Turkey could be America’s most important regional ally, above Iraq, even above Israel, if both sides manage the relationship correctly.
Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, as transcribed by CQ
PRESIDENT BARACK Thank you. Thank you.
CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation…
(APPLAUSE)
… as well as the generosit
By Jeff KearnsBloomberg.com: Worldwide
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 14 percent between Barack Obama’s election and Inauguration Day, the biggest decline ever. The second-biggest drop gave way to a 75 percent rally in 1933.
The CHART OF THE DAY compares the Dow’s retreat since Nov. 4 with the 13 percent slide between Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election and his inauguration on March 4, 1933. The red line goes on to show the Dow’s surge during FDR’s first 100 days. No other new president since the beginning of the last century produced gains or losses of 10 percent or more in the analogous periods.
“Obama is realizing the historic parallels,” said Richard Sylla, an economic and financial historian at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business in New York. “The situation isn’t quite as serious as the 1930s but it’s serious enough that I expect Obama to take a page from FDR’s book to restore some of the confidence that’s been shattered.”
Obama becomes president today during the most severe economic crisis since Roosevelt was sworn in 76 years ago. Like his fellow Democrat, Obama plans to create jobs and boost the economy by investing in roads, bridges and public buildings and increasing oversight of the securities industry.
Stock exchanges closed for more than a week when FDR declared a bank holiday and enacted reform days after becoming president. The Dow jumped 15 percent on the day markets re- opened.
The Dow average declined 187.25 points, or 2.2 percent, to 8,093.97 as of 1:12 p.m. in New York.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Kearns in New York at jkearns3@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: January 20, 2009 07:09 EST
By Igor Panarin
The United States, which is at the epicenter of the global financial tsunami, will suffer the most damage in 2009. In a worst-case scenario that has a roughly 50 percent chance of coming true, the dollar and the entire U.S. economy will crash by November. As a result, the country’s dire political and economic problems could lead to fierce competition between the states in which wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and threaten secession and civil war. This in turn could lead to disintegration of the country into six parts by the summer of 2010 as the leading foreign powers take their pieces of the fallen giant. Under this scenario, California and six western states would fall under Chinese influence; Alaska would go to Russia; Hawaii would go to Japan or China; 15 states in the Midwest and Great Plains would be under Canadian influence; Texas and eight other southern states would be under Mexican influence; and the eastern seaboard states might join the European Union.
Russia must take advantage of the U.S. crisis by expanding its influence and power both domestically and globally in the following areas:
•Pacific Doctrine
Russia needs regions that can produce breakthrough technological innovations, and Primorye is a leading candidate to fulfill this role. While preserving its military and political importance, Primorye should become a powerful financial and economic outpost in the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century. By 2012, it can and should become one of the main centers of international business activity, a hub for investment and innovation.
The political future of Russia’s leaders, as well as its ability to become a leader in innovation, will largely depend on whether Primorye’s political elite can — with Kremlin support — adapt to the reality of world politics.
This primarily means supporting the concept of a fifth “I” — intellect — in addition to President Dmitry Medvedev’s four I’s of institutions, infrastructure, investment and innovation. This would entail developing a partnership between government and the private sector that will ensure Russia’s position as a world leader.
•Former Soviet Republics
A U.S. collapse would lead to a political and military vacuum among former U.S. allies in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russia should declare its intention to return to the foreign policies of Catherine the Great.
•The Middle East
Russia should start by building a strategic partnership with Turkey, which supported Russia in its war with Georgia in August. Russia should take over all of the former U.S. military bases on Turkish territory. In addition, Russia should take full advantage of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan by deploying forces from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to provide peace and stability.
•South Asia
Russia should try to become the main arbiter in the dispute between India and Pakistan. It would also make sense to include Iran and China in the settlement process.
•South America and the Caribbean
Moscow should focus on strengthening its ties and influence in Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba. Russia should direct colossal economic and military resources to those three countries.
The year 2010 should see the re-establishment of Russia’s radar station at Lourdes in Cuba that Moscow abandoned in 2001 with 750 technicians and 2,000 troops. At a December meeting of leaders from 33 South American states — which was held without the participation of the United States for the first time — Mexican President Felipe Calderon proposed creating an organization called the Union of South American and Caribbean Basin States that would facilitate political and economic change on the continent. If such an organization is established, Russia should strive to become a strategic economic and informational-ideological partner.
By expanding its influence in the above areas, Russia can integrate Eurasia and strengthen its political, economic and military influence in the world. The U.S. decline offers Russia a golden opportunity to replace the United States as the world’s leading superpower.
