Greek Rioters Burn Bank, Kill 3 Inside
6 05 2010Europe leaders warn of contagion, 3 die in Greece
Renee Maltezou and Dave GrahamATHENS/BERLIN
Tear gas fired at crowd in Greece
(Reuters) – European leaders warned on Wednesday that the euro zone debt crisis could spread like a bushfire beyond Greece, and investors sold stocks and the euro as Greek anti-austerity unrest claimed its first lives.
WORLD | GREECE | THAILAND
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe’s fate was at stake and France declared the euro was under speculative attack but said it would fail, while the Greek government vowed not to retreat a single step despite violence on the streets of Athens.
Three people, including a pregnant woman, choked to death when rioters set an Athens bank ablaze during a protest against wage and pension cuts that were the price of the 110 billion euro ($146.5 billion) EU/IMF bailout agreed on Sunday.
A general strike shut down Greek airports, tourist sites and public services and about 50,000 demonstrators marched against the planned public spending cuts and tax rises, demanding that tax cheats and corrupt politicians be put on trial.
Hundreds of protesters threw stones and bottles at police who responded with tear gas in easily the biggest demonstration since Prime Minister George Papandreou took office last October.
"We are deeply shocked by the unjust death of these three people, our fellow citizens, who were victims of a murderous act," Papandreou, who is trying to reform an uncompetitive economy plagued by corruption, told parliament.
Greek civil servants will strike again next week to protest against austerity, public sector union ADEDY said.
Greek governments have a history of backing away from reforms due to public protests but Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou stressed that this time would be different.
"We are prepared to pay the heavy political cost," he told parliament during a debate on the austerity bill. "We will not take a single step backwards." [nATH005460]
But Merkel said the common currency was in the most serious crisis of its 11-year life, and other euro zone countries could be hit unless the Greek rescue succeeds.
European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the crisis must not spread. "It’s absolutely essential to contain the bushfire in Greece so that it will not become a forest fire and a threat to financial stability for the European Union and its economy as a whole," he told a news conference.
In Helsinki, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen acknowledged that the Greek rescue might not stop financial instability from spreading.
One worry was whether Finland gets back the money it lends Athens as its part of the package, he told broadcaster YLE. "A much bigger worry is if this (package) will not succeed."
EURO ATTACK
Anxiety that the crisis may spread sent stocks tumbling worldwide, and the euro hit a 14-month low below $1.29, leaving it down 3.5 percent against the dollar this week alone.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the common currency was under attack from financial speculators.
"This is not an attack on Greece but on the euro, and it will fail, for two reasons. Firstly, because the euro zone is solid … and then because we have demonstrated solid solidarity in favor of Greece," he told TF1 television.
In a sign of alarm in Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso also attacked financial "speculators," saying the EU executive could move quickly to regulate them further if they acted irresponsibly.
Merkel, whose foot-dragging many analysts have blamed for aggravating the Greek crisis, told parliament the success of the rescue package would determine "nothing less than the future of Europe — and with it the future of Germany in Europe."
Without the aid, a chain reaction threatened to destabilize the European and international financial system, she said in a debate on approving Berlin’s 22 billion-euro contribution to the emergency loans for Athens, despite German public hostility.
One leading investment banker drew parallels with a past financial crisis which swept through Asia in the late 1990s.
"In some respects what is going on in southern Europe right now feels a lot like what went on in southeastern Asia in summer 1997," said Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.
The IMF ended up bailing out Thailand, where the crisis began, along with Indonesia and South Korea. "It’s difficult to stop the bleeding with a package directed at only one country," Roach said at a bankers’ event in Frankfurt.
BATTERED BANKS
Battered Greek bank shares shed a further 5 percent on news of the deaths, which follow three months of sporadic strikes and street protests.
Shares in Spain and Portugal, seen as the next two targets for investors testing the European Union’s will and ability to defend weak euro zone economies, fell for a second day. Lisbon had to pay more than four times its previous yield to sell six-month treasury bills on Wednesday.
The euro hit a 14-month low of $1.2801 and the cost of insuring Spanish and Portuguese debt against default spiked to euro lifetime highs.
Moody’s Investors Service put its credit rating for Portugal on a three-month review, and an analyst at the agency said that a downgrade was now likely.
"We have sent a signal that it is possible," Anthony Thomas of Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group told Reuters. "Statistically, there is a very strong likelihood that if we put it on a review for downgrade then we follow through with a downgrade."
Seeking to calm markets, Rehn said Spain did not need an aid mechanism of the kind created for Greece and he was not going to propose one. But he also said the deficit levels of all EU states were "worryingly high."
Despite official denials, many economists are convinced Greece will have to restructure its debt, making private investors take a share of the pain.
Concern that the Greek government will be unable to make all the budget cuts agreed with the EU and IMF because of social unrest is one of the drivers of the euro zone turmoil.
Papandreou presented an austerity bill to parliament on Tuesday which foresees 30 billion euros in new savings. It is expected to pass, but the conservative opposition vowed to vote against it, dooming hopes of a political consensus.
Analysts were watching Wednesday’s protest for pointers to the degree of mobilization of Greece’s powerful trade unions.
So far, demonstrations have been limited to tens of thousands but anger is mounting, with opinion polls showing ordinary Greeks believe they are paying the price of the crisis while tax evasion and corruption go unpunished.
"With our strike today we are continuing our fight against harsh and unfair measures that hit workers, pensioners and the unemployed," Yannios Panagopoulos, president of private sector union GSEE, told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Harry Papachristou and Lefteris Papadimas in Athens, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels and Carolyn Cohn in London, Edward Taylor in Frankfurt, Crispian Balmer in Paris, Andrei Khalip in Lisbon, Eva Lamppu in Helsinki; writing by Paul Taylor/David Stamp; editing byPhilippa Fletcher)
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Brainwashed Guantanamo Stooge Now Leading Afghan Taliban
5 05 2010[The man now leading the Afghan Taliban is former Guantanamo Inmate, prisoner ISN #008. This puts the new Taliban in the same category as Abdullah Mehsud, Baitullah's cousin, the original creator of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), who was also a graduate of Guantanamo's torture/brainwashing programs. This means that a CIA agent leads them. Perhaps this was the real reason for the Quetta Shura arrests--to remove every leader between a CIA mole and Mullah Omar? Nothing is as it seems, or as it should be, in America's war of terror.]
By Anand Gopal, Correspondent April 30, 2010 at 2:00 pm EDT The Christian Science Monitor
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan — In the days leading up to the launch of a major US military offensive in the Afghan town of Marjah in February, Taliban commanders in the area received a surprise visit.
It was from a charismatic man of medium build, intense eyes, and a knack for fiery oratory. In a brief meeting, he rallied the troops, discussed strategy, and disappeared into the night.
Most of the commanders present there in late January had not met him before. But in southern Afghanistan he needed no introduction. He was Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, the man who some Western officials and insurgents say is now the day-to-day leader of the Taliban.
“He has tremendous power now,” says a tribal elder in the southern province of Helmand, who knows Mr. Zakir and met with him recently. “He can design military strategy and appoint or fire” Taliban shadow governors.
As the United States escalates its troop numbers to try to roll back a raging insurgency, combating the efforts of Taliban leaders like Zakir will be key. Zakir is known for his battlefield abilities as an organizer, motivator, and tactician. He wields tremendous influence in southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the insurgency and the site of another major offensive set for this summer.
A former Guantánamo detainee, he is believed now to be a deputy to reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, a position he assumed upon Pakistan’s arrest of the movement’s former No. 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a number of other Taliban leaders.
Pakistani intelligence agents arrested Zakir and a close associate earlier this year in early February, according to Western and Afghan government sources, but both were later released without explanation.
Zakir’s rise to power was pieced together through more than a dozen interviews in Kabul and Lashkar Gah with his current and former associates, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Raised in prosperity
Hailing from a well-off Pashtun family with roots in southern Helmand Province, Zakir grew up in the northern province of Jowzjan. His associates say he is in his early 40s, making him too young to have joined the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1970s and ’80s as his older brother had done.
Instead, like many boys at the time, he was sent to study in madrasas, or religious schools, near the Afghan-Pakistani border that taught an extreme version of Islam. He attended such a school in Quetta, Pakistan, then a hotbed for radicalism. There he met an influential figure who would later become a major Taliban commander and his partner in arms, Mullah Abdul Raouf.
By 1997, the pair had returned to Afghanistan and joined the Taliban, the movement of religious students who had swept into power on a platform of law and order and a puritanical, often violent interpretation of Islam.
Mullah Raouf became the commander for the Taliban’s Central Corps, and Zakir was one of his key deputies.
Zakir commanded an important reserve brigade of more than 1,000 soldiers that operated out of the current presidential palace. It was heavily involved in the fight against the opposing Northern Alliance, an assemblage of warlords led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated just before the 9/11 attacks.
Born Abdul Qayyum, his nom de guerre on the Taliban’s walkie-talkie network was “Zakir,” a name that stuck as stories of his military prowess grew. He became known as a skilled tactician, more than once rescuing surrounded Taliban troops using audacious moves behind enemy lines.
“He was a legendary battlefield commander,” recalls Mullah Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander and now a member of parliament. “His fame brought him to the attention of Mullah Omar, and the two became close over time.”
Zakir’s troops, known as the Helmandi Brigade, inspired fear across the country. The brigade acted as a Taliban special forces of sorts, used for daring raids and to keep the conventional troops focused on the demands of battle.
“They were true believers,” says Gul Wazir, a Taliban commander who has been fighting since that era. “Sometimes when the fighting became too difficult and people on the front lines wanted to flee, they would capture us and bring us back to the front lines.”
Driven by ideology
His associates paint a picture of Zakir as a highly ideological fighter, in contrast to some Taliban who may have fought for material gain.
“He was very well versed in sharia [Islamic] law and always followed the orders of his leaders and ulema,” or religious clerics, says a tribal elder and former Taliban commander who fought alongside Zakir.
Zakir was injured numerous times, including in one attack in the late 1990s where a bomb killed four of his close friends and injured him severely. This sparked a period of depression that would resurface in the coming years. At times, he would become suddenly morose and withdrawn mid-conversation. Occasionally, he even dropped out of all activities.
But he repeatedly returned to the battlefield, leading Taliban troops in the north – until one day in late 2001.
Amid the US bombing campaign meant to topple the Taliban government, close to 10 besieged top Taliban commanders met in secret. These included Zakir, Raouf, and Mullah Dadullah, a Taliban leader of legendary brutality. According to two people present at the meeting, all but Dadullah voted to surrender, possibly out of the expectation that they would be released and allowed to go home.
Time in Guantánamo
Zakir and Raouf gave themselves up to the forces of Gen. Rashid Dostum, who turned them over to the Americans, who sent them to Guantánamo.
Under American control, the pair pretended to be low-ranking conscripts – Zakir gave US interrogators a false name, “Ghulam Rasoul.” He portrayed himself as a country boy who went to Kabul “just to see the city” before being pressed into service on the front lines, according to a summary of transcripts from his review board at Guantánamo, which became public as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request.
“I have seen pictures that Afghanistan is being rebuilt, and I am happy that Americans are rebuilding my country,” he told a review panel sometime between 2004 and 2007. “I see no reason why I should be against the Americans.”
Raouf kept up a similar facade and told interrogators that he merely served food to the Taliban.
“If I did not cooperate with them they were going to confiscate my land,” he said in a hearing in 2005. “All I want to do is go there and work on my land.”
The two got a chance to do just that when they were transferred to Afghan custody in late 2007. They were released in early 2008 – possibly due to pressure from tribal elders, Afghan officials say – and quickly reestablished links with their former comrades. Zakir took command of military affairs in southern Afghanistan, Raouf in the north.
Wrote Taliban rule book
Zakir soon became identified with the Taliban’s more pragmatic wing, which was mindful of public opinion. He helped draft a Taliban rule book that urged fighters to limit civilian casualties. He headed a committee that received complaints about abusive local commanders and removed them if necessary. He mediated between factions and with the Pakistani Taliban when tensions arose.
Taliban fighters and Afghan officials say that, unlike most leading Taliban figures, Zakir regularly crosses into Afghanistan to meet with field commanders, inspiring loyalty among the rank and file and winning him credibility within the leadership.
“He has a high standing in the jihadi community,” says Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “This makes him a powerful force.”
According to Western and Afghan sources, the arrests of Zakir and Raouf by Pakistani intelligence agents in late January were part of a wider crackdown on Taliban leadership. But Afghan officials and Taliban members agree the pair were later released. The arrest and release may have been the work of different arms of the Pakistani government, or the leaders may have been temporarily held to put pressure on the insurgent movement. But Pakistani officials have declined to comment on the issue.
‘Wants to win at any cost’
Many experts consider Zakir to be one of the important figures in the insurgency, though it is unlikely that his power will reach that of his predecessor, Mullah Baradar.
“Even though Zakir is at the top, there will be a more collective leadership in place, instead of one person making all the decisions like before,” says an Afghan intelligence official.
Officials are now waiting to see if he brings changes to the group’s direction. Baradar is widely rumored to have been open to negotiations with the Afghan government, but Zakir’s associates say that he is much less likely to have such an orientation.
“I don’t think he will want to negotiate,” says the tribal elder from Helmand who says he visited Zakir recently in Quetta. “He wants to win this war at any cost. That’s what makes him dangerous.”
Qayyum Zakir: the Afghanistan Taliban’s rising mastermind
Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, a former Guantánamo detainee, is considered to be the day-to-day leader of the Afghanistan Taliban insurgency. A look at his rise to power based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former associates.By Anand Gopal, Correspondent April 30, 2010 at 2:00 pm EDT The Christian Science Monitor
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan — In the days leading up to the launch of a major US military offensive in the Afghan town of Marjah in February, Taliban commanders in the area received a surprise visit.
It was from a charismatic man of medium build, intense eyes, and a knack for fiery oratory. In a brief meeting, he rallied the troops, discussed strategy, and disappeared into the night.
Most of the commanders present there in late January had not met him before. But in southern Afghanistan he needed no introduction. He was Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, the man who some Western officials and insurgents say is now the day-to-day leader of the Taliban.
“He has tremendous power now,” says a tribal elder in the southern province of Helmand, who knows Mr. Zakir and met with him recently. “He can design military strategy and appoint or fire” Taliban shadow governors.
As the United States escalates its troop numbers to try to roll back a raging insurgency, combating the efforts of Taliban leaders like Zakir will be key. Zakir is known for his battlefield abilities as an organizer, motivator, and tactician. He wields tremendous influence in southern Afghanistan, the heartland of the insurgency and the site of another major offensive set for this summer.
A former Guantánamo detainee, he is believed now to be a deputy to reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar, a position he assumed upon Pakistan’s arrest of the movement’s former No. 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a number of other Taliban leaders.
Pakistani intelligence agents arrested Zakir and a close associate earlier this year in early February, according to Western and Afghan government sources, but both were later released without explanation.
Zakir’s rise to power was pieced together through more than a dozen interviews in Kabul and Lashkar Gah with his current and former associates, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Raised in prosperity
Hailing from a well-off Pashtun family with roots in southern Helmand Province, Zakir grew up in the northern province of Jowzjan. His associates say he is in his early 40s, making him too young to have joined the anti-Soviet resistance of the 1970s and ’80s as his older brother had done.
Instead, like many boys at the time, he was sent to study in madrasas, or religious schools, near the Afghan-Pakistani border that taught an extreme version of Islam. He attended such a school in Quetta, Pakistan, then a hotbed for radicalism. There he met an influential figure who would later become a major Taliban commander and his partner in arms, Mullah Abdul Raouf.
By 1997, the pair had returned to Afghanistan and joined the Taliban, the movement of religious students who had swept into power on a platform of law and order and a puritanical, often violent interpretation of Islam.
Mullah Raouf became the commander for the Taliban’s Central Corps, and Zakir was one of his key deputies.
Zakir commanded an important reserve brigade of more than 1,000 soldiers that operated out of the current presidential palace. It was heavily involved in the fight against the opposing Northern Alliance, an assemblage of warlords led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated just before the 9/11 attacks.
Born Abdul Qayyum, his nom de guerre on the Taliban’s walkie-talkie network was “Zakir,” a name that stuck as stories of his military prowess grew. He became known as a skilled tactician, more than once rescuing surrounded Taliban troops using audacious moves behind enemy lines.
“He was a legendary battlefield commander,” recalls Mullah Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander and now a member of parliament. “His fame brought him to the attention of Mullah Omar, and the two became close over time.”
Zakir’s troops, known as the Helmandi Brigade, inspired fear across the country. The brigade acted as a Taliban special forces of sorts, used for daring raids and to keep the conventional troops focused on the demands of battle.
“They were true believers,” says Gul Wazir, a Taliban commander who has been fighting since that era. “Sometimes when the fighting became too difficult and people on the front lines wanted to flee, they would capture us and bring us back to the front lines.”
Driven by ideology
His associates paint a picture of Zakir as a highly ideological fighter, in contrast to some Taliban who may have fought for material gain.
“He was very well versed in sharia [Islamic] law and always followed the orders of his leaders and ulema,” or religious clerics, says a tribal elder and former Taliban commander who fought alongside Zakir.
Zakir was injured numerous times, including in one attack in the late 1990s where a bomb killed four of his close friends and injured him severely. This sparked a period of depression that would resurface in the coming years. At times, he would become suddenly morose and withdrawn mid-conversation. Occasionally, he even dropped out of all activities.
But he repeatedly returned to the battlefield, leading Taliban troops in the north – until one day in late 2001.
Amid the US bombing campaign meant to topple the Taliban government, close to 10 besieged top Taliban commanders met in secret. These included Zakir, Raouf, and Mullah Dadullah, a Taliban leader of legendary brutality. According to two people present at the meeting, all but Dadullah voted to surrender, possibly out of the expectation that they would be released and allowed to go home.
Time in Guantánamo
Zakir and Raouf gave themselves up to the forces of Gen. Rashid Dostum, who turned them over to the Americans, who sent them to Guantánamo.
Under American control, the pair pretended to be low-ranking conscripts – Zakir gave US interrogators a false name, “Ghulam Rasoul.” He portrayed himself as a country boy who went to Kabul “just to see the city” before being pressed into service on the front lines, according to a summary of transcripts from his review board at Guantánamo, which became public as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request.
“I have seen pictures that Afghanistan is being rebuilt, and I am happy that Americans are rebuilding my country,” he told a review panel sometime between 2004 and 2007. “I see no reason why I should be against the Americans.”
Raouf kept up a similar facade and told interrogators that he merely served food to the Taliban.
“If I did not cooperate with them they were going to confiscate my land,” he said in a hearing in 2005. “All I want to do is go there and work on my land.”
The two got a chance to do just that when they were transferred to Afghan custody in late 2007. They were released in early 2008 – possibly due to pressure from tribal elders, Afghan officials say – and quickly reestablished links with their former comrades. Zakir took command of military affairs in southern Afghanistan, Raouf in the north.
Wrote Taliban rule book
Zakir soon became identified with the Taliban’s more pragmatic wing, which was mindful of public opinion. He helped draft a Taliban rule book that urged fighters to limit civilian casualties. He headed a committee that received complaints about abusive local commanders and removed them if necessary. He mediated between factions and with the Pakistani Taliban when tensions arose.
Taliban fighters and Afghan officials say that, unlike most leading Taliban figures, Zakir regularly crosses into Afghanistan to meet with field commanders, inspiring loyalty among the rank and file and winning him credibility within the leadership.
“He has a high standing in the jihadi community,” says Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “This makes him a powerful force.”
According to Western and Afghan sources, the arrests of Zakir and Raouf by Pakistani intelligence agents in late January were part of a wider crackdown on Taliban leadership. But Afghan officials and Taliban members agree the pair were later released. The arrest and release may have been the work of different arms of the Pakistani government, or the leaders may have been temporarily held to put pressure on the insurgent movement. But Pakistani officials have declined to comment on the issue.
‘Wants to win at any cost’
Many experts consider Zakir to be one of the important figures in the insurgency, though it is unlikely that his power will reach that of his predecessor, Mullah Baradar.
“Even though Zakir is at the top, there will be a more collective leadership in place, instead of one person making all the decisions like before,” says an Afghan intelligence official.
Officials are now waiting to see if he brings changes to the group’s direction. Baradar is widely rumored to have been open to negotiations with the Afghan government, but Zakir’s associates say that he is much less likely to have such an orientation.
“I don’t think he will want to negotiate,” says the tribal elder from Helmand who says he visited Zakir recently in Quetta. “He wants to win this war at any cost. That’s what makes him dangerous.”
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Tags: state terrorism
Categories : UnIslamic "Islamists", image of the beast
Patraeus Predicts “Horrific” Reactions By Militants to Upcoming Battle for Kandahar
5 05 2010Petraeus warns Kandahar of violent summer ahead
By Ismail Sameem – Fri Apr 30, 12:47 pm ETKANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The chief of U.S. Central Command warned Kandahar residents Friday of a violent summer ahead, predicting “horrific actions” by insurgents as his troops try to drive the Taliban from the southern Afghan city.
U.S. forces are massing on the outskirts of the southern city for the biggest military offensive of the nearly nine-year-old war, in the hope of turning the tide against a strengthening Taliban insurgency.
The Taliban have responded over the last few weeks with a campaign of bomb attacks, assassinations and suicide raids. The city’s worsening security prompted the United Nations to shut its Kandahar office and withdraw foreign staff this week.
General David Petraeus, who as head of U.S. Central Command is responsible for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, acknowledged security had deteriorated in the city, and said it was likely to get worse before it gets better.
“The enemy is going to take horrific actions to disrupt the progress that Afghan and coalition civilian and military elements are working so hard to achieve,” Petraeus told Kandahar journalists at a news conference in the city.
“There have been tough moments here in Kandahar in recent weeks. That is well known. And we know that there will be more tough moments in the weeks and months ahead,” said Petraeus, who commanded U.S. troops during the 2007 “surge” in Baghdad.
“As we learned in Iraq, as we have re-learned in Afghanistan, when you fight to take away the momentum and the sanctuaries and safe havens of the enemy, the enemy fights back.
“And that can mean difficult and tough fights. But that is something that is necessary, because the mission here in Afghanistan is of extraordinary importance to the Afghan people, to the region and to the world,” he said.
SPIRITUAL HOME OF TALIBAN
Kandahar was the spiritual capital of the Taliban movement when it ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001. Petraeus said the September 11, 2001 attacks were planned in the city.
The upcoming offensive will involve at least 23,000 NATO troops and members of the Afghan security forces. U.S. and Canadian troops have already begun “shaping operations” in rural districts around Kandahar, and will begin moving into urban areas after additional U.S. forces arrive in the next few weeks.
Washington calls the offensive the cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s “surge” strategy in Afghanistan to turn the tide this year after years in which the Taliban have made rapid gains.
The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has increased by 4,000-5,000 a month during Obama’s presidency, a process which will end abruptly in August. By that time there will be 100,000 U.S. troops, up from just 32,000 when Obama took power.
The Kandahar operation will be one of the last to take advantage of that surge in troop strength. After that, U.S. troop levels will remain steady for a year, until Washington begins to withdraw in mid-2011.
Thousands of additional U.S. troops have already entered rural districts of Kandahar since the middle of the last year. Petraeus said they had made gains, although he acknowledged that areas remain under Taliban control.
“The shaping operations, the preparatory operations have been ongoing already for some months,” Petraeus said. “As the substantial additional force that’s flowing in (arrives) over the course of the next couple of months, the intensity of security operations will increase accordingly.
“None of this will be easy. As I said, the enemy will fight back,” he said. “Our experience in Iraq was it got harder before it got easier.”
(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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Trauma-Induced Genetic Changes Found In PTSD
5 05 2010Trauma-induced changes in genes could cause post-traumatic stress disorder
Washington, DC: Traumatic experiences “biologically embed” themselves in select genes, subsequently alter their functions and lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a study has revealed.Conducted by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the study is the first large scale investigation to search for trauma-induced changes in the genes of people with PTSD.
“Our findings suggest a new biological model of PTSD in which alteration of genes, induced by a traumatic event, changes a person’s stress response and leads to the disorder,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, principal investigator of the study.
“Identification of the biologic underpinnings of PTSD will be crucial for developing appropriate psychological and/or pharmacological interventions, particularly in the wake of an increasing number of military veterans returning home following recent wars worldwide,” he added.
Previous studies have found that lifetime experiences may alter the activity of specific genes by changing their methylation patterns.
Methylated genes are generally inactive, while unmethylated genes are generally active.
In the new study, DNA samples were obtained from participants in the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study (DNHS), a longitudinal epidemiologic study investigating PTSD and other mental disorders in the city of Detroit.
The researchers analysed the methylation patterns of over 14,000 genes from blood samples taken from 100 Detroit residents, 23 of whom suffer from PTSD.
The analysis found that participants with PTSD had six to seven times more unmethylated genes than unaffected participants, and most of the unmethylated genes were involved in the immune system.
The observed methylation changes in the immune system genes were reflected in the PTSD participants’ immune systems— levels of antibodies to a herpes virus were high in PTSD patients, indicative of a compromised immune system.
While people who experience severe trauma will exhibit a normal stress response, in PTSD, the stress response system becomes deregulated and chronically overactive causing compromised immune functioning.
PTSD has long been linked to increased risk of numerous physical health problems, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The study suggests why PTSD is so strongly associated with physical health problems, trauma exposure causes epigenetic changes in immune system genes and thus, compromised immune functioning putting individuals at risk for a host of disorders.
“Our findings show that PTSD may be associated with epigenetic changes in immune-system genes. If this is the case, these clusters could provide clues to our understanding of how a traumatic event changes gene expression, thus altering immune function and resulting in other possible physiologic alterations,” said Galea.
The findings are published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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Uranium Ball or Cobalt Pencils Responsible for Mumbai Scrapworker Death
5 05 2010[We finally have an answer about that spherical 5kg. piece of uranium,
--It wasn't uranium, it was cobalt.
It wasn't a "ball," it was 16 "pencils."
It wasn't stolen by a night watchmen, it was auctioned to a scrap dealer.
The Navi Mumbai Police crime branch described it as a "five-kg Uranium-238 ball."
A senior scientist of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) described it to Times of India as a "black, dome-shaped structure of the seized depleted uranium."
It's a real shame about that mysterious fire at the BARC nuclear facility in the lab which was allegedly testing the radioactive material to see if it was uranium or something else. Now anybody could safely call the stuff "cobalt pencils" and no one could contest it.]
Mumbai In a major relief for Delhi residents, all the missing cobalt pencils auctioned to a scrap dealer by Delhi University have been recovered, a month after eight people were exposed to radiation in the national capital’s Mayapuri area.
The National Radiation Emergency Response team of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) recovered 16 cobalt pencils from a Gamma cell which was scattered in a scrap yard in Mayapuri, exposing eight persons to radiation. One of them had died later.
BARC sources said that while four pencils were recovered intact, others were found scattered in pieces as they were dismantled in the scrap yard. Some were recovered even outside Delhi.
“The operation of highly radioactive cobalt sources was completed last night and all material has been handed over to Narora Atomic Power station,” the sources said.
“Each of the pencils had 7 pieces inside. We have recovered all the 112 pieces and sent them in sealed flasks to Narora,” the sources said.
The Gamma cell was auctioned by the Delhi University’s Chemistry Department to a scrap dealer leading to radiation leak in Mayapuri.
“Many of these pieces were hidden in the scrap among nuts and bolts and we had a tough time tracing the sources,” the sources said.
The source search, identification andrecovery operation of the Mayapuri scrap to make it free from “orphan sources” (unaccounted sources to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) began on April 7.
The operation was carried out by Emergency response teams of BARC, Nuclear PowerCorporation and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board experts who have experience in nuclear reactor operations.
Support was provided by National Disaster Response force of National Disaster Management authority and Mayapuri police teams.
--It wasn't uranium, it was cobalt.It wasn't a "ball," it was 16 "pencils."
It wasn't stolen by a night watchmen, it was auctioned to a scrap dealer.
The Navi Mumbai Police crime branch described it as a "five-kg Uranium-238 ball."
A senior scientist of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) described it to Times of India as a "black, dome-shaped structure of the seized depleted uranium."
It's a real shame about that mysterious fire at the BARC nuclear facility in the lab which was allegedly testing the radioactive material to see if it was uranium or something else. Now anybody could safely call the stuff "cobalt pencils" and no one could contest it.]
Radiation leak: BARC recovers all missing cobalt pencils
Expressindia
ISTMumbai In a major relief for Delhi residents, all the missing cobalt pencils auctioned to a scrap dealer by Delhi University have been recovered, a month after eight people were exposed to radiation in the national capital’s Mayapuri area.
The National Radiation Emergency Response team of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) recovered 16 cobalt pencils from a Gamma cell which was scattered in a scrap yard in Mayapuri, exposing eight persons to radiation. One of them had died later.
BARC sources said that while four pencils were recovered intact, others were found scattered in pieces as they were dismantled in the scrap yard. Some were recovered even outside Delhi.
“The operation of highly radioactive cobalt sources was completed last night and all material has been handed over to Narora Atomic Power station,” the sources said.
“Each of the pencils had 7 pieces inside. We have recovered all the 112 pieces and sent them in sealed flasks to Narora,” the sources said.
The Gamma cell was auctioned by the Delhi University’s Chemistry Department to a scrap dealer leading to radiation leak in Mayapuri.
“Many of these pieces were hidden in the scrap among nuts and bolts and we had a tough time tracing the sources,” the sources said.
The source search, identification andrecovery operation of the Mayapuri scrap to make it free from “orphan sources” (unaccounted sources to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) began on April 7.
The operation was carried out by Emergency response teams of BARC, Nuclear PowerCorporation and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board experts who have experience in nuclear reactor operations.
Support was provided by National Disaster Response force of National Disaster Management authority and Mayapuri police teams.
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Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS or rTMS)
5 05 2010 Neurostar TMS TherapyNeuronetics, Inc. is a privately held medical device company focused on developing non-invasive therapies for psychiatric and neurological disorders using MRI-strength magnetic field pulses. We are the first and only company to have a non-systemic and non-invasive depression treatment cleared by the FDA for patients who have not benefited from prior antidepressant treatment. Based in Malvern, PA, we are the leader in the development of TMS Therapy (transcranial magnetic stimulation), a non-invasive form of neuromodulation.Incorporated in 2003, we began by licensing a revolutionary patented coil design from Emory University. Using this new, more efficient coil, our first TMS Therapy research units were built and used to complete the largest clinical trial ever conducted (23 international sites) evaluating TMS Therapy® in the treatment of major depression. Since completing clinical trials, our experienced Product Development group has continued to refine our early research device to develop a high quality, efficient, user friendly commercial unit – the NeuroStar TMS Therapy® system. In October of 2008, the NeuroStar TMS Therapy system received FDA clearancefor the treatment of major depressive disorder in patients who have failed to receive benefit from prior antidepressant therapy.* Our goal moving forward is to partner with healthcare professionals by providing them the best products and services possible. We are committed to continuous product improvement and to developing new and innovative solutions to meet our customers’ needs. By providing these tools, we can help healthcare professionals achieve their ultimate goal of effectively treating the patients they serve. * NeuroStar TMS Therapy® is indicated for the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in adult patients who have failed to achieve satisfactory improvement from one prior antidepressant medication at or above the minimal effective dose and duration in the current episode. |
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Non-Invasive Therapeutic Electromagnetic Mind-Control
5 05 2010Depression ‘treatable by electromagnetic therapy’
WASHINGTON: Patients suffering from depression may find relief from treatments using electromagnetic stimulation, offering a possible alternative to mood-altering medications, a new study found.
The research, which was released on Monday, tested 190 patients who had previously failed to respond to antidepressant drugs.
Patients were given at least three weeks of magnetic stimulation. Scientists found that the treatment led to remissions for 14 percent of them, and that most remained in remission for several months.
The treatment, known as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) offers future hope of a non-drug treatment for depression sufferers, although researchers said additional studies are needed.
“This study should help settle the debate about whether rTMS works for depression,” said Mark George of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who led the research team.
“We can now follow up clues suggesting ways to improve its effectiveness, and hopefully further develop a potential new class of stimulation treatments for other brain disorders.”
The treatment aims to jump-start the brain’s mood-regulating circuitry by jolting the top left front section with an electromagnetic coil emitting 3,000 pulses over a 37-minute session.
Researchers said the treatments can be safely administered in a doctor’s office with few side effects, unlike more invasive brain stimulation treatments, such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
The US National Institute of Mental Health-funded research showed that although the treatment “has not yet lived up to early hopes that it might replace more invasive therapies, this study suggests that the treatment may be effective in at least some treatment-resistant patients,” center director Thomas Insel said.
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President of Turkmenistan’s Economic Strategy–(In His Own Words)
5 05 2010 Economic strategy of Turkmenistan: Relying on the people, for the sake of the people |
The article by President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov will be published in the forthcoming May issue of “Turkmenistan” magazine. Turkmenistan.ru online newspaper reproduces the article in full with the consent of the author
I I am deeply convinced: if we set down the true aim and go to it by a carefully calculated route, a success imminent. Independent and neutral Turkmenistan confirms it above-said by the practice of its development, which has received qualitatively new acceleration in recent years. The country, as a fantastic giant, strides through barriers and difficulties, carrying the energy and optimism of the people.
But let’s put allegories aside: the reality of these efforts deserves looking at from the most intent and scrupulous point of view. The world is put before a choice of further way and intense search of the new optimal model of development, including a recovery from a global economic crisis, and Turkmenistan being involved in this process, has declared itself as an equal player and partner, which is following basic three conditions, demanded by the world community – reliability, openness and safety.
Since the first day as head of this country the most important task has been the formation of the Purpose that is capable to unite and inspire the nation in achieving new horizons of independence. These horizons were dictated exclusively by internal problems of young statehood but by new calls of time which have sharply risen before the developed and developing economy, before mature and young democracies, Turkmenistan should integrate into a new world system to coordinate and continue internal development proceeding from the enormous potential of the country, its advantageous geo-strategic position, political system of permanent neutrality and necessity of spiritual self-actualization of the nation dating thousands of years back with its culture, and leave an appreciable trace in the world civilization.
I have realized well: whatever problems put forward overtime, it would not be possible to solve it without them idea of uniting the nation. Without that, in order to start the belt of energy of the nation, it needs to revive the gene of creation inherent to it. So our door was knocked, as it was called by the journalists, an epoch of new Revival, the name itself served as a key to solve the problems of a new century. All was subject to revival: spirit, traditions, old and new experience, goals and problems, methods and means, in short, all that is expressed by the capacious modern concept “innovation”.
Along with that it was required to define accurately the state strategy as the mechanism for realization of the national idea, instrument of diversification of economy and creation of its competitive advantages in a world market of division of labour. “The state – for the person” – proclaims Turkmenistan concluding this extremely briefly under the universal form. As a matter of fact, an appealing modern idea of social development through involvement in this process of the human personality without which any national idea will sag as a badly tensed rope over a mountain precipice.
Even if we search for the main secret of our confident progression, then it is definitely in the sphere of refraction of new realities and secular traditions of the people exactly at that point where they have converged in political and economic calculation of the state.
The belief in creative potential of the nation forces us to build this strategy simultaneously both in key positions, and on flanks, not missing anything – neither big nor small, neither main nor minor, neither long nor momentary demanding decision now and today.
There was an issue to effectively adjust the public management without missing anything from that which should work on the end result that is on the person who consumes the product of his own labour but reproducing this product at a new level of knowledge and quality, living in high grade of life, creating a family, bringing up children, getting access to education and culture, in a word, creating values, above all standing in spiritual hierarchy of the people.
Such statement of the issue has demanded its attaching in the constitution. In the new edition of the Organic Law of Turkmenistan a human being is proclaimed as the highest value of the society and it has predetermined that all the further steps related to the issues of the creation of civil society, providing to each person deeply motivated and interested relation to their rights and duties. Thus, modern elective democracy has found for itself healthy ground in congenial democracy of the Turkmen people, the democracy which has prepared perception of values of modern civilized development.
Certainly, Turkmen democracy is still young, it should get stronger and rise on its feet, but those steps which are undertaken on the maintenance of genuine democracy, origin of the very civil society as a state partner, testify to the verified trajectory of movement in a direction of progress and human development.
Soaking up as a sponge, the most advanced world experience, combining, as it is considered to be, a combination of circumstances and orientation to success, Turkmenistan proves to itself first, then to the others that the true values of the modern society are not in the bowels of the earth but in the people, in their knowledge, professional and human return. From here, the combination of circumstances or strictly speaking, diversification pours out into the system, structured approach to manufacture of a cumulative national product – both raw and export focused, and also its distribution with the account of “the human factor”. Thus, the preference is given to the model which is not overtaking but to the postindustrial development, the strategy which has offered new formula of development, expressed in a proportional parity of national and global institutions, the market capital and a product, the role of state and a private sector. In short, building the economic model, Turkmenistan assigns primary importance to the protection of national interest by optimal occurrence of its economy in the world economy.
II
Once our ancestors, having brought to perfection the ability to live in harmony with nature and use its filigree gifts perfected their vital tools which helped them masterfully cope with all their work in their native land, to create material masterpieces, take very active participation in the functioning of the Great Silk Road, in short, to solve the problems of the century adequately.
In our century our tasks have complicated thousandfold and the reasons are of great variety. These are scientific, technical growth and technological breakthrough caused by it, and the new movement of the world caused by new interests and possibilities of the civilization. This is a global problem of the security born by the new challenges and threats to mankind. In our case study, obliging us enormous energy resources and overcoming the essential historical break which negatively reflected the motivation of people to productive work.
Dividing thesis that the culture and economy are always national and state structure, cultural institutions, cultural traditions are also included in the understanding about economy. I adhere to the conclusion followed from here that to transform of any economy, especially during the transition stage, a human measurement should be given. What does it mean? It means that none of the reforms declared to society can be carried out without the conscious participation of the people and, of course, their support and social protection.
Diligence is the characteristic feature of our nation and the diligence motivated, stipulated by the cast of a soul and by all the factors of the capacity of the environment. In due time, the nation showed wonders of ingenuity adapting the environment they inhabited to reproduce material produced by rational approaches executed, and at the same time the spiritual and moral principles. Like other people conducting the history from the moment of origin of a human civilization, the Turkmen people have succeeded in the creation of their own social and cultural models which are fixed till now in the institute of a family and spiritual traditions.
The practice of the revival has demanded not the mechanical carry-over of these traditions onto the new soil but creation of principally new conditions for their reproduction by modeling of their own economy with all its natural and geographical, social and psychological aspects. Having faced with the problems of self-determination in the conditions of globalization we have seen additional self-realization possibilities for ourselves through the variety of the world and regionalization of the relations.
Our internal reforms, touching upon practically all industrial, social and humanitarian spheres, have been added with the active foreign policy and external economic strategy directed on the maximum participation of the country in the affairs of the world community. Our Neutrality has become not only an effective tool of international policy, but also as the effective impulse on regional and global space of the world.
Work at home, in the country has begun with the definition of priorities which have laid down in a basis of all strategic programmes on putting the country on the international level of development. We proceeded and the state branch and national programmes make essential impact on the structure of industrial goods and services providing them more conformity to the changed public requirements.
The main difficulty consisted in optimizing the standards of quality in respect to all programmes where and at what level they would carry out – in capital and in regions, in health care and education, in the industry and in transport field, in construction and in villages. Having begun reforms from the most remote regions in the west of the country in the town Esenguly which possesses rich on stocks and a variety of natural resources, moden etrap (town) with its corresponding infrastructure we have defined lath height to ourselves and all people and to hold the business of our national honour.
There was no ploughed field of activity in front of us and it demanded not machinery but people. The people, capable to realize all planned programmes and make serious structural changes in the economy, and intensify them, improve a control system and managing methods. In a different way, there was a problem of reproduction of cultural-professional level of the country which is capable to make an impulse to become the developed state with a high standard of living, education and professional culture of the overwhelming majority of the population.
The modern economic ideas state that up-grade starts when the economic movement is coordinated with the values of that culture. Having proclaimed the main value of the person, we started looking for the basic reserve of the production in the human factor as in cumulative national ability of people to realize economic strategy of the state.
In turn, achievement of qualitative level of the human factor has demanded appropriate social structures which in the developed state is provided at the expense of the real sector of the economy with its new scientific, technical and technological basis.
The programme of radical reform of education including academic, higher, professional, technical, comprehensive schools was derived, not casually, as the number one programme.
Like in the schools, kindergartens of the entire country are also equipped with computer classes and modern training programmes. Professional personnel are required in the country capable of being responsible for the destiny of the nation, to lead them further along this complicated world. Opening new institutions of higher education and departments, we prepare future specialists both in our country and in foreign countries where hundreds of students annually go to study and their number will constantly increase.
Reestablishing institutions for postgraduate studies and doctoral candidates with High certification committee on seven directions, we pursue the aim to provide all-round preparation of scientific experts proceeding from a complex issue of reform of native science, and its transformation into real productive forces.
We want to teach our new generation not only learning lives and provide education but also to develop them physically and spiritually, as sound people. I would say that this is one of the important issues of the government. Our ancestors took care of their health as the one most valuable thing which is given by the Almighty and established on unique system, generally speaking, on maintenance of their healthy way of life where, along with a balanced diet physical training of children and youth provided by innumerable sets of games invented by the people and sports contests.
For a healthy way of life we prepared a thoroughly realizing nation-wide programme “Health” and creating corresponding infrastructure, beginning from the modern medical centres and ending with children’s resorts and sport schools.
Within the framework of the programme “Health” the system of protection of motherhood and childhood, preventive medicine, institution of family doctors have received huge state support.
We have inherited including aesthetic views the highest spiritual culture from our ancestors. Being able to work with a clear conscience, our people could also have a rest adequately, putting in all holidays competence and optimism of soul. Today we see our task in that that powerful constructive process to be sustained by the spiritual emancipation of the people and the material basis should be supported by various forms of the encouragement, including measures on development of professional art and arrangement of national competitions, festivals and reviews on revealing national talents.
It is clear that solving of social issues whether it is culture, health care or housing, demands much money. Accordingly social structure should have the industrial component supported by the well-elaborated social-economic policy.
In the aggregate this is our national model and the target of which is to create developed socially-focused market economy of the mixed type, gradual and stage-by-stage formation of highly effective system with the developed public sector, effective entrepreneurship and modern market infrastructure, the effective macroeconomic regulation providing social guarantees to all levels of population and focusing all economic subjects on achievement of high end results.
Our purposes can be stated brieflys follows: “Democratic market reforms – full sufficiency to each family – the strong state”.
III
The rates of the reforms convince us that we are on the correct path. The entire country is in the building woods, covered by a network of communications and the gas pipelines, one of which has reached already China, becoming a modern symbol of the Great Silk Road. Moreover, it broke all records of extent and became the standard of regional infrastructure having passed on the territory of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and initiating the whole network of super manufactures on refining, distillation and gas storage.
The basis of the industry in the real sector of our economy forms fuel-energy complex (FEC) experiencing complete modernization. There is active development of the Turkmen shelf of the Caspian Sea where treaty provisions share out products and work with the biggest world companies in the sphere of extraction of energy resources. In addition to a gas pipeline Turkmenistan-China, almost at the same time a Turkmenistan-Iran additional gas pipeline was launched.
A wide range of works are carried out on the intensification of constructions, establishment of competitive national construction complex, enlarging its material and technical base including on the account of development of local manufacture on production of construction materials.
A dwelling house, including elite apartments, which changed the architectural look of Ashgabat beyond recognition, is erected in every corner of the country. Ashgabat scratches the skies with its white marble new buildings. As I have just mentioned above modern children’s pre-school establishments, educational and specialized schools, higher educational institutions, medical centers and hospitals furnished with the state-of-the-art equipment, sports schools and even Olympic towns, hippodromes, theatres, Culture Palaces, museums, libraries and many others are built in the capital and regions of the country.
Intensification of construction promoted a jump of volume of value added gross year-on-year. Thus in 2008 these volumes increased 3 times, in 2009 – 2.9 times.
Recently the cement, carbamide, kaolin and metallurgical plants have been put into operation in accordance with the principle of economy diversification and intensification of investment activity in the country. A new start was given to a totally new sector – mining. Construction of textile complexes is in full swing. In whole the modernization of this sector made it possible to worthily compete with its output at the world market. Gas turbine power plants, food industry enterprises and many other objects, which have turned the country into a giant construction site, are erected all over the country.
Development of the “Avaza” tourist zone on the ecologically pure coast of the Caspean Sea is carried out at an accelerated pace. Objects erected on this site are to compete with the world class resorts and this site is definitely to be created in the very near future raising the industry of recreation and tourism to a worthy level.
In accordance with this task an up-to-date complex of air-terminal is erected in the city of Turkmenbashy and radical reconstruction of the sea port is also envisaged there. As a whole, within the years of independence there has been created a contemporary transport and communication infrastructure in the country. Recently Tejen-Serahs-Meshhed, Ashgabat-Karakums-Dashoguz, Turkmenabat-Atamurat rail-lines have been laid which possess the access to foreign countries. At present the construction of new railway line Uzen (Kazahstan) – Bereket – Etrek (Turkmenistan) – Gorgan (Iran) with further access to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean has already been launched. Atamurat-Kerkechi Railway Bridge has been put into operation which will give an opportunity to develop economic relations in Central Asian region and bordering states.
Domestic highways of our country are adjusted in accordance with international standards. Total length of highways from west to east and north to south make up 1.7 thousand kilometers.
Rebuilding of a village was our prior concern. Taking measures on the development of rural economy and agro-industrial complex as a whole enabled us to meet the major domestic demand in food at the expense of own resources of the country. At present only 5 percent of the total volume of imports is the share of the food supply and this figure has the tendency to systematic decrease. Just for comparison: in 2008 this index almost approached 9 percent.
Large complexes, farms and peasant unions are created in the country as a result of development of state-private partnership. Considerable successes have been gained in poultry farming; in the near future its products will completely match the country population’s demands in it. A task has been set to found a firm basis got the development of other branches of livestock farming as well as fishery in the very near future.
Unique bioclimatic potential and sufficient human resources, given the successful solution of the issue of irrigation water supply, will give the opportunity to the massive planting of fruits, vegetable, cucurbitaceous, berry and nut in the country and guarantee their wide export. Development of the subtropical zone for cultivation of olives, pomegranates, figs, dates, table and sultana variety of grapes a promising future.
Competitiveness of this production in world markets is undoubtedly ensured by its high quality and ecological guarantees.
We have particular views on the further development of cotton-growing, especially cultivation of high-quality sorts of the fine-fibered cotton.
Every plant growing on the generous Turkmen land should be increased by the measures of rational efforts of people on the fields and relevant concern of the Government, that is the way we try to do, bearing in mind the issues of logistics of a village, including the delivery of agricultural machinery from the best world manufacturers, supply of high-quality fertilizers to farmers and tenants, regulation of economic-monetary relations with a view to promote material interest of manufacturers as a result of their work.
Our principal trump in the cumulative solution of this problem is the water. From all eternity the Turkmens have always valued it as the most invaluable riches, appraising its each drop as a grain of gold. Our ancestors have created unique irrigation system, having brought to perfection the kyariz method of irrigation. Today, based upon national traditions to carry the things you start through to their logical end, we have set a mission to solve the issue of water in a complex way – to introduce the fallow land in crop rotation and maintain ecologic security in the region. The Turkmen lake “Altyn Asyr”, which has already stretched out for hundreds of hectares of land in the centre of Karakum deserts, will serve exactly for this important purpose.
The launching of the second stage of the man-made sea in one of the greatest deserts of the planet will allow us to cope with the solution of the urgent problem of the present – the collecting and processing of drainage water in one place with a view of overcoming of their negative ecological influence to the development of irrigated cropping.
In a word, everything been and being created on our ancient land, on the one hand, will be to support its progress for achievement of a qualitative standard of living of the people, and on the other – to serve the basis for uninterrupted work of the mechanism of social protection of the population and relevant distribution of the national GDP, founded on the modern institutional base of the state-market regulation. Now the strategy of social and economic development of the country until 2030 is being worked out updating the impact influence of the world financial crisis to this process.
Meanwhile this crisis has not caused in phasing out the production, the compelled delays, reduction of workplaces or delays in salary payment. Social privileges in use of gas, the electric power, water, salt and automobile fuel free of charge and other state privileges like in the issues of housing is in full swing in the country. In the field of public health the list of free medical services is strictly observed.
The Government considers taking measures to increase employment of the population, preservation and creation of workplaces, development of services as its major task. With these purposes dozens of new enterprises are constructed annually, especially in rural areas, small and medium cities which promote the decrease of internal migration of the population.
Wages, pensions, welfare payments and grants are constantly raised in the country, in which the process of minimizing the index of consumer prices essentially levels the dynamics of growth of nominal and real incomes of the population. Payment of wages and other incomes is carried out in strict conformity with target dates.
Stable growth of incomes of the population is also expected in the future, which will overtake the general dynamics of the development of the country for the purpose of expansion of internal demand. Thus the population incomes will depend not only on wage levels, but also on equity.
IV
I would like to make a special emphasis on the following: “Turkmenistan has entered a phase of economic reforms while the world economic crisis has faced a great number of problems connected with the maintenance of balance in labour market and the capital. As is known the global crisis was preceded by financial crisis in the course of which, after all, there have taken place structural disproportions between financial and credit-and-monetary sphere, on the one hand, and real sector, on the other.
So to a definite extent we have appeared in a role of pupils who profit by the mistakes of the world and, maybe, its main mistake is to attach more power to the role of the market as the regulator of social demand and offer. Besides, the market mechanism cannot provide sufficient investment in the human capital, i.e. in primary and secondary education, healthcare, culture, sports.
Coincidence of our own way of an optimal mode of development with the joint efforts of the world community on overcoming the consequences of crisis has become our advantage which has caused acquisition of sovereignty by the economy on the basis of the modern institutionalization, which is based on both rational estimation (calculation) and many factors giving a freedom in choosing of institutes, friendly to economic development.
Running forward I note that this chosen course has passed a serious test of time so that the potential of the modern Turkmenistan made it possible to minimize the influence of the crisis to the national economy. According to calculations of authoritative international organizations it has lightly reflected the dynamics of economic development of our country.
Balanced state regulation with the purpose of taking advantage of all financial and political opportunities of the state including effective structure of capital, high rate of investments to basic funds and human capital have become the fundamental factor in this matter.
Successful realization of anti-crisis measures, maximization of their influence on economy are only possible with the provision of the necessary standard of macroeconomic stability, guaranteeing functionality of major sectors of economy, including such parameters like economic growth, population employment, dynamics of overall price level, exchange rate, export and import, capital movement both to and out of the country, stipulated by necessity of analyzing total revenue, the deficiency of which causes the main obstacle in the way of growth of the total gain.
The Government of Turkmenistan tries hard to take into account all factors of the crisis while elaborating and realizing anti-crisis measures and it is proceeded from the necessity of preserving the proper volume of cumulative financial reserves for the solution of both anti-crisis issues and that of the strategic development of state economy for the long-term outlook.
As of today dynamic microeconomic policy provides the maintenance of significant pace of GDP growth gained at the expense of the realization of strategic programs of long-term development of the country, radical sectoral shifts: diversification and modernization of industrial and natural-material GDP structure. Within the last 3 years the average annual tempo of its development exceeded 109 percent, 17 % of which is the share of the construction sector.
In whole, considerable part of the GDP falls on industrial sector. In 2008-2009 fiscal years this index gained almost 72 percent. Prevailing figures of the industrial sector are conditioned by modern priorities of development of the national economy, since the industry meets the internal and external demand: agriculture supplies the internal market with its products, construction draws considerable investments.
Real economic potential of the country grows at the expense of the increase of manufacturing resources, improving quality, and perfection of application mechanisms. Meanwhile basic components of the economic development of Turkmenistan is the long-term investment called into money deposits with the view to gaining income and achieving positive social effect.
Hence we attach special attention to the creation of a favorable investment climate, diversification of investment sources, acceleration of major projects and programme realization, prior investment to the social and engineer infrastructure.
Today in Turkmenistan there has been created an economic system with the sufficiently solid investment potential, which is significantly important in conditions of the world financial crisis. Economy of the country is the surplus on its aspects which promotes to constantly grow “long-term credits”, accumulated both in national and foreign currencies. Correlation of investment volume to GDP growth of the state in 2008 equaled to 32%, in 2009 – more than 47 %, where one third of the total volume is the share of the foreign investments drawn by dynamic tempos.
In whole it is worth mentioning that at the investment point the country is sufficiently attractive since it does possess with great reserves in both fuel and energy and non-recourse sectors of economy combined with the existing of yet created foremost production potential, manpower resources, steadily strengthening legislative base, as well as the net of the infrastructure branches for successful business, all together creating favorable conditions for further steady economic growth.
Private sector also has its priorities which attach strategic character to the state and private partnership in the development and modernization of socio-economic structure of the state. Initiatives on the private sector issues are called to significantly promote changes for the better, introduction of innovations, effectiveness of capital and differentiation of labour.
There has been set a task that by 2020 to increase the share of the private sector in GDP growth of the country by 70 percent (with no account taken of the fuel and energy complex). To realize this task it is necessary not only to widen the existing range of partnership on a number of specters of contracts extended by the Government to private companies but also to attach to this partnership more close organizational and legislative linkage concerning programs of progressive development of the country.
Concrete steps are made in this direction. Law of Turkmenistan “On the state support to the small and medium entrepreneurship” approved in 2009 is directed to the development of small and medium enterprises. A program on state support to business is being elaborated in compliance with the document. The practice of crediting entrepreneurial structures for 10 years at 5 percent interest per annum for purchasing main facilities as well as crediting for1 year for gaining floating funds are widely applied.
By promoting private sector development, State pursues the aim of increasing its contribution to formation of GDP and corresponding increase of incomes of the population. Business itself will be responsible for many social directions.
Monetary accommodation of the financial sector is one of the significant directions of the macroeconomic balance of Turkmenistan.
In the last years the stability of purchasing-power parity of the national monetary unit is provided in the country, amount of credit resources are intensively increased, liquidity of bank assets is supported, the course on financial support of priorities on real sector of economy developments remains. Unification policy of the national currency was achieved in May, 2008 and denomination of manat is also successfully done since January, 2009. As a result of the undertaken cardinal measures financial and economic condition of enterprises has essentially improved, the movement of money improved, availability of credit resources is provided. In the overall country exchange points are available; even so the rate of manta showing its stability hadn’t changed in two years.
The monetary policy of the country is aimed also at showdown of inflationary processes, stabilization of consumer prices. In 2009 the rate of inflation made 100,1 percent which is an absolute minimum for all period of calculations of the given indicator.
At the aim preservation of stability of consumer prices at the domestic market and also due to interest of local commodity producers in increasing export of goods, customs taxes rates are considerably lowered and on some vital goods they are cancelled all together.
Mortgage crediting is developing very rapidly on favorable terms with a view of improvement of security of the population housing habitation. Mortgage is loaned for 30 years under 1% annual interest rate with a grace period till 5 years in which the interest for the credit is paid, instead of the basic debt under the credit. The enterprises and the organizations are authorized to give 50% of discount from the cost of accommodation for the employees who have taken the mortgage credit. Nowadays mortgage credit has been intensively extended in the countryside, small cities and regional provinces.
An integral part of the financial policy is the formation of the qualitative tax-budgetary system acting as one of the conditions of active state regulation by economic processes. Level of tax loading on national economy for the recent years makes about 23 percent to GDP. The budget of Turkmenistan being profitable has a social orientation and the profitable part grows with the advancing rates in relation to expenses. Proficiency means accumulation in the Stabilization fund of the country which is established for the protection of the national economy from the negative influence of external factors and is directed on realization of priority government programmes and introduction of innovations.
The existing fiscal mode promotes positive dynamics of development of subjects of economic activity and stability of social environment. The taxation provides considerable benefits for priority directions of the development of economy.
As I have already noted globalization and transition processes to market relations considerably change a role and state functions. At present time reforms in the political sphere and information sector are initiated in Turkmenistan, and the legislation is updated and the institutional basis is improved. In the modern democratic state a basis to all is the acting legislative base guaranteeing equal possibilities to all its participants. In this direction many things have been done: functions of single legislative authority are transferred to Mejlis, its structure is expanded; many rules were updated and adopted, first and foremost, the Constitution of the country; reference points to multi-party system formation are planned.
It is demonstratively visible that institutional reforms touched upon economic block, construction complex and large scale national projects and entrepreneurship sector. New agencies, committees and unions called to promote efficiency of the realization of priority programmes and projects of modern Turkmenistan have been established. The Institution of strategic planning and economic development of Turkmenistan, Institute of state and law at the President of Turkmenistan, Public service academy at the President of Turkmenistan were established and started their work where preparation and retraining of executive personnel for all sectors of the economy is carried out.
Possibilities of mass media are extended; population access to a global network of internet is improved.
As a whole, institutional reform is directed on as much as possible, effectively to use all financial and political possibilities of the state for realization of the national economic strategy, to provide system and assuming close coordination of economic, socio-political and cultural factors, the approach to solving of management tasks.
V
“How the time is for everybody, so the time is for each one” – says the Turkmen proverb, containing the wisdom of the world. One will not say more accurately about interconnection of the world, as well as about, saying in modern language, what is the consistence of human capital. Today it is the main factor of economical growth or permanent progressive development of the economy.
World process of advanced investment in human capital is taking place in comparison with materially capital investments. This tendency caused the need for the factor of global security as the main condition of the whole development of human civilization, extending the world economy as economical unity of countries of the modern world, functioning of which is connected with existence of the world labor division, world system of transport and communication, and a world market of goods.
Building its economic strategy, also means Turkmenistan’s means under it also tasks of participation in the creation of a global model of security, because it sees in it guarantees of national economical security as basis of its economical sovereignty. From this arrives our approach to security as the subject of unique matter, because not one of its elements, whether it is political, energy, food, ecological, could exist separately, without interdependence from each other and without acting as indivisible in the geopolitical context.
The position that we take in this issue, strong and unchangeable, because it is based on the neutral status of Turkmenistan acknowledged by the world community. This stability of principles of nonmilitary, politically-diplomatic peacemaking under the aegis of the UN attaches to our neutrality the qualities of flexible and strong mechanism for realization of security tasks where our interests and where they are connected with interests of regional and world order. So, acknowledging most vulnerable parts of the global economy the system of international energy supplies and making corresponding initiative, we, securing support of the UN, the continuously realize this initiative into reality, seeing the final aim in the development of internationally-legal document concerning the transit of energy resources taking into account proposals of interested countries and international organizations.
Being the participant to main international conventions and agreements, Turkmenistan makes initiative in the sphere of disarmament problems in the region of Central Asia and the Caspian sea, in the issues of rational use of water resources of the region to secure food security, in the work of recovery of Afghanistan and recovery of its economy, and also for setting close cooperation with structures of the UN in the sphere of protecting of motherhood and childhood, protecting the rights of the disabled, refugees and so on. In solving these and other problems we see real role for the UN Regional Centre for preventive diplomacy in Central Asia that is located in Ashgabat and support more wider and subjected attraction of the Centre to the efforts of the world community undertaken in all these directions.
Turkmenistan supports regulations of the Final document of the conference of the UN on global financial-economic crisis and its consequences for development and considers actual proposals that were stated on it concerning the quick reform of the world financial institutes – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Turkmenistan intends to widen its participation in the realization of projects and programs, realized in the framework of the UN and its structures, first of all, UNDP, ECE, ESKAPO. Development of international ties of our country will continue as in the framework of already signed agreements, as well by setting new international contacts. It is enough to say, that in practice 109 international programs realized in the sphere of healthcare, protection of environment, education, culture and in number of other areas.
Supporting the further development of international law, aimed to promote organization of the normal economic relations between states, Turkmenistan, on its part, guided by organizational-institutional basis of foreign economic relation, that help to successfully realize in practice the policy of “open doors”. This policy favorably affected direct foreign investment in development of priority-driven sectors of the national economy.
We widely use such form of attracting foreign investment as agreements on production share, that is widely used in international practice. So, every year increase the share of oil and gas, produced by joint or foreign companies “Petronas” (Malaysia), “Dragon Oil” (), “Wintershall” (Germany), “Maersk Oil” (Denmark), “ONGC” (India), “Buried Hill” (Canada). For 2009 the unit weight of oil, produced by joint or foreign companies, was 41 percent, and gas – about 6 percent. Close cooperation with leading American companies “John Deer”, “Keis”, “Exxon Mobil”, “Shevron”, “Eurasia Group “, “Boing” and others taking place.
It was widely spread construction by foreign companies of various facilities of industrial and social-cultural field. For the period of 1 January 2010 in application of capital investment in the country 117 foreign companies from 25 countries of the world took part. For the same date the number of constructions, realized by foreign companies was 530 units with construction budget 11,7 billion US dollars.
In the whole world one of most fast growing areas of foreign economic activities, being a very important source of foreign income is international tourism. Beginning with the implementation of the National tourist zone of “Awaza” we thorouthly estimated its economical feasibility and effectiveness and only after this we come to decision to introduce there the mechanism of a free economic zone, acknowledged by the world community, on the basis of tax, financial and legal conditions and the creation of necessary industrial infrastructure. Complex measures, adopted for the development of “Awaza”, envisage a favorable regime for foreign and local investors, businessmen of the tourist industry, including simplification of the visa regime for tourists, tax preferences (during construction and during 15 years after introducing facilities into operation of infrastructure and tourism investors are free from paying tax for property, for income and tax for added value, custom and exchange taxes, from payment for services for licensing and certification and, for rent of land.
I mentioned already the development of all kinds of domestic transport, in which we see, besides providing a direct way to the world, it is also a serious source of foreign trade income for the state, creates possibilities of decreasing income for import, and increase expert of income, and extra income from tourism.
The intensive and pragmatic foreign economic policy of Turkmenistan allows increasing year by year capacity of foreign trade turnover, average annual rates of growth of which for previous years are on sufficiently high level. During a number of years the positive balance of trade of Turkmenistan is high, favorably reflected on the balance of payment of the country.
The main priority in foreign economic policy of the state – gradual transforming of Turkmenistan from the category of the country-exporter of raw materials into country-producer and exporter of ready high technological goods. And by various means the stimulated import of leading technologies, devices and tools. For the last years the share of production of industrial-technological purpose in the structure of import was 70-80 percent.
Leading trade partners of Turkmenistan are such countries like Russia, China, Turkey, USA, UAE, Italy, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France, Iran and other countries. Production of Turkmenistan properly presented in world markets, including numbers natural gas, oil and oil products, electroenergy, polypropylene, liquefied gas, cotton-fiber, cotton yarn, materials, agricultural production and products of processing and others.
In the country annually dozens of international conferences and exhibitions are taking place that promote further development of foreign economic relations and creation of joint ventures. At the initiative of Turkmenistan authoritative investment forums in foreign countries are held. Ashgabat is becoming the centre of attraction of scientific and cultural ideas, where regularly gather representatives of intellectual and creative elite from many countries of the world.
For further effective integration of the economy of Turkmenistan into the world economic system the country needs proper diversified and modernized industrial potential, developed transport and communication arteries, high quality market infrastructure, economical and legal guarantees, conditions for attracting wide-range investments, and stability of social and political systems. In all these directions continuous work is done and already good results were reached. But the world does not stay in one place and Turkmenistan needs more high speed development planned programs.
* * *
The world practice has proved that the right model of the development of the society is that which promotes the steady economic and political development of socially-oriented and socially-responsible types. The society has approached the recognition of national aims superior to the economics and individual material concerns (interests). All components of force of the modern community are concerned in building such a model and every component should realize its responsibility in this process.
The basic component of the model of development of Turkmenistan, the Epoch of New Revival is the social vector. Our potential and every opportunity, vector must be directed most to the achievement of the closest interrelation of economic and social factors of accelerated development. Boosting of huge investments in industrial and social spheres is conditioned on the endeavor of Turkmenistan to gain advanced parameters of development and be worthily ranked among developed countries of the world. Apart from the high-technological lifestyle of the economy, this is the worthy level of welfare of the people.
All reforms taking place in Turkmenistan are aimed at gaining exactly such goals, and economic opportunities only serve as instrument for their effective realization.
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov
President of Turkmenistan
But let’s put allegories aside: the reality of these efforts deserves looking at from the most intent and scrupulous point of view. The world is put before a choice of further way and intense search of the new optimal model of development, including a recovery from a global economic crisis, and Turkmenistan being involved in this process, has declared itself as an equal player and partner, which is following basic three conditions, demanded by the world community – reliability, openness and safety.
Since the first day as head of this country the most important task has been the formation of the Purpose that is capable to unite and inspire the nation in achieving new horizons of independence. These horizons were dictated exclusively by internal problems of young statehood but by new calls of time which have sharply risen before the developed and developing economy, before mature and young democracies, Turkmenistan should integrate into a new world system to coordinate and continue internal development proceeding from the enormous potential of the country, its advantageous geo-strategic position, political system of permanent neutrality and necessity of spiritual self-actualization of the nation dating thousands of years back with its culture, and leave an appreciable trace in the world civilization.
I have realized well: whatever problems put forward overtime, it would not be possible to solve it without them idea of uniting the nation. Without that, in order to start the belt of energy of the nation, it needs to revive the gene of creation inherent to it. So our door was knocked, as it was called by the journalists, an epoch of new Revival, the name itself served as a key to solve the problems of a new century. All was subject to revival: spirit, traditions, old and new experience, goals and problems, methods and means, in short, all that is expressed by the capacious modern concept “innovation”.
Along with that it was required to define accurately the state strategy as the mechanism for realization of the national idea, instrument of diversification of economy and creation of its competitive advantages in a world market of division of labour. “The state – for the person” – proclaims Turkmenistan concluding this extremely briefly under the universal form. As a matter of fact, an appealing modern idea of social development through involvement in this process of the human personality without which any national idea will sag as a badly tensed rope over a mountain precipice.
Even if we search for the main secret of our confident progression, then it is definitely in the sphere of refraction of new realities and secular traditions of the people exactly at that point where they have converged in political and economic calculation of the state.
The belief in creative potential of the nation forces us to build this strategy simultaneously both in key positions, and on flanks, not missing anything – neither big nor small, neither main nor minor, neither long nor momentary demanding decision now and today.
There was an issue to effectively adjust the public management without missing anything from that which should work on the end result that is on the person who consumes the product of his own labour but reproducing this product at a new level of knowledge and quality, living in high grade of life, creating a family, bringing up children, getting access to education and culture, in a word, creating values, above all standing in spiritual hierarchy of the people.
Such statement of the issue has demanded its attaching in the constitution. In the new edition of the Organic Law of Turkmenistan a human being is proclaimed as the highest value of the society and it has predetermined that all the further steps related to the issues of the creation of civil society, providing to each person deeply motivated and interested relation to their rights and duties. Thus, modern elective democracy has found for itself healthy ground in congenial democracy of the Turkmen people, the democracy which has prepared perception of values of modern civilized development.
Certainly, Turkmen democracy is still young, it should get stronger and rise on its feet, but those steps which are undertaken on the maintenance of genuine democracy, origin of the very civil society as a state partner, testify to the verified trajectory of movement in a direction of progress and human development.
Soaking up as a sponge, the most advanced world experience, combining, as it is considered to be, a combination of circumstances and orientation to success, Turkmenistan proves to itself first, then to the others that the true values of the modern society are not in the bowels of the earth but in the people, in their knowledge, professional and human return. From here, the combination of circumstances or strictly speaking, diversification pours out into the system, structured approach to manufacture of a cumulative national product – both raw and export focused, and also its distribution with the account of “the human factor”. Thus, the preference is given to the model which is not overtaking but to the postindustrial development, the strategy which has offered new formula of development, expressed in a proportional parity of national and global institutions, the market capital and a product, the role of state and a private sector. In short, building the economic model, Turkmenistan assigns primary importance to the protection of national interest by optimal occurrence of its economy in the world economy.
II
Once our ancestors, having brought to perfection the ability to live in harmony with nature and use its filigree gifts perfected their vital tools which helped them masterfully cope with all their work in their native land, to create material masterpieces, take very active participation in the functioning of the Great Silk Road, in short, to solve the problems of the century adequately.
In our century our tasks have complicated thousandfold and the reasons are of great variety. These are scientific, technical growth and technological breakthrough caused by it, and the new movement of the world caused by new interests and possibilities of the civilization. This is a global problem of the security born by the new challenges and threats to mankind. In our case study, obliging us enormous energy resources and overcoming the essential historical break which negatively reflected the motivation of people to productive work.
Dividing thesis that the culture and economy are always national and state structure, cultural institutions, cultural traditions are also included in the understanding about economy. I adhere to the conclusion followed from here that to transform of any economy, especially during the transition stage, a human measurement should be given. What does it mean? It means that none of the reforms declared to society can be carried out without the conscious participation of the people and, of course, their support and social protection.
Diligence is the characteristic feature of our nation and the diligence motivated, stipulated by the cast of a soul and by all the factors of the capacity of the environment. In due time, the nation showed wonders of ingenuity adapting the environment they inhabited to reproduce material produced by rational approaches executed, and at the same time the spiritual and moral principles. Like other people conducting the history from the moment of origin of a human civilization, the Turkmen people have succeeded in the creation of their own social and cultural models which are fixed till now in the institute of a family and spiritual traditions.
The practice of the revival has demanded not the mechanical carry-over of these traditions onto the new soil but creation of principally new conditions for their reproduction by modeling of their own economy with all its natural and geographical, social and psychological aspects. Having faced with the problems of self-determination in the conditions of globalization we have seen additional self-realization possibilities for ourselves through the variety of the world and regionalization of the relations.
Our internal reforms, touching upon practically all industrial, social and humanitarian spheres, have been added with the active foreign policy and external economic strategy directed on the maximum participation of the country in the affairs of the world community. Our Neutrality has become not only an effective tool of international policy, but also as the effective impulse on regional and global space of the world.
Work at home, in the country has begun with the definition of priorities which have laid down in a basis of all strategic programmes on putting the country on the international level of development. We proceeded and the state branch and national programmes make essential impact on the structure of industrial goods and services providing them more conformity to the changed public requirements.
The main difficulty consisted in optimizing the standards of quality in respect to all programmes where and at what level they would carry out – in capital and in regions, in health care and education, in the industry and in transport field, in construction and in villages. Having begun reforms from the most remote regions in the west of the country in the town Esenguly which possesses rich on stocks and a variety of natural resources, moden etrap (town) with its corresponding infrastructure we have defined lath height to ourselves and all people and to hold the business of our national honour.
There was no ploughed field of activity in front of us and it demanded not machinery but people. The people, capable to realize all planned programmes and make serious structural changes in the economy, and intensify them, improve a control system and managing methods. In a different way, there was a problem of reproduction of cultural-professional level of the country which is capable to make an impulse to become the developed state with a high standard of living, education and professional culture of the overwhelming majority of the population.
The modern economic ideas state that up-grade starts when the economic movement is coordinated with the values of that culture. Having proclaimed the main value of the person, we started looking for the basic reserve of the production in the human factor as in cumulative national ability of people to realize economic strategy of the state.
In turn, achievement of qualitative level of the human factor has demanded appropriate social structures which in the developed state is provided at the expense of the real sector of the economy with its new scientific, technical and technological basis.
The programme of radical reform of education including academic, higher, professional, technical, comprehensive schools was derived, not casually, as the number one programme.
Like in the schools, kindergartens of the entire country are also equipped with computer classes and modern training programmes. Professional personnel are required in the country capable of being responsible for the destiny of the nation, to lead them further along this complicated world. Opening new institutions of higher education and departments, we prepare future specialists both in our country and in foreign countries where hundreds of students annually go to study and their number will constantly increase.
Reestablishing institutions for postgraduate studies and doctoral candidates with High certification committee on seven directions, we pursue the aim to provide all-round preparation of scientific experts proceeding from a complex issue of reform of native science, and its transformation into real productive forces.
We want to teach our new generation not only learning lives and provide education but also to develop them physically and spiritually, as sound people. I would say that this is one of the important issues of the government. Our ancestors took care of their health as the one most valuable thing which is given by the Almighty and established on unique system, generally speaking, on maintenance of their healthy way of life where, along with a balanced diet physical training of children and youth provided by innumerable sets of games invented by the people and sports contests.
For a healthy way of life we prepared a thoroughly realizing nation-wide programme “Health” and creating corresponding infrastructure, beginning from the modern medical centres and ending with children’s resorts and sport schools.
Within the framework of the programme “Health” the system of protection of motherhood and childhood, preventive medicine, institution of family doctors have received huge state support.
We have inherited including aesthetic views the highest spiritual culture from our ancestors. Being able to work with a clear conscience, our people could also have a rest adequately, putting in all holidays competence and optimism of soul. Today we see our task in that that powerful constructive process to be sustained by the spiritual emancipation of the people and the material basis should be supported by various forms of the encouragement, including measures on development of professional art and arrangement of national competitions, festivals and reviews on revealing national talents.
It is clear that solving of social issues whether it is culture, health care or housing, demands much money. Accordingly social structure should have the industrial component supported by the well-elaborated social-economic policy.
In the aggregate this is our national model and the target of which is to create developed socially-focused market economy of the mixed type, gradual and stage-by-stage formation of highly effective system with the developed public sector, effective entrepreneurship and modern market infrastructure, the effective macroeconomic regulation providing social guarantees to all levels of population and focusing all economic subjects on achievement of high end results.
Our purposes can be stated brieflys follows: “Democratic market reforms – full sufficiency to each family – the strong state”.
III
The rates of the reforms convince us that we are on the correct path. The entire country is in the building woods, covered by a network of communications and the gas pipelines, one of which has reached already China, becoming a modern symbol of the Great Silk Road. Moreover, it broke all records of extent and became the standard of regional infrastructure having passed on the territory of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and initiating the whole network of super manufactures on refining, distillation and gas storage.
The basis of the industry in the real sector of our economy forms fuel-energy complex (FEC) experiencing complete modernization. There is active development of the Turkmen shelf of the Caspian Sea where treaty provisions share out products and work with the biggest world companies in the sphere of extraction of energy resources. In addition to a gas pipeline Turkmenistan-China, almost at the same time a Turkmenistan-Iran additional gas pipeline was launched.
A wide range of works are carried out on the intensification of constructions, establishment of competitive national construction complex, enlarging its material and technical base including on the account of development of local manufacture on production of construction materials.
A dwelling house, including elite apartments, which changed the architectural look of Ashgabat beyond recognition, is erected in every corner of the country. Ashgabat scratches the skies with its white marble new buildings. As I have just mentioned above modern children’s pre-school establishments, educational and specialized schools, higher educational institutions, medical centers and hospitals furnished with the state-of-the-art equipment, sports schools and even Olympic towns, hippodromes, theatres, Culture Palaces, museums, libraries and many others are built in the capital and regions of the country.
Intensification of construction promoted a jump of volume of value added gross year-on-year. Thus in 2008 these volumes increased 3 times, in 2009 – 2.9 times.
Recently the cement, carbamide, kaolin and metallurgical plants have been put into operation in accordance with the principle of economy diversification and intensification of investment activity in the country. A new start was given to a totally new sector – mining. Construction of textile complexes is in full swing. In whole the modernization of this sector made it possible to worthily compete with its output at the world market. Gas turbine power plants, food industry enterprises and many other objects, which have turned the country into a giant construction site, are erected all over the country.
Development of the “Avaza” tourist zone on the ecologically pure coast of the Caspean Sea is carried out at an accelerated pace. Objects erected on this site are to compete with the world class resorts and this site is definitely to be created in the very near future raising the industry of recreation and tourism to a worthy level.
In accordance with this task an up-to-date complex of air-terminal is erected in the city of Turkmenbashy and radical reconstruction of the sea port is also envisaged there. As a whole, within the years of independence there has been created a contemporary transport and communication infrastructure in the country. Recently Tejen-Serahs-Meshhed, Ashgabat-Karakums-Dashoguz, Turkmenabat-Atamurat rail-lines have been laid which possess the access to foreign countries. At present the construction of new railway line Uzen (Kazahstan) – Bereket – Etrek (Turkmenistan) – Gorgan (Iran) with further access to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean has already been launched. Atamurat-Kerkechi Railway Bridge has been put into operation which will give an opportunity to develop economic relations in Central Asian region and bordering states.
Domestic highways of our country are adjusted in accordance with international standards. Total length of highways from west to east and north to south make up 1.7 thousand kilometers.
Rebuilding of a village was our prior concern. Taking measures on the development of rural economy and agro-industrial complex as a whole enabled us to meet the major domestic demand in food at the expense of own resources of the country. At present only 5 percent of the total volume of imports is the share of the food supply and this figure has the tendency to systematic decrease. Just for comparison: in 2008 this index almost approached 9 percent.
Large complexes, farms and peasant unions are created in the country as a result of development of state-private partnership. Considerable successes have been gained in poultry farming; in the near future its products will completely match the country population’s demands in it. A task has been set to found a firm basis got the development of other branches of livestock farming as well as fishery in the very near future.
Unique bioclimatic potential and sufficient human resources, given the successful solution of the issue of irrigation water supply, will give the opportunity to the massive planting of fruits, vegetable, cucurbitaceous, berry and nut in the country and guarantee their wide export. Development of the subtropical zone for cultivation of olives, pomegranates, figs, dates, table and sultana variety of grapes a promising future.
Competitiveness of this production in world markets is undoubtedly ensured by its high quality and ecological guarantees.
We have particular views on the further development of cotton-growing, especially cultivation of high-quality sorts of the fine-fibered cotton.
Every plant growing on the generous Turkmen land should be increased by the measures of rational efforts of people on the fields and relevant concern of the Government, that is the way we try to do, bearing in mind the issues of logistics of a village, including the delivery of agricultural machinery from the best world manufacturers, supply of high-quality fertilizers to farmers and tenants, regulation of economic-monetary relations with a view to promote material interest of manufacturers as a result of their work.
Our principal trump in the cumulative solution of this problem is the water. From all eternity the Turkmens have always valued it as the most invaluable riches, appraising its each drop as a grain of gold. Our ancestors have created unique irrigation system, having brought to perfection the kyariz method of irrigation. Today, based upon national traditions to carry the things you start through to their logical end, we have set a mission to solve the issue of water in a complex way – to introduce the fallow land in crop rotation and maintain ecologic security in the region. The Turkmen lake “Altyn Asyr”, which has already stretched out for hundreds of hectares of land in the centre of Karakum deserts, will serve exactly for this important purpose.
The launching of the second stage of the man-made sea in one of the greatest deserts of the planet will allow us to cope with the solution of the urgent problem of the present – the collecting and processing of drainage water in one place with a view of overcoming of their negative ecological influence to the development of irrigated cropping.
In a word, everything been and being created on our ancient land, on the one hand, will be to support its progress for achievement of a qualitative standard of living of the people, and on the other – to serve the basis for uninterrupted work of the mechanism of social protection of the population and relevant distribution of the national GDP, founded on the modern institutional base of the state-market regulation. Now the strategy of social and economic development of the country until 2030 is being worked out updating the impact influence of the world financial crisis to this process.
Meanwhile this crisis has not caused in phasing out the production, the compelled delays, reduction of workplaces or delays in salary payment. Social privileges in use of gas, the electric power, water, salt and automobile fuel free of charge and other state privileges like in the issues of housing is in full swing in the country. In the field of public health the list of free medical services is strictly observed.
The Government considers taking measures to increase employment of the population, preservation and creation of workplaces, development of services as its major task. With these purposes dozens of new enterprises are constructed annually, especially in rural areas, small and medium cities which promote the decrease of internal migration of the population.
Wages, pensions, welfare payments and grants are constantly raised in the country, in which the process of minimizing the index of consumer prices essentially levels the dynamics of growth of nominal and real incomes of the population. Payment of wages and other incomes is carried out in strict conformity with target dates.
Stable growth of incomes of the population is also expected in the future, which will overtake the general dynamics of the development of the country for the purpose of expansion of internal demand. Thus the population incomes will depend not only on wage levels, but also on equity.
IV
I would like to make a special emphasis on the following: “Turkmenistan has entered a phase of economic reforms while the world economic crisis has faced a great number of problems connected with the maintenance of balance in labour market and the capital. As is known the global crisis was preceded by financial crisis in the course of which, after all, there have taken place structural disproportions between financial and credit-and-monetary sphere, on the one hand, and real sector, on the other.
So to a definite extent we have appeared in a role of pupils who profit by the mistakes of the world and, maybe, its main mistake is to attach more power to the role of the market as the regulator of social demand and offer. Besides, the market mechanism cannot provide sufficient investment in the human capital, i.e. in primary and secondary education, healthcare, culture, sports.
Coincidence of our own way of an optimal mode of development with the joint efforts of the world community on overcoming the consequences of crisis has become our advantage which has caused acquisition of sovereignty by the economy on the basis of the modern institutionalization, which is based on both rational estimation (calculation) and many factors giving a freedom in choosing of institutes, friendly to economic development.
Running forward I note that this chosen course has passed a serious test of time so that the potential of the modern Turkmenistan made it possible to minimize the influence of the crisis to the national economy. According to calculations of authoritative international organizations it has lightly reflected the dynamics of economic development of our country.
Balanced state regulation with the purpose of taking advantage of all financial and political opportunities of the state including effective structure of capital, high rate of investments to basic funds and human capital have become the fundamental factor in this matter.
Successful realization of anti-crisis measures, maximization of their influence on economy are only possible with the provision of the necessary standard of macroeconomic stability, guaranteeing functionality of major sectors of economy, including such parameters like economic growth, population employment, dynamics of overall price level, exchange rate, export and import, capital movement both to and out of the country, stipulated by necessity of analyzing total revenue, the deficiency of which causes the main obstacle in the way of growth of the total gain.
The Government of Turkmenistan tries hard to take into account all factors of the crisis while elaborating and realizing anti-crisis measures and it is proceeded from the necessity of preserving the proper volume of cumulative financial reserves for the solution of both anti-crisis issues and that of the strategic development of state economy for the long-term outlook.
As of today dynamic microeconomic policy provides the maintenance of significant pace of GDP growth gained at the expense of the realization of strategic programs of long-term development of the country, radical sectoral shifts: diversification and modernization of industrial and natural-material GDP structure. Within the last 3 years the average annual tempo of its development exceeded 109 percent, 17 % of which is the share of the construction sector.
In whole, considerable part of the GDP falls on industrial sector. In 2008-2009 fiscal years this index gained almost 72 percent. Prevailing figures of the industrial sector are conditioned by modern priorities of development of the national economy, since the industry meets the internal and external demand: agriculture supplies the internal market with its products, construction draws considerable investments.
Real economic potential of the country grows at the expense of the increase of manufacturing resources, improving quality, and perfection of application mechanisms. Meanwhile basic components of the economic development of Turkmenistan is the long-term investment called into money deposits with the view to gaining income and achieving positive social effect.
Hence we attach special attention to the creation of a favorable investment climate, diversification of investment sources, acceleration of major projects and programme realization, prior investment to the social and engineer infrastructure.
Today in Turkmenistan there has been created an economic system with the sufficiently solid investment potential, which is significantly important in conditions of the world financial crisis. Economy of the country is the surplus on its aspects which promotes to constantly grow “long-term credits”, accumulated both in national and foreign currencies. Correlation of investment volume to GDP growth of the state in 2008 equaled to 32%, in 2009 – more than 47 %, where one third of the total volume is the share of the foreign investments drawn by dynamic tempos.
In whole it is worth mentioning that at the investment point the country is sufficiently attractive since it does possess with great reserves in both fuel and energy and non-recourse sectors of economy combined with the existing of yet created foremost production potential, manpower resources, steadily strengthening legislative base, as well as the net of the infrastructure branches for successful business, all together creating favorable conditions for further steady economic growth.
Private sector also has its priorities which attach strategic character to the state and private partnership in the development and modernization of socio-economic structure of the state. Initiatives on the private sector issues are called to significantly promote changes for the better, introduction of innovations, effectiveness of capital and differentiation of labour.
There has been set a task that by 2020 to increase the share of the private sector in GDP growth of the country by 70 percent (with no account taken of the fuel and energy complex). To realize this task it is necessary not only to widen the existing range of partnership on a number of specters of contracts extended by the Government to private companies but also to attach to this partnership more close organizational and legislative linkage concerning programs of progressive development of the country.
Concrete steps are made in this direction. Law of Turkmenistan “On the state support to the small and medium entrepreneurship” approved in 2009 is directed to the development of small and medium enterprises. A program on state support to business is being elaborated in compliance with the document. The practice of crediting entrepreneurial structures for 10 years at 5 percent interest per annum for purchasing main facilities as well as crediting for1 year for gaining floating funds are widely applied.
By promoting private sector development, State pursues the aim of increasing its contribution to formation of GDP and corresponding increase of incomes of the population. Business itself will be responsible for many social directions.
Monetary accommodation of the financial sector is one of the significant directions of the macroeconomic balance of Turkmenistan.
In the last years the stability of purchasing-power parity of the national monetary unit is provided in the country, amount of credit resources are intensively increased, liquidity of bank assets is supported, the course on financial support of priorities on real sector of economy developments remains. Unification policy of the national currency was achieved in May, 2008 and denomination of manat is also successfully done since January, 2009. As a result of the undertaken cardinal measures financial and economic condition of enterprises has essentially improved, the movement of money improved, availability of credit resources is provided. In the overall country exchange points are available; even so the rate of manta showing its stability hadn’t changed in two years.
The monetary policy of the country is aimed also at showdown of inflationary processes, stabilization of consumer prices. In 2009 the rate of inflation made 100,1 percent which is an absolute minimum for all period of calculations of the given indicator.
At the aim preservation of stability of consumer prices at the domestic market and also due to interest of local commodity producers in increasing export of goods, customs taxes rates are considerably lowered and on some vital goods they are cancelled all together.
Mortgage crediting is developing very rapidly on favorable terms with a view of improvement of security of the population housing habitation. Mortgage is loaned for 30 years under 1% annual interest rate with a grace period till 5 years in which the interest for the credit is paid, instead of the basic debt under the credit. The enterprises and the organizations are authorized to give 50% of discount from the cost of accommodation for the employees who have taken the mortgage credit. Nowadays mortgage credit has been intensively extended in the countryside, small cities and regional provinces.
An integral part of the financial policy is the formation of the qualitative tax-budgetary system acting as one of the conditions of active state regulation by economic processes. Level of tax loading on national economy for the recent years makes about 23 percent to GDP. The budget of Turkmenistan being profitable has a social orientation and the profitable part grows with the advancing rates in relation to expenses. Proficiency means accumulation in the Stabilization fund of the country which is established for the protection of the national economy from the negative influence of external factors and is directed on realization of priority government programmes and introduction of innovations.
The existing fiscal mode promotes positive dynamics of development of subjects of economic activity and stability of social environment. The taxation provides considerable benefits for priority directions of the development of economy.
As I have already noted globalization and transition processes to market relations considerably change a role and state functions. At present time reforms in the political sphere and information sector are initiated in Turkmenistan, and the legislation is updated and the institutional basis is improved. In the modern democratic state a basis to all is the acting legislative base guaranteeing equal possibilities to all its participants. In this direction many things have been done: functions of single legislative authority are transferred to Mejlis, its structure is expanded; many rules were updated and adopted, first and foremost, the Constitution of the country; reference points to multi-party system formation are planned.
It is demonstratively visible that institutional reforms touched upon economic block, construction complex and large scale national projects and entrepreneurship sector. New agencies, committees and unions called to promote efficiency of the realization of priority programmes and projects of modern Turkmenistan have been established. The Institution of strategic planning and economic development of Turkmenistan, Institute of state and law at the President of Turkmenistan, Public service academy at the President of Turkmenistan were established and started their work where preparation and retraining of executive personnel for all sectors of the economy is carried out.
Possibilities of mass media are extended; population access to a global network of internet is improved.
As a whole, institutional reform is directed on as much as possible, effectively to use all financial and political possibilities of the state for realization of the national economic strategy, to provide system and assuming close coordination of economic, socio-political and cultural factors, the approach to solving of management tasks.
V
“How the time is for everybody, so the time is for each one” – says the Turkmen proverb, containing the wisdom of the world. One will not say more accurately about interconnection of the world, as well as about, saying in modern language, what is the consistence of human capital. Today it is the main factor of economical growth or permanent progressive development of the economy.
World process of advanced investment in human capital is taking place in comparison with materially capital investments. This tendency caused the need for the factor of global security as the main condition of the whole development of human civilization, extending the world economy as economical unity of countries of the modern world, functioning of which is connected with existence of the world labor division, world system of transport and communication, and a world market of goods.
Building its economic strategy, also means Turkmenistan’s means under it also tasks of participation in the creation of a global model of security, because it sees in it guarantees of national economical security as basis of its economical sovereignty. From this arrives our approach to security as the subject of unique matter, because not one of its elements, whether it is political, energy, food, ecological, could exist separately, without interdependence from each other and without acting as indivisible in the geopolitical context.
The position that we take in this issue, strong and unchangeable, because it is based on the neutral status of Turkmenistan acknowledged by the world community. This stability of principles of nonmilitary, politically-diplomatic peacemaking under the aegis of the UN attaches to our neutrality the qualities of flexible and strong mechanism for realization of security tasks where our interests and where they are connected with interests of regional and world order. So, acknowledging most vulnerable parts of the global economy the system of international energy supplies and making corresponding initiative, we, securing support of the UN, the continuously realize this initiative into reality, seeing the final aim in the development of internationally-legal document concerning the transit of energy resources taking into account proposals of interested countries and international organizations.
Being the participant to main international conventions and agreements, Turkmenistan makes initiative in the sphere of disarmament problems in the region of Central Asia and the Caspian sea, in the issues of rational use of water resources of the region to secure food security, in the work of recovery of Afghanistan and recovery of its economy, and also for setting close cooperation with structures of the UN in the sphere of protecting of motherhood and childhood, protecting the rights of the disabled, refugees and so on. In solving these and other problems we see real role for the UN Regional Centre for preventive diplomacy in Central Asia that is located in Ashgabat and support more wider and subjected attraction of the Centre to the efforts of the world community undertaken in all these directions.
Turkmenistan supports regulations of the Final document of the conference of the UN on global financial-economic crisis and its consequences for development and considers actual proposals that were stated on it concerning the quick reform of the world financial institutes – the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Turkmenistan intends to widen its participation in the realization of projects and programs, realized in the framework of the UN and its structures, first of all, UNDP, ECE, ESKAPO. Development of international ties of our country will continue as in the framework of already signed agreements, as well by setting new international contacts. It is enough to say, that in practice 109 international programs realized in the sphere of healthcare, protection of environment, education, culture and in number of other areas.
Supporting the further development of international law, aimed to promote organization of the normal economic relations between states, Turkmenistan, on its part, guided by organizational-institutional basis of foreign economic relation, that help to successfully realize in practice the policy of “open doors”. This policy favorably affected direct foreign investment in development of priority-driven sectors of the national economy.
We widely use such form of attracting foreign investment as agreements on production share, that is widely used in international practice. So, every year increase the share of oil and gas, produced by joint or foreign companies “Petronas” (Malaysia), “Dragon Oil” (), “Wintershall” (Germany), “Maersk Oil” (Denmark), “ONGC” (India), “Buried Hill” (Canada). For 2009 the unit weight of oil, produced by joint or foreign companies, was 41 percent, and gas – about 6 percent. Close cooperation with leading American companies “John Deer”, “Keis”, “Exxon Mobil”, “Shevron”, “Eurasia Group “, “Boing” and others taking place.
It was widely spread construction by foreign companies of various facilities of industrial and social-cultural field. For the period of 1 January 2010 in application of capital investment in the country 117 foreign companies from 25 countries of the world took part. For the same date the number of constructions, realized by foreign companies was 530 units with construction budget 11,7 billion US dollars.
In the whole world one of most fast growing areas of foreign economic activities, being a very important source of foreign income is international tourism. Beginning with the implementation of the National tourist zone of “Awaza” we thorouthly estimated its economical feasibility and effectiveness and only after this we come to decision to introduce there the mechanism of a free economic zone, acknowledged by the world community, on the basis of tax, financial and legal conditions and the creation of necessary industrial infrastructure. Complex measures, adopted for the development of “Awaza”, envisage a favorable regime for foreign and local investors, businessmen of the tourist industry, including simplification of the visa regime for tourists, tax preferences (during construction and during 15 years after introducing facilities into operation of infrastructure and tourism investors are free from paying tax for property, for income and tax for added value, custom and exchange taxes, from payment for services for licensing and certification and, for rent of land.
I mentioned already the development of all kinds of domestic transport, in which we see, besides providing a direct way to the world, it is also a serious source of foreign trade income for the state, creates possibilities of decreasing income for import, and increase expert of income, and extra income from tourism.
The intensive and pragmatic foreign economic policy of Turkmenistan allows increasing year by year capacity of foreign trade turnover, average annual rates of growth of which for previous years are on sufficiently high level. During a number of years the positive balance of trade of Turkmenistan is high, favorably reflected on the balance of payment of the country.
The main priority in foreign economic policy of the state – gradual transforming of Turkmenistan from the category of the country-exporter of raw materials into country-producer and exporter of ready high technological goods. And by various means the stimulated import of leading technologies, devices and tools. For the last years the share of production of industrial-technological purpose in the structure of import was 70-80 percent.
Leading trade partners of Turkmenistan are such countries like Russia, China, Turkey, USA, UAE, Italy, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France, Iran and other countries. Production of Turkmenistan properly presented in world markets, including numbers natural gas, oil and oil products, electroenergy, polypropylene, liquefied gas, cotton-fiber, cotton yarn, materials, agricultural production and products of processing and others.
In the country annually dozens of international conferences and exhibitions are taking place that promote further development of foreign economic relations and creation of joint ventures. At the initiative of Turkmenistan authoritative investment forums in foreign countries are held. Ashgabat is becoming the centre of attraction of scientific and cultural ideas, where regularly gather representatives of intellectual and creative elite from many countries of the world.
For further effective integration of the economy of Turkmenistan into the world economic system the country needs proper diversified and modernized industrial potential, developed transport and communication arteries, high quality market infrastructure, economical and legal guarantees, conditions for attracting wide-range investments, and stability of social and political systems. In all these directions continuous work is done and already good results were reached. But the world does not stay in one place and Turkmenistan needs more high speed development planned programs.
* * *
The world practice has proved that the right model of the development of the society is that which promotes the steady economic and political development of socially-oriented and socially-responsible types. The society has approached the recognition of national aims superior to the economics and individual material concerns (interests). All components of force of the modern community are concerned in building such a model and every component should realize its responsibility in this process.
The basic component of the model of development of Turkmenistan, the Epoch of New Revival is the social vector. Our potential and every opportunity, vector must be directed most to the achievement of the closest interrelation of economic and social factors of accelerated development. Boosting of huge investments in industrial and social spheres is conditioned on the endeavor of Turkmenistan to gain advanced parameters of development and be worthily ranked among developed countries of the world. Apart from the high-technological lifestyle of the economy, this is the worthy level of welfare of the people.
All reforms taking place in Turkmenistan are aimed at gaining exactly such goals, and economic opportunities only serve as instrument for their effective realization.
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov
President of Turkmenistan
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“Junk Bond King” Makes a Move On Azerbaijan
5 05 2010 [Another American capitalist "entrepreneur," participating in the process of creating democratic-revolution; this one is led by "junk bond king," Michael Milken.
"Milken was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 as the result of an insider trading investigation. After a plea bargain, he pled guilty to six securities and reporting violations but was never convicted of racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison and permanently barred from the securities industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. After the presiding judge reduced his sentence for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and good behavior, he was released after less than two years."[5]
Milken is “a specialist in finance, information systems and operational research[from] Wharton (School of Economics).” “Operational Research” was the WWII psywar program of the American and British governments, which gave birth to the Tavistock Institute. Wharton was one of its affiliates. Wharton is infamous for its inclusion in the list of “Tavistock Institutions In The United States” given us by researcher Dr. John Coleman in his “Committee of 300.” For those who don’t know, the “300″ are allegedly the super-wealthy families who secretly rule the world. Tavistock, reportedly their central mind-control research center, provides the means to produce our “scientific dictatorship.” The actual instrument which provides the insiders the means to control a society’s behavior is called an “economic amplifier,” as described in another “conspiracy” document, called, “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.“ The Silent Weapon relies upon the science of “econometrics,” which was developed by the Wharton School, Milken’s alma mater.
So here we have an NGO, created by an active tool of the conspiracy who is extensively schooled in scientific techniques to control mankind’s behavior, and this organization is trying to get a piece of the action in Azerbaijan.
I smell another big rat!]
"Milken was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 as the result of an insider trading investigation. After a plea bargain, he pled guilty to six securities and reporting violations but was never convicted of racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison and permanently barred from the securities industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. After the presiding judge reduced his sentence for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and good behavior, he was released after less than two years."[5]
Milken is “a specialist in finance, information systems and operational research[from] Wharton (School of Economics).” “Operational Research” was the WWII psywar program of the American and British governments, which gave birth to the Tavistock Institute. Wharton was one of its affiliates. Wharton is infamous for its inclusion in the list of “Tavistock Institutions In The United States” given us by researcher Dr. John Coleman in his “Committee of 300.” For those who don’t know, the “300″ are allegedly the super-wealthy families who secretly rule the world. Tavistock, reportedly their central mind-control research center, provides the means to produce our “scientific dictatorship.” The actual instrument which provides the insiders the means to control a society’s behavior is called an “economic amplifier,” as described in another “conspiracy” document, called, “Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.“ The Silent Weapon relies upon the science of “econometrics,” which was developed by the Wharton School, Milken’s alma mater.
So here we have an NGO, created by an active tool of the conspiracy who is extensively schooled in scientific techniques to control mankind’s behavior, and this organization is trying to get a piece of the action in Azerbaijan.
I smell another big rat!]
U.S Milken Institute can participate in joint research with AIC
05.05.2010 15:58
Azerbaijan, Baku, May 5 / Trend /
Azerbaijani Investment Company (AIC) and the Milken Institute discussed the possibility of cooperation in joint research in economic and industrial spheres, the Ministry of Economic Development said.
Prospects of cooperation were discussed within the participation of the Azerbaijani delegation led by AIC executive director Afghan Isayev in the annual conference of the Milken Institute Global Conference, held in Los Angeles April 25-30.
“During the meetings heads of several international financial organizations and foreign investment companies exchanged views on prospects of joint participation with the AIC while realizing the projects in non-oil sector of Azerbaijan”, the message said.
Milken Institute is a leading specialist among U.S analytic centers in the economic sphere. Representatives of major international financial organizations and investment companies in the world attend the annual conferences of the Institute.
AIC was established by the presidential order dated March 30, 2006. The only founder of the company is the Azerbaijani Ministry of Economic Development.
Do you have any feedback? Contact our journalist at capital@trend.az
Azerbaijani Investment Company (AIC) and the Milken Institute discussed the possibility of cooperation in joint research in economic and industrial spheres, the Ministry of Economic Development said.
Prospects of cooperation were discussed within the participation of the Azerbaijani delegation led by AIC executive director Afghan Isayev in the annual conference of the Milken Institute Global Conference, held in Los Angeles April 25-30.
“During the meetings heads of several international financial organizations and foreign investment companies exchanged views on prospects of joint participation with the AIC while realizing the projects in non-oil sector of Azerbaijan”, the message said.
Milken Institute is a leading specialist among U.S analytic centers in the economic sphere. Representatives of major international financial organizations and investment companies in the world attend the annual conferences of the Institute.
AIC was established by the presidential order dated March 30, 2006. The only founder of the company is the Azerbaijani Ministry of Economic Development.
Do you have any feedback? Contact our journalist at capital@trend.az
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RBC: RWE and Turkmenistan delaying the deal on Nabucco
5 05 2010RBC: RWE and Turkmenistan delaying the deal on Nabucco
00:57 05.05.2010The German energy company RWE announced to postpone signing a deal to supply gas from Turkmenistan for the gas pipeline Nabucco. According to director of RWE Supply and Trading Stefan Yudisha, the agreement must be reached by the end of this year.
Earlier the sides hoped to resolve the terms of the deal by the end of I half-year 2010. According to agency Reuters, postponement of the date of signing of the agreement due to the slowdown of the harmonization process at the governmental level between the two countries.
Recall the previous statements of the RWE on gas supplies from Turkmenistan to the Nabucco gas pipeline were heard in December last year. At that time, S. Yudish indicate the first 6 months of this year as the likely timing of harmonizing conditions of supply of gas.
Consortium for the construction of Nabucco, which includes the Austrian OMV, German RWE, Hungary’s MOL, Turkey’s Botas, Bulgaria Bulgarian Energy Holding, Romanian Transgaz, plans take a final investment decision on the project by the end of 2010. after collecting bids from potential customers that will assess the demand for power piping. Not yet signed any contracts with gas suppliers for Nabucco.
Note that the construction of the pipeline in the Caspian Sea is difficult territorial disputes between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan over the Caspian oil and gas fields, but in the past year, Turkmenistan has promised to seek a compromise.
Turkmenistan is planning to diversify export routes of gas after Russia, the former major customer, stopped purchasing in April 2009. Ashgabat has shown particular interest in supplying gas for the project Nabucco.
Turkmenistan produces about 75 billion cubic meters. meters of gas a year and previously sold 50 billion cubic meters. m per year to Russian Gazprom. In December this year Turkmenistan is planning to launch gas pipeline to China and Iran bandwidth 6 and 13 billion cubic meters. meters per year respectively, and plans to further increase their capacity.
Nabucco gas pipeline would transport natural gas from Central Asia and Caspian Sea region to Central Europe via Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Austria. Putting the pipeline into operation was scheduled for 2011. But later was moved to 2013. The project cost is estimated at 7.9 billion euros. Through this pipeline could be pumping up to 31 billion cubic meters. meters of natural gas per year.
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What CIA ‘Analysts’ Are Doing In Kohat And FATA?
5 05 2010[American "backseat drivers" must accompany new F-16s? This is unheard of! This is how America treats its friends?]
o Foreign Minister Qureshi should stay in Pakistan more to see the dried up riverbeds instead of advocating India’s case
o With such antics by the government it is not simply that we are destroying our country for the achievements of US goals, but are effectively we are fast being reduced to a joke
Meet the foreign minister of India: “India is not stealing our water,” says Mr. Shah Mehmood Qureshi [No, it’s not Kumari, we checked!]
Remember how US was desperate for visas and US media leaks decried ‘harassment’ from Pakistan? Our government capitulated as usual and that’s how tens and probably hundreds of CIA ‘analysts’ entered Pakistan recently. Blackwater’s twin sister DynCorp is also here, precisely 9 kilometers away from Pakistan’s most important nuclear buildings. The new F-16s coming to Pakistan will come with US ‘supervisors’ who will ensure we don’t ‘misuse’ the planes. Who in Islamabad is playing this cruel joke with our nation?
By SHIREEN M. MAZARI
Monday, 3 May 2010.
The Nation
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Just examining a few recent developments and news revelations from the US shows how the ridiculous is increasingly becoming the norm in Pakistan’s relations with the US and India.
Let us take the US first.
Last week The Washington Post (30 April) had a story by Greg Miller on how the CIA had a new strategy of stationing more analysts overseas. As he described it:
“The CIA’s overseas expansion since Sept. 11, 2001, has mainly been evident on the operations side, with more case officers, more drone strikes and the distribution of a lot more cash. But the agency also has been sending abroad more employees from its less-flashy directorate, in what officials described as a major shift in how the agency trains and deploys its analysts.”
According to his story, “hundreds” of CIA analysts are already in overseas assignments. Pakistan, of course, has been especially targeted on this count with CIA officials being discovered as far afield as Kohat and in FATA also. It is no wonder that the US was desperate that Pakistan expedite the hundreds of US visa applications and Prime Minister Gilani obliged on the eve of his departure to Washington for the so-called strategic dialogue. Not much happened strategically for Pakistan but certainly a whole lot of CIA agents got their visas and are now scouring the territory of Pakistan. What is even more disturbing is that the private security agencies are also still present all over including DynCorp in Sihala, but the Government is unprepared to exercise any sovereign control on these issues. Apparently DynCorp has refused to move out of Sihala despite being shown alternatives – and the general view is that Sihala offers the ideal location for them to monitor Pakistan’s nuclear installations.
It has also now become public that DynCorp not only came along with the US anti-narcotic program in Pakistan but, according to the information revealed as the result of a Congressional hearing recently dealing with a Pentagon audit, the US also contracted it to monitor the Pakistan-Afghan border. So they are present in FATA also. With DynCorp and third-country intelligence agencies also being brought in by the CIA – including from Muslim States of West Asia and the Gulf in Khost – and with covert organized terror groups like “Asian Tigers” the Pakistan government and military really do not have a clear idea of exactly who is doing what in the FATA region. But what has become clear is that efforts are on big time to drag the Pakistan military to a battle in North Waziristan and to bow completely before a US agenda in exchange for the proverbial “peanuts”. After all, the US has still to pay the bulk of the Coalition Support Fund for previous years and this Fund payment is Pakistan’s right as it has already incurred the costs of the services sought by the US. As for weapons allowed to be accessed by Pakistan, the much touted frigates apart from being old also have no viable weapons systems capabilities, such as surface to air missiles.
Even more ridiculous is the deal made to acquire the 18 F-16s that are expected to trickle down to Pakistan this year. According to a story in a leading US newspaper, the deal included the provision that US personnel will come with the F-16s to ensure that the hi-tech weapons and other systems are used properly! According to the story, US personnel may be on board when these planes fly!
The PAF was asked to explain this but their spokesman first went around in circles trying to show that such personnel always accompany the planes and then said he would get back with the exact provisions of the deal but never did.
So clearly if we do get the F-16s (and let us not forget our sorry history on that count with the US) we will also inherit US personnel to supervise how we use these planes! Is this not a bad joke on the people of Pakistan?
This links our US appeasement with our India policy – if there is such a thing at present. It is surely a first that a Pakistani Prime Minister, instead of pleading the cause of Pakistan, pleads the Indian Prime Minister’s cause to the Pakistanis as well as defending India on the water issue by saying that India is not stealing our share of river water. Perhaps if the Foreign Minister stayed long enough in Pakistan he would be able to see the dried up river beds.
But then the present government is faithfully following the US agenda for us including peace talks with India on a new agenda since India has cast aside the composite dialogue. It is also a supreme irony that having condemned the Musharraf economic policies, the Musharraf economic team is slowly being brought back into action and at more senior positions!
With such antics by the government it is not simply that we are destroying our country for the achievements of US goals, but are effectively we are fast being reduced to a joke.
This comment was first published by The Nation, where Dr. Mazari is an editor. She can be reached at callstr@hotmail.com
© 2007-2010. All rights reserved. PakNationalists.com
What CIA ‘Analysts’ Are Doing In Kohat And FATA?
o Foreign Minister Qureshi should stay in Pakistan more to see the dried up riverbeds instead of advocating India’s case
o With such antics by the government it is not simply that we are destroying our country for the achievements of US goals, but are effectively we are fast being reduced to a joke
Meet the foreign minister of India: “India is not stealing our water,” says Mr. Shah Mehmood Qureshi [No, it’s not Kumari, we checked!]
Remember how US was desperate for visas and US media leaks decried ‘harassment’ from Pakistan? Our government capitulated as usual and that’s how tens and probably hundreds of CIA ‘analysts’ entered Pakistan recently. Blackwater’s twin sister DynCorp is also here, precisely 9 kilometers away from Pakistan’s most important nuclear buildings. The new F-16s coming to Pakistan will come with US ‘supervisors’ who will ensure we don’t ‘misuse’ the planes. Who in Islamabad is playing this cruel joke with our nation?
By SHIREEN M. MAZARI
Monday, 3 May 2010.
The Nation
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Just examining a few recent developments and news revelations from the US shows how the ridiculous is increasingly becoming the norm in Pakistan’s relations with the US and India.
Let us take the US first.
Last week The Washington Post (30 April) had a story by Greg Miller on how the CIA had a new strategy of stationing more analysts overseas. As he described it:
“The CIA’s overseas expansion since Sept. 11, 2001, has mainly been evident on the operations side, with more case officers, more drone strikes and the distribution of a lot more cash. But the agency also has been sending abroad more employees from its less-flashy directorate, in what officials described as a major shift in how the agency trains and deploys its analysts.”
According to his story, “hundreds” of CIA analysts are already in overseas assignments. Pakistan, of course, has been especially targeted on this count with CIA officials being discovered as far afield as Kohat and in FATA also. It is no wonder that the US was desperate that Pakistan expedite the hundreds of US visa applications and Prime Minister Gilani obliged on the eve of his departure to Washington for the so-called strategic dialogue. Not much happened strategically for Pakistan but certainly a whole lot of CIA agents got their visas and are now scouring the territory of Pakistan. What is even more disturbing is that the private security agencies are also still present all over including DynCorp in Sihala, but the Government is unprepared to exercise any sovereign control on these issues. Apparently DynCorp has refused to move out of Sihala despite being shown alternatives – and the general view is that Sihala offers the ideal location for them to monitor Pakistan’s nuclear installations.
It has also now become public that DynCorp not only came along with the US anti-narcotic program in Pakistan but, according to the information revealed as the result of a Congressional hearing recently dealing with a Pentagon audit, the US also contracted it to monitor the Pakistan-Afghan border. So they are present in FATA also. With DynCorp and third-country intelligence agencies also being brought in by the CIA – including from Muslim States of West Asia and the Gulf in Khost – and with covert organized terror groups like “Asian Tigers” the Pakistan government and military really do not have a clear idea of exactly who is doing what in the FATA region. But what has become clear is that efforts are on big time to drag the Pakistan military to a battle in North Waziristan and to bow completely before a US agenda in exchange for the proverbial “peanuts”. After all, the US has still to pay the bulk of the Coalition Support Fund for previous years and this Fund payment is Pakistan’s right as it has already incurred the costs of the services sought by the US. As for weapons allowed to be accessed by Pakistan, the much touted frigates apart from being old also have no viable weapons systems capabilities, such as surface to air missiles.
Even more ridiculous is the deal made to acquire the 18 F-16s that are expected to trickle down to Pakistan this year. According to a story in a leading US newspaper, the deal included the provision that US personnel will come with the F-16s to ensure that the hi-tech weapons and other systems are used properly! According to the story, US personnel may be on board when these planes fly!
The PAF was asked to explain this but their spokesman first went around in circles trying to show that such personnel always accompany the planes and then said he would get back with the exact provisions of the deal but never did.
So clearly if we do get the F-16s (and let us not forget our sorry history on that count with the US) we will also inherit US personnel to supervise how we use these planes! Is this not a bad joke on the people of Pakistan?
This links our US appeasement with our India policy – if there is such a thing at present. It is surely a first that a Pakistani Prime Minister, instead of pleading the cause of Pakistan, pleads the Indian Prime Minister’s cause to the Pakistanis as well as defending India on the water issue by saying that India is not stealing our share of river water. Perhaps if the Foreign Minister stayed long enough in Pakistan he would be able to see the dried up river beds.
But then the present government is faithfully following the US agenda for us including peace talks with India on a new agenda since India has cast aside the composite dialogue. It is also a supreme irony that having condemned the Musharraf economic policies, the Musharraf economic team is slowly being brought back into action and at more senior positions!
With such antics by the government it is not simply that we are destroying our country for the achievements of US goals, but are effectively we are fast being reduced to a joke.
This comment was first published by The Nation, where Dr. Mazari is an editor. She can be reached at callstr@hotmail.com
© 2007-2010. All rights reserved. PakNationalists.com
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Tags: state terrorism
Categories : image of the beast
The Vanishing Point for the American Empire
5 05 2010The Vanishing Point for the American Empire
The region today delineated as both Afghanistan and Pakistan has known many borders over the millennia, yet none have been more artificial or contentious than the one today separating Pakistan from Afghanistan known as the Durand line but referred to by the military and intelligence community as Zero line. A funny thing happened to the United States when the Obama administration decided to cross Zero line and bring the Afghan war into Pakistan. Instead of resolution, after nearly two years into the administration’s AfPak strategy, it would seem the gap between reality and the Washington beltway has only widened.Instead of moving into a new future that defused India and Pakistan’s nuclear rivalry and promised “a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people,” the U.S. is falling back on its old cold war relationships that created the problem in the first place. But as the costs of maintaining an archaic cold war posture mount, the world’s economy crumbles and the contradictions tear the war’s flimsy logic to shreds, it’s clear that, the U.S. is facing a bigger enemy than it ever imagined.
Before the Obama administration even set foot in office it promised to shift its attention, time, money and energy away from Iraq towards Afghanistan. The president’s AfPak policy was intended to correct the mistakes of the past while addressing the war in a more realistic fashion that focused as much on the actions of Pakistan’s military as it did the actions of the Afghan government.
The Obama administration’s decision to actively address Pakistan’s behavior emerged only after Washington’s military/intelligence community reluctantly accepted proof that Pakistan’s ISI was aiding Taliban actors such as Malawi Jalaluddin Haqqani. It also emerged after solid evidence suggested that Pakistan itself was on the verge of caving in to their own Taliban extremists, known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or TTP .
Despite being the single largest focus of the American military, much of what the United States does in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains a military secret. A report issued by the Center For Strategic and International Studies by Anthony H. Cordesman in September 2008, declared alarmingly. “No country or international organization provides useful unclassified overview data on the developments in the fighting [in Afghanistan] in anything like the depth that the US Department of Defense provides in its quarterly reports on the Iraq war. The [limited] reporting that is available also decouples the fighting in Afghanistan from that in Pakistan. Accordingly, public official reporting on the growing intensity of the war since 2006 ignores one of the most critical aspects of the conflict.”
Evidence of the strain facing America’s cold war-trained bureaucrats now appears regularly as the contradictions deepen. Defense Secretary Robert Gates crossed his own personal zero line in an address to the National Defense University in February when he criticized Europe’s growing anti-war sentiment as a dangerous threat to peace. The Obama administration rails at the Karzai government’s corruption but denies it the guidance and expertise necessary to make it effective at governance. The U.S. then diverts power and money to regional tribal leaders whom many fear (including U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry) will simply become a new class of warlord, once the U.S. departs.Since January 2009, U.S. Predator Drone strikes are reported to have killed at least 529 people in the tribal areas of Pakistan of whom 20 percent may have been civilians. Considered to be a clear violation of international law by American legal scholars, the cross border strikes inflame Pakistani opinion against the U.S. Yet, the Pentagon praises their new anti-terror weapon while at the same time continuing to deny that the program even exists.
As the Obama administration struggles to reconcile Washington’s special interests with those posed by Iran, Pakistan, India, China and Russia, it should be remembered that the Soviet Union faced a similar challenge in Afghanistan. But in the end the biggest enemy the Soviets faced was not the Stinger missiles or the disunited Mujahideen Jihadis. The Soviet Union’s biggest enemy was the archaic cold war structure of the Soviet system itself, and that is a lesson that Washington refuses to accept.
The United States has fought on both the Pakistani and Afghan sides of the Durand line. In the 1980s it fought on the side of extremist-political Islam. Since September 11, 2001 it has fought against it. But the border separating the two seemingly incompatible behaviors remains largely a dark mystery. It is therefore appropriate to think of Zero line as the vanishing point for the American empire, the point beyond which its power and influence disappears; the line where 60 year’s worth of American policy in Eurasia confronts itself and ceases to exist. The Durand line separating the two countries is visible on a map. Zero line is not.
# # # #
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. Their next book Crossing ZeroThe AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire will be published February, 2011.Edit : Edit
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EMERGING THREAT TO WORLD: Indo-Israeli Nexus
5 05 2010EMERGING THREAT TO WORLD: Indo-Israeli Nexus
WORLD MUST TAKE A NOTE OF THE REAL EVIL
By Sajjad Shaukat
Emergence of Real Evil
Taking cognizance of the growing threat of global terrorism which has been dividing the Western and Islamic nations on cultural and religious lines since 9/11, American and European governments have already started inter-faith dialogue especially between the Christian and the Muslim nations.
In this connection, many conferences were held in various countries in which scholars from Islamic states also participated with a view to creating cultural understanding among major religious communities. In the recent past, a four day conference of Muslim and Christian intellectuals held at the Yale University Divinity School of America for promoting interfaith dialogue, but ended without discussing any issue of religious fundamentalism in respect of state terrorism. Another conference of Muslims, Christians and Jews was held at Madrid, arranged by the efforts of Saudi King Abdullah.
However, all these measures are proving fruitless due to a deliberate anti-Muslim campaign, launched by the Indo-Israeli lobbies, creating obstacles in global cultural cooperation which is essential for global peace. America and its allies continue to kill many innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Palestine through heavy aerial bombardment and ground shelling in the name of war on terror. US-led Indo-Israeli forces have been using every possible technique of state terrorism in these territories which have become the breeding grounds of a prolonged interaction between freedom fighters and state terrorists, sabotaging world peace.
Indian-held Kashmir has become a special focus as state terrorism there keeps on going unabated. In this context, on August 12, 2008, Indian forces killed Hurriyat Conference leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz along with five other persons who were protesting against the government decision to give land to trust that runs Amarnath, a shrine of Hindus. On the same day, more than 200000 Kashmiris marched towards the Martyrs Graveyard to participate in the funeral of Abdul Aziz. The police killed 18 innocent Muslims by firing. Nevertheless, massive demonstrations, strikes and firing by the security forces continue in the occupied Kashmir intermittently and people raise the slogans for liberation of Kashmir. While extremist Hindus had also begun economic blockade of the Muslims in wake of curfew, emulating the Israeli siege of Gaza which resulted in starvation of thousands of innocent Palestinians. Meanwhile, from time to time, Tel Aviv has continued shelling on the controlled territories of the Palestine including targetted killing, while Indian troops continue to kill Kashmiri people through fake encounters.
Besides, both India and Israel which had openly jumped on Bush’s anti-terrorism enterprise after the September 11, are acting upon a secret diplomacy, targeting Pakistan and China in particular and other regional countries in general.
In this context, proper media coverage was not given to the Indo-Israeli secret diplomacy, which could be assessed from the interview of Israel’s ambassador to India, Mark Sofer published in the Indian weekly Outlook on February 18, 2008. Regarding India’s defence arrangements with Israel, Sofer had surprisingly disclosed “We do have a defence relationship with India, which is no secret. On the other hand, what is secret is the defence relationship”. And “with all due respect, the secret part will remain a secret.”
Indo-Israeli nexus remained under wraps till 2003, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited India to officially reveal it. In this regard, Indian ‘The Tribune’ wrote on September 10, 2003, “India and Israel took giant leaps forward in bolstering the existing strategic ties and forging new ones” and Tel Aviv has “agreed to share its expertise with India various fields as anti-fidayeen operations, surveillance satellites, intelligence sharing and space exploration.” From anti-missile systems to hi-tech radars, from sky drones to night-vision equipment, Indo-Israeli defense cooperation has known no bounds in recent times.
The matter is not confined to purchasing of military equipments only, Indo-Israeli overt and covert links are part of a dangerous strategic game in Asia. In this connection, the then Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu had already made it clear in July 1997 saying, “Our ties with India don’t have any limitations—as long as India and Israel are friendly, it is a strategic gain”.
There are other reasons behind Indo-Israeli secret nexus. Fast growing economic power of China coupled with her rising strategic relationship with the Third World has been misperceived by the Americans and Indians. Owing to this jealousy, tactical support of Washington to New Delhi, indirect military aid through Israel, the US-India nuclear deal—all are part of American desire to make India a major power to counterbalance China in Asia as both of them see Beijing a “future strategic competitor”.
On the other side, a ‘nuclearized’ Pakistan, depending upon minimum deterrence, having close ties with Beijing is another major target of the Indo-Israeli secret diplomacy. As regards Islamabad, India, Afghanistan and Israel are in collusion as part of a plot to ‘destabilize’ Pakistan for their common strategic interests.
The fact of the matter is that by availing the ongoing international phenomena of terrorism, Jewish-Hindu lobbies are collectively working in America and other European countries to exploit the double standards of the west in relation to terrorism and human rights vis-à-vis Pakistan and China. Israel and India are equating the ‘war of independence’ in Kashmir and Palestine with terrorism. If India considers Pakistan as her enemy number one, Israel takes Iran in the same sense especially due to its nuclear programme which is also negated by the US. Tel Aviv is also against Pakistan as it is the only nuclear Islamic country. However, these similarities of interest have brought the two countries to follow a common secret diplomacy with the tactical support of Washington, targeting particularly Pakistan and China including other states like Nepal, North Korea, Bangladesh, Iran, Syria etc.
Another regrettable point is that irresponsible attitude of some Indian, Israeli and Western politicians has introduced dangerous socio-religious dimension in their societies by equating the “war on terror” with “war on Islam” and acts of Al Qaeda with all the Muslims. Their media have also been contributing to heighten the currents of world politics on cultural and religious lines with the negative projection of Islam. In this connection, reprinting of the caricatures about Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and release of a Dutch film against the Holy Quran in the recent past might be noted as an example.
It is because of these developments that a greater resentment is being found among the Muslims who think that the US in connivance with the Indo-Israeli lobbies is sponsoring state terrorism, directly or indirectly from Kashmir to Palestine.
In this context, on October 19, 2007, the special issue of South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, under the caption-‘Working for India or against Islam? Islamophobia in Indian American Lobbies’ wrote, “In the past few years, Indian American community has gained an unprecedented visibility in the international arena and now constitutes influential ethnic lobbies in Washington. Among other factors, Hindu aligned with Jewish pressure groups in relation to the war against terrorism and to further the India-Israel-US strategic partnership play a major role in exaggerating Islamophobic overtones in the Indian American lobbies”.
Nevertheless, by manipulating the present phenomena of world terrorism and anti-Muslim approach of the west, both India and Israel have been availing this golden opportunity to achieve their covert goals by convincing the US-led European states that a ‘nuclearized’ Pakistan is sponsoring cross-border terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir. And Iran and Syria are doing the same act in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. In this regard, equation of ‘war of liberation’ in Kashmir and Palestine with terrorism has become the main target of New Delhi and Tel Aviv which intend to divert the attention of the west from their own atrocities, being perpetrated in the occupied territories.
Most alarming point in this respect is that Indo-Israeli nexus for the sake of delaying the solution of Kashmir and Palestine—under the pretext of so-called Islamic terrorism is not only sabotaging world peace, but is also taking the world to the brink of clash of civilizations.
Sajjad Shaukat is a regular writer for Opinion Maker. He writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations
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Replay In Kyrgyzstan of Putin’s Perils
5 05 2010Putin’s Perils
Revolutions Speed Russia’s Disintegration
By Uwe Klussmann and Christian Neef
REUTERS
Kyrgyz opposition protesters walk with flag past a burning car outside the government building in central Bishkek.From the get-go, the stars weren’t exactly in alignment during his visit. The important guest from Moscow, President Vladimir Putin, had just arrived in Yerevan when the sky turned dark and wet snow started falling, blanketing the capital of the Caucasus republic of Armenia. In fact, the clouds were hanging so low that the mighty Ararat mountain, Armenia’s national symbol, which towers 5,000 meters into the skies, was out of view.
In Yerevan that’s always a bad sign.
Trying to lift the spirits and lighten the mood, Robert Kocharian, Armenia’s head of state, had a solution: He took his Russian counterpart, Putin, to the finest restaurant in town, Cafe Poplavok (“The Swimmer”). With classical jazz in the background and the two men sipping red Armenian wine, Kocharian tried his best to alleviate some of Putin’s concerns and cheer him up.
It was Friday, March 25.
Some 2,500 kilometers east, in Bishkek, the situation was far from casual. Indeed, the streets of the Kyrgyz capital had grown rowdy. An angry mob of demonstrators was about to take control of more than just Bishkek’s streets. Armed with clubs, they stormed supermarkets and luxury goods stores. Looters temporarily took control of the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
The day before, the regime’s opposition had initiated a surprise coup and taken control of the White House, seat of Kyrgyzstan’s government. President Askar Akayev surrendered his power without resistance. The toppled head of this tiny country of 5 million located at the base of the Tien Shan mountains, fled to Russia in a helicopter with his family.
Kyrgyzstan was the latest country in the region whose government was chased out of office. The Georgians needed several months in 2003 to unseat Eduard Shevardnadze, and the Ukrainians took eight weeks last fall to overthrow their government in Kiev. But the former nomad people of Kyrgyzstan broke all previous records: in Bishkek, the revolution was a done deal after two hours, and it was the first such event in a former member of the Soviet Union that is dominated by the Muslim religion.
Of course, East and West had totally different takes on the kind of coup which happened in this republic, which shares its border with China. While the Americans celebrated Kyrgyzstan’s “dawn of a better, democratic future” (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice), a confidante of Putin had a different take. Referring to Kyrgyzstan’s traditional role as a hub for drug trafficking and the looting in the capital’s streets, he painted a grim picture: This, he said, was a revolution that “tastes like opium and shows the color of the darkest night.” It sounded all-too similar: When the authoritarian Ukrainian regime in Kiev was overthrown by Victor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, Moscow called it an “anti-Russian coup.”
But the upheaval in Kyrgyzstan wasn’t exactly any old uprising of local shepherds. Instead, it was no less than a break with tradition, especially for Putin.
Emancipation from Moscow
That the reports from Bishkek reached him during his visit to Yerevan must have been symbolic for the Russian leader in a very bitter way: Following Akayev’s toppling, a leader known to be loyal to Moscow, Armenia is now the last remaining truly pro-Russian republic in the post-Soviet region.
After the coup in Bishkek, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — the alliance of former Soviet republics whose support Russia had hoped to harness in its bid to regain its former superpower status — is as good as dead, just like the corpses that the highly controversial German pathologist Gunther von Hagens had prepared in Kyrgyzstan year after year.
In the end, the generally tight-lipped Putin beat out the Armenian press in writing CIS’s obituary. “The only reason it was founded,” Putin said, was to enable the “civilized divorce” of all republics after the Soviet Union fell apart. This task, the Russian president said, had now been completed.
But as a matter of fact, the CIS alliance was originally intended to be something very different. It was supposed to prevent precisely what is actually unraveling now: “an erosion of this geopolitical region,” as Putin called as recently as last July. But Moscow’s relations with the young new republics are in shambles, and they are characterized by fear and contempt — or by financial dependence.
After the fall of Bishkek, the man often called Russia’s new czar, merely looks like a politician who has run out of luck. Indeed, it seems Paris and Berlin are the only places where he still has a good reputation.
Back on the home front, though, Putin comes across as a unlucky politician. And that hasn’t been limited to his presidency: the former senior KGB officer has also accomplished little as head of the Kremlin. Viktor Cherkashin, also a former KGB officer, recently criticized the president as being a mere “bureaucrat.” Cherkashin worked for the KGB for 40 years, most recently as chief of counter-espionage at the Russian embassy in Washington. Further fanning the flames, a Kremlin adviser close to the president was quoted as saying that Putin had lost his “decision-making drive,” that “he is panicking.” And Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Center pinpointed what is currently moving Russia’s political elite: their home country was increasingly finding itself encircled because amateurish foreign policy had fueled the creation of a cordon sanitaire, or “protective barrier,” between Russia and the West.
The Moscow establishment sees a dark omen in American President George W. Bush’s plans for honoring and celebrating the end of World War II. A few weeks from now, before Bush is set to visit Putin on May 9, the anniversary of the war, the US president will head to Latvia and Georgia. By visiting Moscow’s most troublesome neighbors, Washington is indirectly pouring salt on Russia’s open wounds, signaling that its sphere of power as it existed in 1945 with all the conquered regions, has now dwindled and shrunk to the country’s own national borders.
Russia’s self-isolation
With a sense of satisfaction, former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski talks about “self-isolation” these days when he analyzes Moscow’s current foreign policy. The Russian government, he argues, automatically interprets every success in the West as a loss for Russia. There have been plenty of reasons to alter this course, in the Ukraine and in central Asia. But instead of redefining its long-term goals, the Kremlin decided to function as a sort of patron saint of the despot regimes. Moscow’s strategy, said Brzezinski, called for “completing the past.”
Surely, Russia’s government could not have overlooked the fact that plenty of social dynamite had piled up in Kyrgyzstan as well. Still, the Kremlin kept backing its old crony, Askar Akayev.
The regime, led by the engineer and scientist Akayev, had always been weak. A well-read aesthete — he admires former German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, poet Heinrich Heine and composer Robert Schuman — Akayev was viewed as a liberal when he took office in 1990. Kyrgyzstan was praised as an “island of democracy,” especially compared to its authoritarian neighbor states.
However, before long, Akayev’s power developed into an authoritarian, family clan-dominated rule that subjugated mass media and the economy. Akayev banned insubordinate newspapers and disempowered his former vice president, Felix Kulov. Kulov subsequently established himself as the opposition leader, emerged as a rival to the president, and was then sent to prison for an “abuse of his authority.”
AFP
Kyrgyz opposition supporters stand at the central square of Bishkek.Under Akayev, the economic situation in Kyrgyzstan was miserable, and the country was the poorest among the former CIS states. The average per capita income decreased to €20 ($26) per month, with little hope of improvement.
In late February, the ruler went a step too far, when he had his son, Aidar, his daughter, Bermet, and other relatives elected to parliament. In addition, Akayev used legislative tricks and even forgery to put the brakes on the opposition. It worked: in the end, they only got five seats in parliament.
By then, the Kyrgyz population had had enough and its anger erupted. In the poorer southern part of the country, opposition groups organized road blocks, and before long, the situation got out of hand in the entire region. The rebels marched to Bishkek, led by former regime functionaries who’d switched sides. Joining them were urban academics, bazaar vendors, and many rural workers. When Akayev fled the country, the wave of looting broke loose. Many of the rebels wanted to solve the social problems right away, but through robbery instead of long-term reforms. After the mob freed him from prison, it took “Security Forces Coordinator” Felix Kulov two days to stop the upheaval in the streets.
Originally, the opposition had planned to topple Akayev in legitimate elections in the autumn, but under pressure from the people, it had to move faster. The new acting president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who already had served in that same capacity under Akayev between 2002 and 2002, admitted to having mixed feelings. “I wouldn’t wish for anyone to rise to power this way,” he said.
A persisting Soviet legacy
Kyrgyzstan’s biggest problem is its internal division and the glaring discrepancies between regions. On the one hand, there’s a developed north with a strong Russian influence and character, and then there’s an impoverished rural south dominated by clans. The new powerful men in Bishkek — former Gen. Felix Kulov, 56, a representative of the north, and interim leader Bakiyev, 55, a man of the south — are all part of a cadre that has been shaped by the old Soviet system. As such, they are part of a national problem that will take decades to solve.
It is quite reasonable to doubt the revolution’s success because the corrupt system still works, even without former leader Akayev. After all, the country’s parliament was hand-picked by Akayev and is comprised of old regime cronies and shady businessmen. Even Foreign Minister Rosa Otunbayeva said it was “a mistake” that she was allowed to govern following the coup. Meanwhile, the head of the domestic secret service, who under Akayev recruited numerous spies from within the opposition circles, is also still in office. There are currently no plans to unveil the files on that matter.
This type of continuity made it easy for Vladimir Putin to publicly sacrifice his old ally Akayev. He knew the new people in Bishkek “quite well,” Putin said in Yerevan, they “had contributed a lot to developing the relations with Russia.”
However, it will be difficult for Moscow to take Kyrgyzstan under its wings again. Foreign Minister Otunbayeva, for example, a former diplomat in Washington and in Tiblisi (where she experienced first hand Georgia’s “Rose Revolution”) wants to establish closer ties to the United States. Kyrgyzstan is very important geo-strategically, and she also wants to make sure that the 1,000 American soldiers who have been stationed near Bishkek since the Afghanistan war remain in her country.
As early as February, Otunbayeva pledged allegiance to a small group of partners and sponsors of the Kyrgyz revolution, to “our American friends” at Freedom House (who donated a printing press in Bishkek to the opposition), and to George Soros, a speculator who previously helped unseat Edward Shevardnadze’s government in Georgia. Trying to help the democratic process, the Americans poured some $12 million into Kyrgyzstan in the form of scholarships and donations — and that was last year alone. Washington’s State Department even funded TV station equipment in the rebellious southern province town of Osh.
The revolution: coming to a former Soviet republic near you
The “bacillus of revolution,” or “bacteria of revolution,” could now spread to the neighboring central Asian republics in a similar way. Take, for example, the populous country of Uzbekistan, where despot Islam Karimov (who many believe is suffering from cancer) has exploited all the possibilities of an iron-fist rule: some 10,000 opposition members and Islamic rebels are languishing in prisons, mosques are being monitored and controlled and imams can only be appointed by the state.
Things are also on shaky ground in Kazakhstan, a country with vast oil reserves. President Nursultan Nazarbayev rules Kazakhstan with his family clan. In December, Nazarbayev will run for re-election, and he will have to square off with a very serious opposition candidate, the former state prosecutor general, Zharmakhan Tuyakbai. For several months now, former ministers and leading officials are changing ranks and joining the opposition. Like others, the leadership of this country was “also worried,” wrote Moscow’s Nesawissimaja gasetanewspaper. But Nazarbayev will hardly make the same mistake as his neighbor Akayev, who didn’t want to employ force against the opposition.
Following the events in Bishkek, the heads of two government-loyal parties in Kazakhstan stressed that “we are ready to defend the sovereignty of our country with weapons.” This clear, unmistakable message had Nazarbayev’s backing, so much was clear.
Last week, Akayev himself came to the conclusion that democracy (or whatever he views as democracy) must “be defended with force if necessary.” That these words came from his place of exile, Moscow, gave some people cause for concern. After all, a Kremlin adviser used nearly the same rhetoric to back Akayev. The unwillingness of the rulers to “use force” had allowed opposition groups to take over power in several former CIS countries, he said.
And what little is left if CIS could soon crumble. Trouble is also brewing in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, where the next opposition march is set for April 26, the anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Putin will have to carefully ponder his next move. TV images from Tiblisi, Kiev, and Bishkek have clearly left their mark. In the Muslim constituent republic of Bashkortostan, some 15,000 demonstrators recently threatened to storm the government. At the same time protestors in the Caucasian republic of Ingushetia urged the regional sovereign to step down. To make matters worse, across Russia, Putin’s poorly implemented social reforms have caused hundreds of thousands of Russians to hit the streets for the first time in years.
After the fall of Bishkek, a Moscow newspaper recently asked domestic politicians what color the revolution would be once it reached Russia?
“In our country, where aggression is deeply ingrained in each and every one of us, it could be the color of blood,” one member of Duma, the Russian parliament, said.
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The Evil Empire Concerned Over Potential Loss of Azerbaijan
5 05 2010[The following article is damage control for the Empire in Azerbaijan. The message is to ignore reports that the cancellation of wargames with American forces and anti-American statements coming out of Baku are signs of a split with Washington, or threaten the future of Nabucco.
The author, Shahin Abbasov is a member of the Assistance Foundation Open Society Institute - Azerbaijan. This is another George Soros Foundation which promotes democratic-revolution under the guise of education and human rights concerns, just like Freedom House in Kyrgyzstan. This tells us that anyone who supports real freedom and opposes the Empire should ignore those who urge us to NOT believe our own eyes in the Caucasus. There is a very real danger that America may have lost Baku and everything that goes with it.
Obama, how are you going to win the pipeline wars if you keep losing ground?]
Cancel scheduled for next month military exercises with the United States caused a surge in speculation that the U.S. may “lose” Azerbaijan. According to the Azerbaijani analysts, they show no signs of the transition between the two countries make a critical phase.
Azerbaijani decision to cancel the May exercise was taken two days after his arrival in Baku on April 17 Deputy Minister of Defense for Policy Flurnoy Michele (Michele Flournoy), which met with President Ilham Aliyev and Defense Minister Safar Abiyev and Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov.
The government in Baku could not explain the decision, but it was preceded by a warning from the president that Baku will take “adequate steps” with respect to supporting the countries of Armenia, “outside Depending on the size, economic and military power of these states. ” The influential head of the socio-political department of the Presidential Administration Ali Hasanov has tightened this statement, warning that “if the U.S. will continue to be biased in Karabakh, Azerbaijan could review the strategic partnership with America”, local media reported.
At first glance, the recent steps Baku explained fueling fears in connection with the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and their implications for the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh. It should be noted that after Armenia declared April 22 decision to suspend the process of reconciliation with Turkey and Azerbaijan is no longer voiced by such aggressive statements.
However, one clear course of action that can be interpreted as anti-American, yet there has been. It concerns the energy sector – the focus of attention of foreign investors in the Caspian littoral states.
In his speech at the parliament session on April 20 and the deputy chairman of the party “Ana Veten” (Motherland) Phase Agamaly encouraged to reduce the percentage of American companies in oil projects. The motive for such a step, he said, is the decision of Congress to provide humanitarian aid to the separatist government of Karabakh.
In response, Parliament Speaker Oktay Asadov mute Agamali and demanded that he stop “talking about things about which he knows nothing,” reported in the media . The next day, Gasanov distanced himself from suggestions Agamaly, stating that Azerbaijan is faithful to its strategic partnership with the U.S..
“Our government remains committed to a strategic partnership with the United States, including in the security field and in the energy sector”, – quoted him as saying the media .
In Baku, perhaps there is a long list of grievances to Washington, including criticism from the U.S. to address violations of media rights in the country, U.S. support for the process of normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations, delays in the appointment of an ambassador to Baku, and the failure to invite President Ilham Aliyev at the April nuclear summit . But no more.
The U.S. has always been actively lobbying the Azerbaijani energy projects like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, contributing to the formation of the country as an independent regional player, says energy expert Ilham Shaban. It is unlikely that Azerbaijan wanted to abandon that support, he adds.
American companies are currently not very represented in oil projects in Azerbaijan. Their presence is limited to four minority stakes in the project of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli by the following companies: ExxonMobil (8 percent), Chevron (10.2 percent), HESS (2.7 percent) and Devon (5.6 percent).
Redefining the issue of the share of U.S. companies in the multibillion project Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli require a revision unilaterally production sharing agreement, which I do not foresee “, said Shaban. The Government will sign contracts with relevant companies in May.
According to the head of the Baku non-governmental Centre for Political Innovation and Technology Mubariz Ahmedoglu, it also no signs that the Azerbaijani government plans to abandon its strategic cooperation with the United States on energy issues in the fight against terrorism and regional security. Anti-American statements by the Azerbaijani authorities, has already stopped, “he said.
“The Government aims to continue its balanced foreign policy, and I do not expect major changes in relations between Baku and Washington” – he said.
The head of the Baku Political Research Center “Atlas” Elkhan Shahinoglu shares this view. In his view, “none of the parties not interested in further aggravation of relations.”
Editor’s Note:
Shahin Abbasov is a freelance correspondent for the Baku and board member of the Assistance Foundation Open Society Institute – Azerbaijan.
April 30, 2010 |
The author, Shahin Abbasov is a member of the Assistance Foundation Open Society Institute - Azerbaijan. This is another George Soros Foundation which promotes democratic-revolution under the guise of education and human rights concerns, just like Freedom House in Kyrgyzstan. This tells us that anyone who supports real freedom and opposes the Empire should ignore those who urge us to NOT believe our own eyes in the Caucasus. There is a very real danger that America may have lost Baku and everything that goes with it.
Obama, how are you going to win the pipeline wars if you keep losing ground?]
S. Abbasov: Baku departs from its “anti-American” position
Azerbaijan: Baku departs from its “anti-American” positionsCancel scheduled for next month military exercises with the United States caused a surge in speculation that the U.S. may “lose” Azerbaijan. According to the Azerbaijani analysts, they show no signs of the transition between the two countries make a critical phase.
Azerbaijani decision to cancel the May exercise was taken two days after his arrival in Baku on April 17 Deputy Minister of Defense for Policy Flurnoy Michele (Michele Flournoy), which met with President Ilham Aliyev and Defense Minister Safar Abiyev and Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov.
The government in Baku could not explain the decision, but it was preceded by a warning from the president that Baku will take “adequate steps” with respect to supporting the countries of Armenia, “outside Depending on the size, economic and military power of these states. ” The influential head of the socio-political department of the Presidential Administration Ali Hasanov has tightened this statement, warning that “if the U.S. will continue to be biased in Karabakh, Azerbaijan could review the strategic partnership with America”, local media reported.
At first glance, the recent steps Baku explained fueling fears in connection with the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and their implications for the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh. It should be noted that after Armenia declared April 22 decision to suspend the process of reconciliation with Turkey and Azerbaijan is no longer voiced by such aggressive statements.
However, one clear course of action that can be interpreted as anti-American, yet there has been. It concerns the energy sector – the focus of attention of foreign investors in the Caspian littoral states.
In his speech at the parliament session on April 20 and the deputy chairman of the party “Ana Veten” (Motherland) Phase Agamaly encouraged to reduce the percentage of American companies in oil projects. The motive for such a step, he said, is the decision of Congress to provide humanitarian aid to the separatist government of Karabakh.
In response, Parliament Speaker Oktay Asadov mute Agamali and demanded that he stop “talking about things about which he knows nothing,” reported in the media . The next day, Gasanov distanced himself from suggestions Agamaly, stating that Azerbaijan is faithful to its strategic partnership with the U.S..
“Our government remains committed to a strategic partnership with the United States, including in the security field and in the energy sector”, – quoted him as saying the media .
In Baku, perhaps there is a long list of grievances to Washington, including criticism from the U.S. to address violations of media rights in the country, U.S. support for the process of normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations, delays in the appointment of an ambassador to Baku, and the failure to invite President Ilham Aliyev at the April nuclear summit . But no more.
The U.S. has always been actively lobbying the Azerbaijani energy projects like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, contributing to the formation of the country as an independent regional player, says energy expert Ilham Shaban. It is unlikely that Azerbaijan wanted to abandon that support, he adds.
American companies are currently not very represented in oil projects in Azerbaijan. Their presence is limited to four minority stakes in the project of Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli by the following companies: ExxonMobil (8 percent), Chevron (10.2 percent), HESS (2.7 percent) and Devon (5.6 percent).
Redefining the issue of the share of U.S. companies in the multibillion project Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli require a revision unilaterally production sharing agreement, which I do not foresee “, said Shaban. The Government will sign contracts with relevant companies in May.
According to the head of the Baku non-governmental Centre for Political Innovation and Technology Mubariz Ahmedoglu, it also no signs that the Azerbaijani government plans to abandon its strategic cooperation with the United States on energy issues in the fight against terrorism and regional security. Anti-American statements by the Azerbaijani authorities, has already stopped, “he said.
“The Government aims to continue its balanced foreign policy, and I do not expect major changes in relations between Baku and Washington” – he said.
The head of the Baku Political Research Center “Atlas” Elkhan Shahinoglu shares this view. In his view, “none of the parties not interested in further aggravation of relations.”
Editor’s Note:
Shahin Abbasov is a freelance correspondent for the Baku and board member of the Assistance Foundation Open Society Institute – Azerbaijan.
April 30, 2010 |
| Source - Eurasianet.org Permanent address article - http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1273003320 |
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US Slips Kyrgyz $15 Million Payment for Manas Airbase
5 05 2010U.S. to make $15 mln airbase payment to Kyrgyz interim government
The United States will transfer $15 million to the Kyrgyz provisional government as rent for the Pentagon’s transit center, the U.S. president’s special assistant for national security said on Tuesday.
Michael McFaul said during a visit to the Kyrgyz capital that the first quarterly rent payment since the ouster of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev would be made on Wednesday. He added that during a meeting with the interim government he also discussed the restoration of democracy and urgent economic aid to Kyrgyzstan.
The military base was built on the territory of Bishkek’s Manas airport in 2001 to service the U.S.-led international military operations in nearby Afghanistan.
In early 2009, the Kyrgyz government announced that all U.S. troops would have to leave the country, but later agreed a deal with the Pentagon that increased the rent to $60 million a year and turned the base into a transit center.
Russia also has a base near Bishkek, and in April expressed its readiness to provide aid to Kyrgyzstan’s interim government. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia would give Kyrgyzstan a $20 million grant and a $30 million concessional loan to help stabilize the economic situation in the ex-Soviet republic after the riots in early April that led to the opposition taking power and Bakiyev’s departure.
The self-declared interim government urgently needs funds and fuel to normalize conditions in the impoverished Central Asian republic.
BISHKEK, May 4 (RIA Novosti)
Michael McFaul said during a visit to the Kyrgyz capital that the first quarterly rent payment since the ouster of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev would be made on Wednesday. He added that during a meeting with the interim government he also discussed the restoration of democracy and urgent economic aid to Kyrgyzstan.
The military base was built on the territory of Bishkek’s Manas airport in 2001 to service the U.S.-led international military operations in nearby Afghanistan.
In early 2009, the Kyrgyz government announced that all U.S. troops would have to leave the country, but later agreed a deal with the Pentagon that increased the rent to $60 million a year and turned the base into a transit center.
Russia also has a base near Bishkek, and in April expressed its readiness to provide aid to Kyrgyzstan’s interim government. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia would give Kyrgyzstan a $20 million grant and a $30 million concessional loan to help stabilize the economic situation in the ex-Soviet republic after the riots in early April that led to the opposition taking power and Bakiyev’s departure.
The self-declared interim government urgently needs funds and fuel to normalize conditions in the impoverished Central Asian republic.
BISHKEK, May 4 (RIA Novosti)
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Transcript of Ahmadinejad’s Speech At U.N. Nuclear Nonproliferation Conference
5 05 2010Transcript of Ahmadinejad’s Speech At U.N. Nuclear Nonproliferation Conference
4 May 2010, 3:04 pm
TRANSCRIPT
In the Name of God,
The Compassionate, the Merciful
Oh God, hasten the arrival of Imam Al-Mahdi,
Grant him good health and victory,
and make us his followers and those who attest
to his rightfulness.
Mr. Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I thank the Almighty God for granting me the opportunity to talk with you about one of the most crucially-important issue of global concern. Undoubtedly, meetings of the Assembly on the modification and completion of NPT are regarded as the most important meetings of the Assembly since its creation.
Realization of sustainable security has always constituted one of the most pressing issues faced by human communities in the course of history.
Without security, human beings will never be able to fulfill their aspirations neither in material nor spiritual domains.
The disposition to achieve the goals of security is inherent in the nature of human being. No country, nation or state …………….
Divine prophets, thinkers and people of good faith have always sought to guide human beings through having faith to God, and practicing diving teachings and injunctions which guarantee a peaceful and safe life in both worlds. From the viewpoint of divine prophets, a …. society, is a global society where the belief in the oneness of God is professed, and justice is proclaimed, a place where security, pure, friendship and brotherhood prevail under the leadership of the most noble servant of God together with Jesus Christ (P.B.U.H) and other dedicated people.
In the absence of sustainable security or feeling of safety, no room will be left to introduce a holistic planning towards development and prosperity.
Today, although countries allocate a major portion of resources to boost their national security, there is no sign of any improvement in the current circumstances or the shadow of threat predominating the international climate.
Regrettably, in spite of this vitally-crucial need, and because of the behavior of a few governments whose policies reflect a departure from the teachings of divine prophets, the threat of nuclear bombs continue to cast a shadow on the entire globe, where no one can feel safe. Some governments in their strategies introduce nuclear bombs an element of stability and security, a mindset which is based on fallacy and misleading argument.
Nuclear bomb, even if produced and stockpiled on the pretext of deterrence is a dangerous act and a false strategy which runs against the main course of security. It threatens in the first place that has produced and stockpiled such weapons. You may remember that how the aerial transport of a cruise missile mistakenly loaded with nuclear warhead from a base inside the US soil to another base in the country posed a serious danger creating anxiety and fear among the American people. Second, nuclear arm is a destructive weapon that destroys all living creations including human beings, animals and plant species everywhere it explodes its radiations will affect next generations, with massive and persistent environmental pollutions which remain for hundreds of years. Look at the disastrous consequences of atomic explosions in Hiroshima and the use of depleted nuclear bombs in south Iraq. Nuclear arms are, therefore, a fire against humanity rather than a weapon for defense or offence. Possession of nuclear weapons is not something to be proud of; rather it is ugly and ignominious. More ignominious is the threat to use such weapons, the specter and ramifications of which are in no way comparable with any crime committed in history.
Those who exploded atomic bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people and leveled to the ground two cities, are regarded as the most hated human beings in the history.
For over sixty years the Security Council and the United Nations have failed to build sustainable security feeling of security in the international relations. The current international circumstances seem to be far more critical than those of past decades.
Wars, aggressions, occupation, and above all, the shadow of threat stockpiling of nuclear armaments and weapons of mass-destruction, as well as the defunct policies of certain imperial minded states have obliterated the prospect of security at national, regional and international levels. The existing mentality in all societies is widely affected by a feeling threat and insecurity. The mottos of disarmament and non-proliferation have not been realized, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to fulfill its responsibilities. Over the past forty years some governments, including the occupation Zionist regime have been equipped with nuclear weapons.
What is real reason behind all this?
In my opinion we should find the reasons in the policies and measures of a number arrogant and ambitious power as well as in the inefficacy of NPT and its imbalanced provisions, and hence, I wish to highlight some of these reasons.
1. Feeling of superiority
In the mindset of divine prophets and devoted people and based on all humanitarian beliefs, superiority comes from devotion to moral principles, purity, humility and the desire to serve human kind, not from the power of suppressing others.
Prosperity and perfection depends on purity not on military power. Unfortunately, some governments, by relying on the outdated theory of survival, find military power and means of superiority to suppress other nations, a policy that has disseminate the seeds of hate and hostility, and instigated arms race in the international relations.
2. The production and use of nuclear weapons
The first atomic bomb was made and used by the United States. This inhuman act apparently gave the upper hand to the United State and its allies in the World II, however it turned to be a main contributor of nuclear arms development by other. The post-world war II era is characterized by a period of intensified arms race. The production, stockpiling, and improved quality of nuclear armaments in a country was the best justification for others to develop their own arsenals, a trend that has been unstoppable over the past forty years in violation of the commitments set forth in the NPT.
3. Nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence
This policy is the main factor behind the mounting arms race, because deterrence requires having the edge and the head both in quality and quantity of weapons, which itself has led to a continual devastating nuclear race. According to unofficial reports, there are more than 20,000 nuclear warheads in the world, half of which stockpiled in the United States. The other side, as the rival of the United States, is forced to continue the development of nuclear weaponry on the excuse of deterrence and these two constitute the flagrant violation of NPT provisions.
4. The threat in international relations to use Nuclear Weapons
Regrettably, the government of the United States has not only used nuclear weapons, but also continues to officially threaten some countries including Iran to use such weapons against them. Years back, another country in Europe repeated the same threat. Meanwhile, the Zionist regime continually threatens Middle East countries. This is a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and NPT provisions.
5. Unilateral use of the Security Council and the IAEA
Nuclear weapons states enjoy exclusive rights privileges at the highest international decision-making body and in the IAEA. They widely use these platforms unilaterally against the spirit of NPT and the non-nuclear states. These unacceptable and unfair practices have turned into a continued process because of being repeated over years.
None of the non-nuclear states has ever been able to enjoy its inalienable and legal rights for the peaceful use of nuclear energy without facing pressures or threats. This happens while, despite the article 6 of the statute, there is not a single report of inspections by the IAEA experts on the nuclear facilities of the United States and its allies, and there is written plan for their disarmament. Whilst, under the pressures of these governments and on various excuses, a number of resolutions were issued against non-nuclear weapons states, to deny them of their legal rights in defiance of NPT provisions.
6. Enforcement of multi-standard criteria
While the Zionist regime has stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads, instigated a number of full-fledged wars, and continues to militarily threaten and terrorize countries of the region, it enjoys the full supported of the United States and of its allies to develop its nuclear weapon program. However, the same governments impose heaviest pressures and psychological warfare upon the member countries on the false pretext of probable diversions of their peaceful activities without giving any substantiated evidence.
7. Taking Nuclear Energy Tantamount to Nuclear Weapons
It is clearly evident to all that nuclear energy is the most clean and cheapest sources of energy. Climatic changes and environmental pollutions arising from fossil fuel consumption which is also non-renewable, underline the need for the use of nuclear energy. For the continued generation of 1000 megawatt of electricity in a year needs 7 million barrels of oil that cost 500 million dollars with current crude prices, while the cost of generating the same capacity with nuclear energy amounts about 60 million dollars. Generally the investment needed to construct and utilize a nuclear power plant is less than half of the cots of power plant operated with fossil fuels. Moreover, nuclear power plants do not create environmental pollutions. Nuclear technology can be effectively and widely applied in the production of medical isotopes for diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening diseases as well as in industry, agriculture and in other fields.
One of the biggest treasons committed by the countries which own the monopoly of nuclear weapons is the way they have placed nuclear arms in the category of nuclear energy. As a matter of fact, the path to a weaponry program is different from the process of using nuclear energy and they want to monopolize both the weapons and the energy, in order to boost their ability to force their views on the international community.
8. Lack of balance in the provisions of NPT and the responsibilities of the IAEA
Although NPT has been entrusted to fulfill three major goals of non-proliferation, including disarmament, access of all members to nuclear technology, and peaceful use of nuclear energy, the applicant countries face the most difficult conditions reflected in the adoption of safeguards and mechanisms. On the contrary, no effective tool has been introduced to address the potential risk of nuclear weapons, which is viewed as the most crucial mission of the IAEA. All efforts in this respect are merely limited to dialogue that lacks any guarantee or force. The IAEA has been putting most pressures on non-nuclear states whilst nuclear bomb states continue to enjoy full immunity and exclusive rights.
Dear friends,
It has now become evidently clear that production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and policies enforced by some nuclear weapon countries, as well as the weakness and imbalance in the NPT are major factors of insecurity and development of nuclear arms.
Today, nuclear disarmament, elimination of nuclear threat and non-proliferation are regarded as the essential tools for building sustainable security and enhanced peace and amity.
However, the question is whether granting extraordinary authority in the IAEA to the nuclear weapons states to address the important issue of disarmament is the right approach. This policy that has been pursued for over forty years only produced totally different results. It is a simplistic and illogical thinking to expect the nuclear weapons states to take any effective voluntary initiative towards disarmament and non-proliferation, because they consider nuclear arms a factor of superiority.
An Iranian saying reads: A knife never cuts its handle.
Expecting the greatest sellers of the nuclear weapons to monitor the disarmament process is illogical.
The government of the United States that is the biggest culprit in the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons or threat to use them insists on taking the lead in reforming the NPT through a series of propaganda moves. The US Administration, in defining its new nuclear policies, has announced that it will not produce new nuclear arm and will not attack non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons. The United States has never respected any of its commitments. What are the guarantees for such a commitment or the tool for its verification? I should remind that in the past decades, the United States had most of its wars with its friends. Furthermore, under the new policies, some member states of NPT were threatened to be the target of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The United States has always diverted public attention from its illegitimate actions bringing into focus misleading issues. They have recently raised the issue of nuclear terrorism as part of its efforts to maintain, upgrade, and complete their nuclear arsenals on one hand, and divert world public opinion from the issue of disarmament by repeating fake and baseless stories on the intention of independent states that defy US expansionist policies.
In the new strategy, there is no mention nuclear strike against nuclear weapon countries in order to concentrate on the target independent nations. Meanwhile major terrorist networks are supported by its intelligence agencies and by the Zionist regime. We have concrete evidence in this very connection that will be exhibited during the forthcoming conference on global fight against terrorism in Tehran.
In the new policy, they say they will not develop weapons, but they will enhance their capability enhancement means giving greater capability to nuclear weapons to kill and destroy without being tested. This is proliferation and development of new weapons, in addition, such policies are not verifiable, because there is no inspection by any independent body on nuclear programs of the United States and its allies.
Let us see the difference in the Washington Meeting, the host country focused its efforts to preserve its monopoly of nuclear weapons and superiority on other countries, while the Tehran Meeting participate were seeking to make the world free from nuclear weapons.
The motto of Tehran Meeting was, “Nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none”.
Dear colleagues,
To realize the humanitarian goal of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, and useful use of nuclear energy, I offer the following proposals:
1. Modification and completion of NPT
The treaty much be changed to D.N.P.T and disarmament must be within the preview of its missions through clear, binding, and effective mechanisms along with solid international guarantees. The mission must be pursued and be implemented by non-nuclear weapons states.
2. Formation of an independent international group to be entrusted with full authority by the General Assembly with the adoption of the operational procedures of the Article 6 of the NPT, and planning and full inspection on the nuclear disarmament and non proliferation.
This group must follow its activities in a way to ensure effective participation of all independent nations in the management of works with intention to eliminate all nuclear weapon under an urgent timetable, maximum 3 years. Realization of such a goal is technically feasible based on expert analyzers.
3. Introduction of legally-binding comprehensive security guarantees, without discrimination or condition until the achievement of a complete nuclear disarmament on the part of nuclear weapon states.
4. Immediate cessation of all types of research, development or improvement of nuclear weapons and related facilities, and introduction of a plan to ensure independent and effective monitoring of non-nuclear weapon states.
5. Adoption of a legally binding instruction on the full prohibition of the production, development, stockpiling, and proliferation of nuclear arms.
6. Suspension of membership from the IAEA and the Board of Governors of countries that resort to the use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.
The presence and political influence of a number of countries has so far prevented the IAEA from performing its legal functions particularly with regard to articles 4 and 6 of the statute. The government of the United States should not be a member of the Board of Governors that in addition to the use of atomic bombs in the war with Japan, deployed weapons, during the war in Iraq, with munitions made from weakened uranium. How can such a government be a member of the Board of Governors?
7. Cessation of nuclear cooperation with non-member countries, and adoption of punitive measures against all countries that continue their cooperation with non-members.
8. Any threat to attack or use of nuclear weapons, or attacks on nuclear facilities must be regarded as an act jeopardizing the international peace and security urging rapid reaction of the United Nations and NPT members to suspend cooperation with the country that threatened or committed the military action.
9. Rapid and unconditional implementation of the resolution at the 1995 meeting for establishment of nuclear free zone in the Middle East.
10. Dismantling of nuclear weapons from the military bases of the United States and its allies in other countries including in Germany, Italy and Japan.
11. Collective efforts to reform the structure of the Security Council
The current structure of Security Council is absolutely unfair and inefficient. Changing the structure of the Council and completion of NPT are inextricably tied to each other towards the accomplishment of the goals of the IAEA.
Dear friends!
I, on behalf of the great and civilized, and culture maker Iranian nation, that has always been the harbinger of monotheism, justice, and peace in the world, declare the readiness of the Islamic Republic of Iran for participation in implementing the above mentioned proposal and the justice seeking disarmament programs, as well as taking peaceful advantage of the nuclear energy.
I hereby declare with a loud voice that a nation that has nurtured and trained in its cradle great personalities like Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sanaie, Vahshi Bafqi, Avicenna, Abu-Reyhan, Shariar, and the noble and freedom seeker leaders, a Gnostic and sagacious man such as Imam Khomeini (P), and dedicated them to the mankind; a nation that has always been the harbinger of love, kindness and peace of the entire mankind and a poem by whose renowned poet Sa’di glows in the United Nations, reading, “The mankind are entirely limbs of the same body; As they are all made of the same gem”; a nation that declared 2,500 years ago that slavery is annulled and a crime against mankind, that is to say, the great Iranian nation, does not need the atomic bomb for its advancement and does not regard it as a means for its grandeur and pride.
The logic and demand of the Iranian nation is the manifestation of the demand of the entire nations.
The entire nations love peace, brotherhood and hate and suffer from discrimination and injustice. Many of my colleagues heads of governments, and many personalities and well wisher and justice seeker thinkers have in their talks with me expressed shared concerns regarding the need for global disarmament and the expansion of public usage of clean and peaceful nuclear energy, ending the monopoly of its usage, which is included in our proposals.
This is the word of the entire independent nations and governments that say:
Nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none.
Therefore, my presence and my address here is their presence and their addresses.
Dear colleagues!
Now I wish to say a few words to those who still consider production, stockpiling of nuclear weapons as a pillar for their strength and a cause to be proud of:
They had better realize that the era of the nuclear bombs is over now. Production, stockpiling, and threatening to sue the nuclear weapons is exclusively the conduct of those who cannot resort to clear logic and cannot think humanely.
Resorting to the language of threats in confrontation with strong logic is a policy of the past and incompetent in our times.
We are living at the age of nations, cultures, and primacy of human power of intellect. Reliance on the force of weapons in international relations is a sinister legacy of uncultured, and barbaric governments of the past.
The policies aimed at bringing under control the entire world has clearly suffered a dramatic defeat, and the dreams of new empires will never come true.
Instead of following the outdated course of the past, it is better to join to the mainstream of nations and independent governments on the solid foundation of human culture and logic. This is for their own good and best interest’s future belongs to the nations, security, peace and justice shall prevail in the whole world with the help of the faithful under the leadership of the perfect human being. There will be no room in the future world for intimidation and arrogant powers.
The collective movement of the world nations aimed at launching major reforms based on monotheism and establishment of justice in international relations has begun.
I hereby invite the esteemed President of the United States Mr. Obama to join this movement if he is still committed to his motto of change, since tomorrow would be too late.
Dear friends and colleagues;
Through cooperation and sympathy, wishing for a world abounding in justice and peace is near at hand and the motto of nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none would be the basis for interactions between human beings with one another, and the human beings with the nature.
Hoping for a day when justice would abound, no human being would get angry, and when he would, he would find no weapon to quench his anger.
Hello to justice and freedom,
Hello to love and affectionate feelings,
And I wish you success, prestigious lives, and victory.
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Tags: footsteps towards true peace, opposing world war III
Categories : How Do We Build the Resistance?, The Most Moral Army In the World, serving life, survival
Kazakhstan Suggested US to Open Military Base on its Territory
5 05 2010
Kazakhstan Suggested US to Open Military Base on its Territory
by Daniyar Karimov
He said that the proposal was stated by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev at the meeting with the US President Barack Obama in Washington. “The leaders discussed a possibility of the US troops to fly in Afghanistan through the North Pole and territory of Kazakhstan from the US, McFaul underlined, that is more convenient than flights through Europe”.
By the “K2Kapital”: the US looks for an alternative path for its military troop’s flight to Afghanistan. Notwithstanding that the interim government head Roza Otunbaeva stated that the new state administration will follow all agreements concerning the Transit Center Manas.
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Pogroms in the Kyrgyz village
5 05 2010Two weeks after the start of riots in Kyrgyz village Mayevka burst aggressive mob number several thousand. Five villagers were killed and several houses destroyed. Most farms in Mayevka owned ethnic Turks.In Kyrgyzstan, there are thousands of villages, where, as in the May Day gatherings, side by side is inhabited by various peoples. No one can be sure that the events occurred here will not be repeated in other parts of Kyrgyzstan. http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/multimedia/2010/05/100503_v_kyrgyz_mayevka.shtml
more about " Pogroms in the Kyrgyz village", posted with vodpod
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The Evidence From Faisal Shahzad–(Goog.Trans.)
5 05 2010[Once again, we see another unfortunate patsy sent to create an "al Qaida" scare in the US. If this boy or his predecessor (underwear bomber, who came after the "shoe bomber") had really been trained by "al Qaida" super-terrorists, he would have known how to make real explosives and detonators. His "car bomb" would have had a chance to really go "BOOM!" instead of potentially creating a fireball. This is practically a repeat of the amateurish 2007 Glasgow Airport attack. In all of these cases, we are urged to believe that these people were trained by explosives experts, but if that was true, they would be using tried and true detonation initiators, instead of making attempts that look like they were dreamed-up by a twelve-year old.
If Hakeemullah Mehsud really claimed that this bomber was his man, then he really comes-off looking like an asshole.]How the FBI came to the prince
Vladimir Kozlovsky
Russian Service of BBC, New York
Russian Service of BBC, New York
Investigators have tried not to miss anything As is clear from this document, when miners and an investigation team was thrown close to the corner of 45 th Street and 7 th Avenue dark green Nissan Pathfinder SUV with the engine and lights flashing, he was steaming, and the contents of his trunk smoldered.
Measures to prevent the explosion took about eight hours, after which the investigators have got in the SUV and took out several white plastic bags of fertilizer, two red cans of gasoline with a capacity of 5 gallons, 158 crackers M-88 fireworks, three full propane tank, two alarm connected to the wire, the three keys to the house and the key to the car brand Isuzu.
M88 fireworks have about a tenth of the explosive force of M80 fireworks.Boss SUV scraped from the dashboard of his serial number, but investigators quickly discovered it in other places and found the name and address of the last person to whom it was registered in Connecticut. The local traffic police said that the Nissan was registered there under a different number. The official owner of the car revealed on Sunday that gave it to another man, and he recently sold it, and therefore appears in court papers simply as a seller.
On the same day the Connecticut FBI questioned the Seller, who told them that in April, he posted an online advertisement and selling SUV. A few days later he telephoned potential buyer.
It looks like the first indictment in the case of Faisal Shahzad He rejected a proposal to reformulate the car at him, explaining that she already has to her room.
The buyer left the parking lot at its new SUV, leaving behind a black Isuzu. On Monday, the Seller has met with a police artist who painted with his words, a portrait of the buyer.
The same day, the Seller shown a set of six photos and asked to identify the buyer SUV. He pointed to a picture Faisal Shahzad. The investigator contacted the Connecticut Pechtman traffic police and found that the number of owners Shahzad black Jeep Isuzu Rodeo S / LS.
Pechtman received from the phone company Verizon data on the cellular phone, from which Shahzad agree with the seller about the meeting. Telephone operated from 16 to 28 April. Among other things, he called four times from Pakistan. 25 April, he phoned in Pennsylvania in the shop selling crackers M-88.
On Monday, investigators spoke with the owner of the house in Bridgeport, where he lived Shahzad. A few hours earlier the landlord had seen Shahzad comes into the garage behind the house. Inside could be seen two bags of fertilizers. Investigators conducted a search and found the fertilizer and crackers.
One of the keys found in SUV in Times Square, went to the castle in the apartment prince.
According to investigators Pechtmana, after the prince was arrested at the airport after. Kennedy, he showed that he was taught to make bombs in Waziristan. He also admitted that the car in which he arrived at the airport, lies a gun. Investigators searched the car and actually found a barrel.
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Faisal Shahzad, the Terror Suspect Behind the Times Square Car Bomb
5 05 2010Faisal Shahzad: Who is the terror suspect behind the Times Square car bomb?
BY KEVIN DEUTSCH IN BRIDGEPORT, CONN.">CONN., JOE JACKSON IN SHELTON, CONN., AND ROCCO PARASCANDOLA AND RICH SCHAPIRO IN NEW YORKDAILY NEWS WRITERS
PHOTOS: Shahzad, believed to be the man in the pic above, was arrested while trying to leave the country on board a plane departing for Dubai. The man at the center of the botched Times Square car bomb plot was known in his neighborhood as a mysterious loner who kept odd hours and "always looked on edge," neighbors said Tuesday. "I thought he might be connected to to terrorism – a lot of us did because he acted strangely," said Dashawn LeBelle, who lives near Faisal Shahzad in Bridgeport, Conn. "But we didn’t call police. We should have called."
"He would be carrying in boxes in the middle of the night. He always looked on edge," said LeBelle, who added that he often wore Islamic garb.
"We knew something weird was going on."
Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American, was in custody Tuesday after he was pulled off a Dubai-bound flight at JFK Airport.
Shahzad recently traveled to Pakistan, where he reportedly spent time in Karachi and Peshawar, an area known as a haven for Islamic militants, officials said.
A married father of two small children, Shahzad moved to Bridgeport, Conn., with his wife, Huma Mian, last year.
"He was a very smart guy, very kind, but you could sort of tell he was hiding something," said Lorenzo Patel, 32. "He had family but it’s like he was going places alone and keeping odd hours, not like a father should.
"That house gave me a bad feeling."
Born in Karachi, Shahzad moved to the United States in 1998 after getting a student visa, sources said.
Shahzad, whose father was a member of the Pakistani Air Force, studied at now-shuttered Southeastern University in Washington, D.C., before transferring to the University of Bridgeport, where he graduated in 2000 with a degree in computer applications and information systems.
He returned to the school and earned an MBA in 2005.
"I remember him as being quiet but very intelligent and diligent," said one professor, who declined to give his name.
After graduating, Shahzad was granted a work visa.
He got married in 2008 and became a naturalized citizen on April 17, 2009.
Before moving to Bridgeport, Shahzad lived in a two-story colonial home in Shelton, Conn.
He purchased the house in 2004 and took out a $218,400 mortgage. But the house went into foreclosure last year.
That wasn’t the end of his money woes. