievement indeed. I think at least that can be accomplished by him.”

    Like Turkey, another Muslim country with its interplay of democracy and Islam, Malaysia will be closely watched to see how it copes with forces for change. Anwar firmly rejects the notion that Malaysia’s “democratic deficit” has anything to with the fact that it is Muslim.

    “The newly independent Muslim states were democracies,” Anwar said. “Indonesia had a free election in 1955 until it was hijacked by Sukarno. Iran had democratic elections only to be hijacked by the CIA, British intelligence and the oil companies. Seventy five to 80% of Muslims are familiar with the democratic process.”

    Source: www.guardian.co.uk, September 10 2008

  • Young woman fired from Uyghur radio station, then arrested

    Young woman fired from Uyghur radio station, then arrested

    Young woman fired from Uyghur radio station, then arrested

    Reporters Without Borders condemns the dismissal and arrest of Mehbube Ablesh, a member of the Uyghur community in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, who worked for Xinjiang People’s Radio Station, a government station based in the provincial capital of Urumqi.

    After posting articles online criticising provincial leaders and Chinese government policy, she was fired from the station’s advertising department in August and was then arrested by the Urumqi police. According to one of her colleagues interviewed by Radio Free Asia, she is still being held.

    “As in other provinces with pro-autonomy movements, there is even more censorship and police control in Xinjiang than the rest of China, especially during the month of Ramadan,” Reporters Without Borders said. “There is an urgent need for Uyghur journalists to be allowed to write and express themselves without fear of being arrested and convicted on trumped-up charges of calling for violence or threatening Chinese sovereignty.”

    Nurmuhemmet Yasin, the author of the 2004 short story “Wild Pigeon,” was sentenced in February 2005 to 10 years in prison for inciting Uyghur separatism. Written in the first person, the story described a young pigeon that was put in a cage by humans and took its own life rather than sacrifice its freedom. The authorities claimed that it was about Yasin’s father, who poisoned himself in similar circumstances, and argued that it therefore contained a political message.

    Korash Huseyin, an employee of the literary magazine that published the short story, was arrested in November 2005 and was sentenced to three years in prison by a south Xinjiang court. Ismail Tiliwaldi, the Uyghur governor of Xinjiang, said Yasin’s arrest was necessary to maintain stability in the region.

    Abdulghani Memetemin, a Xinjiang-based writer, teacher and translator, was arrested on 26 July 2002 for providing information to the East Turkestan Information Centre (ETIC), an Uyghur rights and pro-independence group run by Uyghur exiles in Germany. A Kashgar court sentenced him to nine years in prison in June 2003 on a charge of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign organisations.”

    Reporters Without Borders believes that all of these Uyghurs were unfairly convicted for expressing themselves publicly, and calls on the Chinese authorities to release them.

     

     

     

     

     

    Source: Reporters Without Borders, 10 September 2008