Category: America

U.S. general wants to move troops to northern Iraq

By ADAM ASHTON

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. general in Iraq wants to place more American soldiers along the fault line between Iraqi Kurds and Arabs, two groups who have appeared on the verge of civil war at times over the past year.

Gen. Ray Odierno has discussed his proposal with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, two leaders who have been at odds for the past year over how to determine which group should govern the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and the Ninevah plains near Mosul.

A spokesman for Multi-National Force Iraq said Monday that Odierno is proposing a temporary deployment that would not affect the planned withdrawal of American forces by Dec. 31, 2011.

The intent is to partner American soldiers with Kurdish-controlled peshmerga and Iraqi forces who answer to al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad “to prevent the disputed areas from being used as a seam.”

“If approved, this change in security posture would be a temporary measure to improve confidence in the security situation and pressure terrorist networks,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified as a matter of policy.

Resolving the dispute between Kurds and Arabs over Kirkuk and the Ninevah plains is one of the top remaining priorities for Americans in Iraq. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the country last month and urged al-Maliki and Barzani to settle the matter before U.S. forces leave.

Al-Maliki’s Cabinet, meanwhile, has submitted a proposal that would give Iraqi voters a chance in January to hasten the withdrawal of American forces from their country by as much as a year, sending all remaining U.S. soldiers home by the end of 2010 instead of 2011.

The plan, en route to Iraq’s parliament, would set a national referendum on Jan. 16, giving voters a say on the security agreement that defines the pace of the drawdown.

That vote would take place on the same date that Iraqis choose their next parliament, their first national vote since 2005.

It’s not clear whether parliament will support the date, but it’s likely that Iraqis – exhausted by more than six years of war and occupation – would elect to send Americans home earlier if they had an opportunity to vote on it.

The pact took effect Jan. 1. Its key date so far was June 30, when American soldiers were required to leave their bases in cities and towns. Al-Maliki designated the date “National Sovereignty Day,” and it was celebrated with parties in the street.

That success could persuade Iraqis to support the withdrawal agreement, said Abdul Karim al-Samarrai, a prominent lawmaker from the Iraqi Islamic Party.

“The people now have a better idea about what the agreement holds for them, especially as they have seen the actual withdrawal of American troops from their cities. Maybe they have more faith in it,” he said.

About 131,000 American soldiers remain in Iraq. That number is expected to decline to 50,000 by next August.

The security agreement, drafted last fall between the Bush administration and al-Maliki’s government, says either side must give the other a year’s notice before changing the pact, meaning that the U.S. would have at least that much time to exit Iraq if voters reject the agreement.

Al-Maliki agreed to put the agreement to a vote to appease critics in parliament who insisted that all Iraqis have their say. The referendum was supposed to take place at the end of July.

The Ministry of Planning also announced a delay in another election-related issue Monday. It’s postponing a planned census because of fears that the results would stir violence in the northern provinces that are the focus of Odierno’s new security proposal.

The Kurdistan Regional Government wants to annex both areas. The census was supposed to be a step toward votes on whether the territories would join the semiautonomous Kurdish region or continue to be controlled by Baghdad.

Barzani’s government controls three provinces and views both Kirkuk and the Ninevah plains as essential parts of the Kurdish homeland.

Kurds grew especially sensitive to threats against the territories late last year when the central government deployed an army division near Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed province believed to have roughly equal populations of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen.

Meanwhile, the Ninevah plains outside Mosul have seen some of the most violent attacks on civilians in recent weeks. More than 20 Yazidis, a religious minority, were killed Thursday. A village outside Mosul was leveled by two truck bombs Aug. 10, which killed more than 30.

(Ashton reports for The Modesto (Calif.) Bee. McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent Sahar Issa contributed to this report.)

August 18, 2009
Turks Growing More Confident over Turkey’s International Role

Turks Growing More Confident over Turkey’s International Role

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 158

August 17, 2009

By: Saban Kardas

An Ankara-based think-tank, Uluslararasi Stratejik Arastirmalar Kurumu (USAK), announced the findings of its 2009 public opinion poll on Turkish perceptions of foreign policy (www.usak.org.tr, August 14). The survey shows that the Turkish people prioritize national interests over global causes, and a visible increase in their self-confidence can be identified. Moreover, Turks continue to support E.U. accession, while the United States is still perceived as the major risk to Turkey’s security.

The survey indicated popular support for the government’s foreign policy. 49 percent of the 1,100 respondents believe that “Turkish foreign policy is successful,” while 27 percent evaluate it as unsuccessful, and 20 percent find it fair. The level of support for Turkish foreign policy has increased by 7 percent since the last survey in 2005.

