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Category: Europe

  • Russians moving into Syria

    Russians moving into Syria

    Strategic alliance include fleet, missiles

    Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND.

    The coast of Syria, where Tartus is located

    Just as Russia has reasserted its power in the Black Sea, it now plans to make waves in the Mediterranean Sea by establishing a major base in Syria, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

    This decision not only will allow a permanent presence of Russia’s nuclear-armed Black Sea fleet in the Mediterranean, but it also offers the potential for future confrontations between Russia and Israel, as well as with the United States.

    The Russian navy has begun to upgrade facilities in Tartus, Syria, and already has backed this up by moving to Syria a flotilla of its powerful warships led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. The flotilla includes the Russian navy’s biggest missile cruiser Moskva and some four nuclear missile submarines.

    From 1971 to 1992, the former Soviet Union operated a naval maintenance facility at Tartus. It then fell into disrepair. Only one of its three floating piers remained operational.

    But the facilities now are being restored.

    “It is much more advantageous to have such a facility than to return ships that patrol the Mediterranean to their home bases,” said former Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Eduard Baltin.

    The establishment of the permanent base also is viewed as Moscow’s response to the upcoming installation of U.S. missile interceptors along Poland’s Baltic coast at Redzikowo. Such an agreement was signed last month between the U.S. and Poland.

    Syria, meantime, also is considering a request from Moscow to base missiles in the country due to tensions between Russia and the West over its invasion of Georgia in the Caucasus.

    Russia would send in the surface-to-surface Iskander missile which Moscow says is capable of penetrating any missile defense system.

    With a NATO code name of the SS-26 Stone, the Iskander is a road-mobile system. It has a range of 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, giving Damascus the capability of striking Tel Aviv in Israel.

    Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin is the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

    Source: www.worldnetdaily.com, September 19, 2008

  • Whither Turkish-Armenian relations?

    Whither Turkish-Armenian relations?

    By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul

    As symbolic gestures go, Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s attendance at an Armenia-Turkey football match in Yerevan on September 6 could not have been bettered.

    The first visit by a senior Turkish politician since Armenia became independent 17 years ago, it has sparked an upsurge of fraternal feeling on both sides of a border closed since 1993. And the signs are that there is more to come. If Armenia agrees to renounce territorial claims on eastern Turkey implicit in its founding charter, one senior Turkish diplomat says: “We could see diplomatic relations begun and rail links restarted within six months.”

    “The two sides are in agreement over a surprising number of issues,” agrees Richard Giragosian, a Yerevan-based analyst, describing Armenia’s invitation of Gul as “a vital foreign policy victory” for the Caucasian state’s embattled government. Armenia stands to benefit enormously from the rapprochement. With its Azeri and Turkish borders closed, Georgia has been its only window on the West. When Russia wrecked Georgian infrastructure in August, it was Armenians, not Georgians, who suffered from food shortages.

    It is no coincidence either that the two Turkish provinces bordering Armenia are the country’s poorest. For years, politicians in Kars and Igdir have been calling for the border to be opened. Trade between the two countries “would slow rapid population movement away from eastern Turkey,” says former Turkish ambassador to Russia, Volkan Vural. “It would provide Central Asia-bound exporters with a good new route. Plus energy security would be improved if Armenia joins current energy projects.”

    Though Turkey has increasingly used its key position on the “East-West” corridor connecting Europe to the Caspian as a card in its stumbling EU negotiations, such optimism seems premature, for three reasons.

    Reasons not to be cheerful

    First, it ignores the fact that Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan has been closed since the 1988-1994 armed conflict that took place in the small ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the predominantly ethnic Armenians and Azeri forces. Azerbaijan showed considerable statesmanship in backing the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. But there is no sign of progress on Nagorno-Karabakh. Instead, enriched with oil and gas money, Baku now spends $1bn annually on military rearmament. Belligerent rhetoric about re-taking lost territories is, if anything, on the up.

    Second, and much more importantly, Turkey’s talk of a new Caucasian pact appears to ignore the key lesson of August’s conflict in South Ossetia; in today’s Caucasus, Russia is boss. The August bust-up “was clearly not about Ossetia, only a little about Georgia, only a little about Nato, and a huge amount about geopolitics,” says David Smith, director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center in Tbilisi. “It was a shot fired at the East-West corridor, a warning to BP, ExxonMobil, anybody hoping to loosen Gazprom’s hold on Central Asia.”

    With Russian bombs falling within 200 metres of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, Georgia’s neighbours seem to have got the message. Azerbaijan recently upped oil exports via Russian pipelines when BTC flow was interrupted by a Turkish Kurdish separatist sabotage attack on the pipeline on August 6. And when US Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Baku on September 3 to drum up local support for a trans-Caspian gas line, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev turned him down.

    With the future of Nabucco, a hugely expensive EU-backed gas pipeline due to bring Caspian gas direct to Europe by 2013, looking increasingly doubtful, some analysts hint at the possibility of rerouting the East-West corridor through Armenia. But this talk of Armenia offering new energy security possibilities misses another point: Georgia earned its position on the East-West corridor thanks to its staunch pro-American stance; Armenia, meanwhile, to cite Richard Giragosian, is little better than “a Russian garrison state.”

    Visitors to Yerevan have their passports stamped by Russian border guards. Armenia’s energy and telecommunication sectors have been in Russian hands since 2005 and 2006 respectively. Russian Railways bought Armenian railways this January. In that context, Giragosian argues, opening the Turkish-Armenian border risks abetting Russian efforts to sideline Georgia. “The key question Turkey needs to ask itself over Armenia,” he says, “is do we have a partner on the other side.”

  • God, Evolution and Charles Darwin

    God, Evolution and Charles Darwin

    From Times Online
    September 17, 2008

    Ten surprising things Darwin said about religious faith

    Nick Spencer

    Next year is the big Darwin anniversary. Two hundred years after his birth and 150 after the publication of On the Origin of the Species, millions will celebrate the life and work of Charles Darwin, one of the most brilliant scientists in history, and a man who was thoroughly decent, honourable and likeable.

    Unfortunately, he has become caught up in the crossfire of a battle in which Darwin exhibited little personal interest. On one side of this cartoonish debate are the creationists. Their precise numbers, in the UK, are uncertain, although the major survey Theos /ComRes are conducting into the public’s beliefs about Darwinism, creationism and ID, which will be published next year, should help us find out more. Numbers aside, the point is that creationists dislike Darwin and regularly criticise him for supposedly undermining their religious beliefs.

    In the other trench lie the militant Godless who – bizarrely – wholly agree with the creationists. Darwinism, they proclaim, does indeed undermine religious belief and a good thing too. Darwin is their icon and they frantically genuflect before his image, in a way brilliantly parodied by the satirical magazine The Onion.

    The truth is, as ever, more complex. Darwin was too interesting, too careful a thinker to be caricatured in these ways. He was a Christian and yes, he did lose his faith. But he was never an atheist. He engaged in religious debate with friends but confessed to being in a hopeless “muddle”. He agonised over whether the exquisite beauty of life on earth was worth the pain of natural selection. He hated religious controversy and was deeply respectful of others’ views. He took upon himself the duties of a country parson whilst living at Downe and contributed to the South American Missionary Society. And, to top it all, he often doubted whether, his mind being evolved, he could even trust it in such matters. All in all, he was too complex, too subtle a man to be left to the polemicists.

    So, in the interests, of rescuing him from the no-man’s-land in which he has become trapped, here are 10 Darwin quotations, from his later years, which you are unlikely to hear from the mouths of either creationists or atheists in 2009.

    1. “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.” (Autobiography)

    2. “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.” (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

    3. “I hardly see how religion & science can be kept as distinct as [Edward Pusey] desires… But I most wholly agree… that there is no reason why the disciples of either school should attack each other with bitterness.” (Letter to J. Brodie Innes, November 27 1878)

    4. “In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.” (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

    5. “I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

    6. “I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God.” (Letter to Frederick McDermott, November 24 1880)

    7. [In conversation with the atheist Edward Aveling, 1881] “Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?” (Edward Aveling, The religious views of Charles Darwin, 1883)

    8. “Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” (Letter to Graham William, July 3 1881)

    9. “My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design.” (Letter to Joseph Hooker, July 12 1870)

    10. “I can never make up my mind how far an inward conviction that there must be some Creator or First Cause is really trustworthy evidence.” (Letter to Francis Abbot, September 6 1871)

    Nick Spencer is director of studies at the public theology think-tank Theos which is conducting, in partnership with the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion a project on evolution, faith and Charles Darwin. Mr Spencer’s book, Darwin and God, will be published in 2009 by SPCK.

    Source: The Times, September 17, 2008

  • Creationist Adnan Oktar wins ban on Richard Dawkins site

    Creationist Adnan Oktar wins ban on Richard Dawkins site

    From The Times
    September 20, 2008

    Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

    A Muslim creationist has succeeded in having Richard Dawkins’s website banned in Turkey, after complaining that its atheist content was blasphemous.

    The country’s internet users are now subject to a court order imposed on Turk Telecom that prohibits them from accessing richarddawkins.net.