Igor Panarin, former analyst with the KGB, is dean of the international relations department at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Updated at 12 January 2009 1:39 Moscow Time.
Today Russia is the main obstacle on the way to the resolution of the situation in the South Caucasus, said famous Russian political scientist and chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia Heydar Jamal, speaking about the supply of arms to Armenia by Russia free of charge. He said if not for Moscow the Karabakh conflict could have been settled long ago.
Nicholas Birch is a freelance reporter
January 9, 2009
ISTANBUL and TORONTO — In his native Turkey, he is a key figure in one of the country’s biggest political trials, a convoluted, explosive tale of assassinations and conspiracy.
He has also figured large in a Cairo court, where he was alleged to be an operative for Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, who recruited a Canadian to spy for Israel on Arab bank customers.
Here in Canada, Tuncay Guney presents himself as a rabbi, with hat and black coat – though the Jewish community says he’s not one of their own.
A cagey, unassuming-looking 36-year-old with shaky English, the former reporter left a path of intrigue and controversy on three continents before turning up in Toronto as a refugee claimant.
“Going back to Turkey would mean arranging a date with the Angel of Death,” he said in an e-mail in Turkish.
For the past six months, few days have gone without him being on the front page of a Turkish newspaper.
He is the informant behind the closely watched Ergenekon trial, in which leading intellectuals and military officers are accused of attempting to overthrow the Muslim-rooted AK party that governs Turkey.
United only by their hatred of the AK, the 85 right-wing nationalists and hard-line secularists in the dock are accused of being part of a secret organization called Ergenekon and charged with plotting high-level killings to destabilize society and force army intervention.
“I sparked a revolution in my country. The masks fell,” Mr. Guney said in his e-mail. “If I talk, everything will change.”
The case began in 2001 when police in Turkey pulled him in for selling a stolen car.
The man was a nondescript sort: a failed journalist with a primary school certificate and a thick Anatolian accent. Then he began to talk.
“I’ve never seen anybody like Tuncay Guney,” recalled Ahmet Ihtiyaroglu, the organized-crime interrogator who took over from his gobsmacked colleagues in small crimes. “It was as if somebody had sent him in to reveal everything.”
The police called in investigative magistrates. But out on bail, Mr. Guney fled to the United States.
He left behind 140 pages of depositions and six boxes of documents – some top-secret – that hold a prime place in the indictment. Mr. Guney is mentioned more than 400 times in the indictment and named as a “suspect on the run.”
In his deposition, Mr. Guney said he worked for General Veli Kucuk, a former military intelligence chief suspected in dozens of homicides.
This week, the trial heard that his aliases included Daniel Levi, Kemal Kosbag and Tuncay Bubay.
Those names had cropped up before, in a spy case against an Egyptian-Canadian CIBC employee in Toronto.
In 2007, a Cairo court sentenced Mohamed el-Attar to 15 years in prison after he was arrested in Egypt while visiting family. The prosecution said that Mr. el-Attar worked for Mossad, while in Turkey and Canada, and had been recruited by Daniel Levi, Kemal Kosba and Tuncay Bubay.
According to Newsweek’s Turkish edition, a former housemate said Mr. Guney once introduced Mr. el-Attar to him as a friend. The Israeli consulate said the Mossad allegations were “madness.”
Daniel is also the name Mr. Guney uses in his Toronto life – as rabbi Daniel T. Guney.
Jacob House, the congregation he says he represents, appears to be little more than a website and a postal box.
The Toronto Board of Rabbis and the Canadian Jewish Congress say Mr. Guney is not a member of the community and appears to be associated with the Messianic Judaism movement, evangelical Christians who try to convert Jews.
According to the Turkish media, Mr. Guney became acquainted with evangelical Christians while in New York. When his asylum demand in the United States was rejected, a Kurdish convert drove him to Canada in 2004.
“People let him enter their lives because they felt sorry for him. He always appeared a poor, weak character,” says one Turkish journalist who first met him in 1994.
“Tuncay Guney has 1,000 faces. Only God knows which is the real one,” said Hasan Yilmaz, editor of the Toronto-based newspaper CanadaTurk.
Mr. Guney, meanwhile, is in no hurry to be back where he triggered so many shockwaves.
“The state is not in control of the streets or the prisons. Look at the seniority of the Ergenekon suspects and what they did. Do you think they would permit me to live in liberty or in jail?”
Source: www.theglobeandmail.com, January 9, 2009