These results might be attributed to the effect of the government’s recent foreign policy initiatives. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pro-Palestinian policies earlier this year bolstered his popularity at home. Moreover, the government has used energy deals with the European Union and Russia as a public relations tool domestically to argue that the country has been emerging as a major energy hub and will become a global power. Such campaigns by the government might also have boosted its support.

There is growing self-confidence among the Turkish public about the country’s international standing. In response to the question: “Do you believe many countries are contemplating dividing Turkey?” 54 percent said yes. This is a rather high figure and it largely reflects Turkish negative perceptions of foreign powers and fears of territorial dismemberment. Nonetheless, it represents a significant decline from 72 percent in 2005 and 64 percent in 2004. The resolution of Turkey’s problems with its neighbors, and the diminishing threat from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) might explain this trend toward a more confident and less skeptical perception of the outside world.

The question: “What should be the priority of Turkish foreign policy?” produced revealing answers. A combination of military and economic security concerns proved most popular: prevention of terror attacks (13 percent), protection of Turkey’s economic interests (12 percent), preparing defense against foreign armies (10 percent), and boosting Turkish investments abroad (8 percent). These responses show that Turkish people still prioritize the advancement of “national interests” over the promotion of “global” issues. Dealing with environmental issues was at the bottom of the list. Likewise, the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad, assisting oppressed countries, or supporting Islamic causes received low levels of support (www.usak.org.tr, August 14).

In another significant reflection of the nationalist tendencies within Turkish society, 72 percent of the respondents defined the “identity of Turkey in international affairs” as “Turkish.” 13 percent regarded Turkey as a European state, 6 percent as Muslim and 5 percent as Middle Eastern.

On the question: “What country threatens Turkey the most?” the United States maintained its place at the top of the list (25 percent), followed by Israel (15 percent) and France (12 percent). Although the proportion of those who perceive the U.S. as the main threat has declined compared to 29 percent in 2005 and 28 percent in 2004, its place at the top of the list is revealing. Despite the rejuvenation of Turkish-American relations under the Obama administration, and their sympathy for him, the results suggest ongoing reservations toward American “policies,” and that more concrete measures might be needed to enhance these relations. Likewise, 32 of the respondents believe the United States is the country that poses the biggest threat to world peace.

Interestingly, these results are corroborated by the conclusions of the recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey. Although the election of Obama improved the U.S. image around the world, in Turkey along with other Muslim nations, U.S. favorability ratings still remain low (PEW, July 23).

Nonetheless, the United States climbed to fourth place on the friendly countries list, behind Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkmenistan. In 2005, the United States ranked twelfth on the same list. Moreover, on a related question, “what country would come to Turkey’s rescue, if it was confronted a major problem such as war, civil conflict or natural disaster?” most Turks expected the United States (25 percent) to assist, followed by Azerbaijan (10 percent). Although Turks feel threatened by the policies of the United States, they essentially view it as an indispensable partner capable of providing security at difficult times, unlike other “friendly” countries that are either distant or too weak to offer any meaningful help.

One remarkable trend among the list of “threatening countries” concerns France. Whereas those who perceived France as a source of threat accounted for only 0.69 percent in 2003, that figure rose to 2.5 in 2004, and 12.9 percent in 2009. This negative attitude toward an E.U. member is indicative of Turkish people’s reactions to recent French policies. Apparently the French support for the Armenian theses, and Paris’s vocal opposition to Turkey’s E.U. accession are resented by not only the Turkish government, but also within the society (www.usak.org.tr, August 14).

Similarly, attitudes toward the other outspoken critic of Turkey inside the EU, Germany, also support similar conclusions. Whereas, Germany was not perceived as threatening in 2005, 1.82 percent of the respondents in 2009 said Germany threatens Turkey. Conversely, on the list of friendly countries, only 0.64 percent sees Germany as a friend, which indicates a dramatic decline from 8.2 percent in 2004.

Together, the negative reactions to France and Germany’s attempts to block Turkish accession suggest that Turks still value the E.U. membership process and the E.U. ideal. Indeed, in response to the question “where does Turkey’s future lie?” 56 percent chose the E.U., while those who preferred the Turkish or the Islamic world remained at 23.64 and 10 percent respectively. Nonetheless, Turks believe that their country’s rejection by the E.U. is due to religious and cultural differences and historical prejudices toward Turkey.

https://jamestown.org/program/turks-growing-more-confident-over-turkeys-international-role/

August 18, 2009

OBAMA’S RECOMMENDATION TO ELDERLY

THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE ….. YOU MUST LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW ABOUT WHAT IS ACTUALY IN THE HEALTH CARE PLAN OBAMA IS TRYING TO RUSH THROUGH. I’m sending it to everyone in my addressbook and hope you will too! … Jean Eaton <[email protected]>

On page 425 it says in black and white that EVERYONE on Social Security, (will include all Senior Citizens and SSI people) will go to MANDATORY counseling every 5 years to learn and to choose from ways to end your suffering (and your life). Health care will be denied based on age. 500 Billion&n bsp;will be cut from Seniors healthcare. The only w ay for that to happen is to drastically cut health care, the oldest and the sickest will be cut first. Paying for your own care will not be an option. “ON PAGE 425 OF OBAMA’S HEALTH CARE BILL, the Federal Government will require EVERYONE who is on Social Security to undergo a counseling session every 5 years with the objective being that they will explain to them just how to end their own life earlier. Yes…They are going to push SUICIDE to cut medicare spending!”

Fred Thompson: Interviews

(BE SURE TO CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK( Fred Thompson: Interviews) TO HEAR THE INTERVIEW!)

August 12, 2009

horrors of the Armenian genocide

An uncompromising look at the horrors of the Armenian genocide

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, August 2, 2009

By Michael Janusonis <[email protected]>

Journal Arts Writer

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani of The Lark Farm.

AP / HENNY RAY ABRAMS

The 13th Rhode Island International Film Festival officially begins its six-day run Tuesday night with a gala at the Providence Performing Arts Center, followed by a series of short films on the giant screen. But it will actually kick off Monday with a couple of special screenings: a 10 a.m. showing of Monsters Vs. Aliens 3-D at Providence Place Cinemas and a 6:30 p.m. screening at the Columbus Theater of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s 2007 historical epic The Lark Farm.

Despite its bucolic name, The Lark Farm is an uncompromising look at the horrors of the Armenian genocide launched by the Turks in 1915, when World War I was going badly for them. The massacre was carried out amidst fears that the substantial Christian Armenian population, who had always been second-class citizens in the Muslim Ottoman Empire, was going to join the Russians who were fighting the Turks in the war.

During the genocide, which began in 1915, many Armenian men were arrested and killed. The women and children were deported to a desert region near the Syrian border, though many of them perished during the forced marches. In the end, it is estimated that between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians died in this holocaust. Unnervingly, their story parallels events that began two decades later in Germany when the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Trying to tell such a broad-based story is a daunting undertaking, except perhaps as a documentary. But the writing-directing Tavianis, who are in their late 70s and whose output over the decades includes the groundbreaking Padre Padrone and Night of the Shooting Stars, made this history very personal by focusing on one family as it struggled to survive in an increasingly bleak and trying situation.

The Lark Farm revolves around the lives of the prosperous Avankian family, who live in a fine house in the city and have recently restored the big house at their homestead in the countryside, Lark Farm, to its former ornate grandeur. But the war has broken out, threatening the already wobbly Ottoman Empire, and the Avankians are hearing inklings that things will not go well for the Armenians.

When the family patriarch dies at the start of the film, he warns with his dying breath to flee, but no one pays heed. His son, Aram (Tcheky Karyo), a wealthy businessman, believes things will pretty much continue as they always have with just a few rough spots. His beatific wife, Armineh (Arsinee Khanjian), puts up a brave front, but is not so convinced. His sister, the headstrong Nunik (Paz Vega), has fallen in love with a Turkish officer (Alessandro Preziosi), who plots to leave the army and flee with her across the border because he has heard rumors that bad things might come. “There’s no hope for us here. I’m a Turk and you’re Armenian,” he tells Nunik.

It seems like a set-up for what will be a Romeo-Juliet romance, but The Lark Farm soon grows much darker even than that classic tale. Soon the resentment toward the Armenians, who are seen by some Turks as a sort of fifth column of traitors and spies, spirals out of control. Plans are afoot to arrest the Armenian leaders quietly, including Aram. But things quickly get out of hand when a hot-headed officer gets involved and events slip away from the control of the colonel who is in charge of this region. A decent man who has befriended the Armenians, he tries to prevent the killing, but is too late.

The attack on the Avankians and their neighbors, who have arrived at Lark Farm in hopes of finding refuge from the Turks, is horrific and bloody. It sets the tone for the terrors that will follow, which will see most of the men murdered and the women sent off on a long march toward the desert with little food to sustain them. In desperation, some of them turn to selling sexual favors for a loaf of bread. Others are killed outright or left to die at the side of the road. The Lark Farm becomes a study in human cruelty.

Cinematically, it’s powerful and yet that power is muted somewhat by the melodramatic way events unfold on screen. The Armenians are pictured as innocents and saints; most Turks as soulless monsters. Some scenes and characters are overplayed. At one point, a Turkish soldier who has arrived at the Avankian manse during their dinner, covetously looks at a tureen that’s filled with soup, spilling its contents on the table and making a grab for the tureen with greed in his eyes. There are many such scenes that lack subtlety.