    The court in Istanbul issued its judgment after Adnan Oktar claimed that his book Atlas of Creation, which contests the arguments for evolution, had been defamed on Dawkins’s website.

    In July Professor Dawkins wrote on his site: “I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breath-taking inanity of the content.”

    Earlier this year Mr Oktar, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya, tried to have Dawkins’s book The God Delusion banned in Turkey but failed. He is also appealing against a three-year prison sentence for creating an illegal organisation for personal gain.

    Source: The Times, September 20, 2008

  • Royal Society’s Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

    Royal Society’s Michael Reiss resigns over creationism row

    From The Times
    September 17, 2008

    Lewis Smith and Mark Henderson

    The resignation of Michael Reiss has divided scientists

    The Royal Society’s embattled director of education resigned last night, days after causing uproar among scientists by appearing to endorse the teaching of creationism.

    Michael Reiss, a biologist and ordained Church of England clergyman, agreed to step down from his position with the national academy of science after its officers decided that his comments had damaged its reputation.

    His resignation comes after a campaign by senior Royal Society Fellows who were angered by Professor Reiss’s suggestion that science teachers should treat creationist beliefs “not as a misconception but as a world view”.

    Sir Richard Roberts, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1993, described such views as outrageous, and organised a letter to the society’s president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, demanding that Professor Reiss be sacked. Phil Willis MP, the chairman of the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, was due to meet Royal Society officers today to demand an explanation of Professor Reiss’s comments.

    The Royal Society stood by the scientist initially, insisting that he had not departed from its official policy and that his remarks had been misinterpreted. Many senior figures, however, felt that Professor Reiss had been naive, at best, to make statements that could easily be seen to back teaching creationism as if it were science, and should not have done so while speaking in his Royal Society role.

    The society said in a statement: “Some of Professor Michael Reiss’s recent comments, on the issue of creationism in schools, while speaking as the Royal Society’s director of education, were open to misinterpretation. While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the society’s reputation. As a result, Professor Reiss and the Royal Society have agreed that, in the best interests of the society, he will step down immediately as director of education — a part-time post he held on secondment. He is to return, full-time, to his position as Professor of Science Education at the Institute of Education.”

    The resignation has divided scientists and administrators. While some welcomed the move, others felt that Professor Reiss had raised an important point and should have been supported. Lord Winston, Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College, London, who is not a Royal Society Fellow, said: “I fear that the Royal Society may have only diminished itself. This individual was arguing that we should engage with and address public misconceptions about science — something that the Royal Society should applaud.”

    Mr Willis said: “It is appropriate for the Royal Society to have dealt with this problem swiftly and effectively, rather than provoking continued debate. I hope the society will now stop burying its head and start taking on creationism.”

    The furore came after a speech given by Professor Reiss to the British Association for the Advancement of Science last week, in which he said that teachers should accept that they were unlikely to change the minds of pupils with creationist beliefs.

    “My experience after having tried to teach biology for 20 years is if one simply gives the impression that such children are wrong, then they are not likely to learn much about the science,” he said.

    “I realised that simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn’t lead some pupils to change their minds at all. Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson . . . There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have — hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching — and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion.”

    The Royal Society said that “creationism has no scientific basis and should not be part of the science curriculum. However, if a young person raises creationism in a science class, teachers should be in a position to explain why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism is not, in any way, scientific.”

    Chris Higgins, Vice-Chancellor of Durham University, said: “While I have no doubt that Michael Reiss’s comments have been misinterpreted by parts of the media, I think that the fact that he has generously stood down allows the Royal Society to clarify the robust position on this issue. There should be no room for doubt that creationism is completely unsupportable as a theory.”

    Professor Reiss was not available for comment.

    Source: The Times, September 17, 2008

  • EU: Georgia crisis fortifies importance of Turkey

    EU: Georgia crisis fortifies importance of Turkey

    HELSINKI, Finland: The Georgian crisis has strengthened the strategic importance of Turkey both in the Caucasus and for the European Union, the bloc’s enlargement chief said Friday.

    EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Turkey was “engaged in very active and evidently successful diplomacy” in its neighboring regions.

    Turkey has met separately with Georgian and Russian officials in an effort to promote peace between the two countries since their war in August.

    It is also helping to normalize ties between Syria and the EU and is mediating talks between Israel and the Palestinians in Istanbul.

    “Turkey remains a very important bridge between Europe and the Islamic world,” Rehn told reporters during a visit to Helsinki. “In other words, everything that has happened in recent weeks has only strengthened Turkey’s strategic importance from the EU’s point of view.”

    EU: Georgia crisis fortifies importance of Turkey – International Herald Tribune.