Nevertheless, the plight of the Avankians, whose brother in Italy desperately attempts to raise money to get them out of Turkey, is emotionally riveting. It expands to include the tale of a Muslim beggar who tries to help the family, which has always been good to him, hatching an elaborate rescue plan. It goes back to focus on Nunik who finds herself in a camp where she falls in love with another Turkish soldier and is involved in a selfless act to save what’s left of her family. Vega gives a poignant performance as Nunik, who has nowhere left to turn. She puts a face on the struggles of the Armenian people during this dark period.

August 11, 2009

Hoover Dam ByPass

THE WIDER VIEW: Taking

shape, the new bridge at the

Hoover Dam

Creeping closer inch by inch – 900ft above the mighty Colorado River

the two sides of a $160 million bridge at the Hoover Dam in America

slowly take shape. The bridge will carry a new section of US Route 93

past the bottleneck of the old road which can be seen twisting and

winding around and across the dam itself.

When complete, it will provide a new link between the states of Nevada

and Arizona . In an incredible feat of engineering, the road will be supported

on the two massive concrete arches which jut out of the rock face.

The arches are made up of 53 individual sections – each 24ft long

which have been cast on-site and are being lifted into place using

an improvised high-wire crane strung between temporary steel pylons.

The arches will eventually measure more than 1,000ft across.
At the moment, the structure looks like a traditional suspension bridge. But once the arches are complete,
the suspending cables on each side will be removed.

Extra vertical columns will then be installed on the arches to carry the road.
The bridge has become known as the Hoover Dam bypass, although it is officially called the Mike O’Callaghan-
Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, after a former governor of Nevada and an American Football player from Arizona
who joined the US Army and was killed in Afghanistan.

Work on the bridge started in 2005 and should finish next year. An estimated 17,000 cars and trucks will cross it every day.

The dam was started in 1931 and used enough concrete to build a road from New York to San Francisco .
The stretch of water it created, Lake Mead , is 110 miles long and took six years to fill.
The original road was opened at the same time as the famous dam in 1936.

August 11, 2009

U.S. Hopes For Sarkisian Visit To Turkey

Turkey – U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with foreign ministers of Armenia, Turkey and Switzerland in Istanbul, 06Apr2009

10.08.2009

Emil Danielyan

The United States hopes that President Serzh Sarkisian will visit Turkey in October to continue Yerevan’s fence-mending “football diplomacy” with Ankara, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said over the weekend.

Bryza acknowledged at the same time that the U.S.-backed Turkish-Armenian dialogue has stalled of late and that he is now less optimistic about chances for the normalization of relations between the two estranged neighbors.

“What I had hoped was going to happen did not happen,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “Sometimes, if I’m asked to make a prediction, the prediction does not come true. I thought that there was a specific step that was about to occur.”

“There is no reason why those steps still can not happen, and we are working together with the Swiss mediators to try to help the parties think through what it is that they each can do to get the process moving again. I do have some hope that that will happen, but I can’t predict how quickly or what can be agreed,” he added.

Speaking to RFE/RL on May 28, Bryza insisted that Armenia’s rapprochement with Turkey has not reached an impasse despite Ankara’s renewed linkage between the normalization of bilateral relations and a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. Visiting Yerevan two weeks later, Philip Gordon, the newly appointed U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian, likewise sounded upbeat on the normalization prospects.

Sarkisian has since increasingly expressed his frustration with Ankara’ stance, implicitly accusing the Turks of reneging on agreements reached during year-long negotiations with his government. The Armenian leader made clear last month that he will not accept Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s invitation to watch with him the October 14 return match of the two countries’ national football teams unless Turkey takes “real steps” to reopen its border with Armenia. The two presidents attended the first game played in Yerevan in September last year.

Armenia — U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza in Yerevan.

In Bryza’s words, Sarkisian’s visit to Turkey would be “very good news for America” because it would mean that “two of our friends are coming together.” “We were so pleased when President Gul came to Yerevan and we would be happy if President Sarkisian went to Turkey,” he said.

Bryza stressed, however, that Washington will not press Sarkisian to accept Gul’s invitation. “It’s important not to conflate or confuse our desire for something to happen with pressure,” he said. “I have seen some absolutely ridiculous accusations by some here in Armenia that the United States is pressuring Armenia to agree to one thing or another.”

Some Armenian opposition politicians have claimed that Turkey’s preconditions for normalizing relations with Armenia have left Yerevan under stronger pressure from the international community and the U.S. in particular to make more concessions in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Bryza also insisted that the success of the Turkish-Armenian dialogue does not hinge on a breakthrough in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks mediated by the U.S., Russia and France. “These two processes are separate,” he said. “What is true is that, as I’ve said so many times, if there is progress in one process, that will help to generate a more positive mood throughout the entire region and then help to reduce tension and facilitate progress in the other process.”

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1796458.html

August 10, 2009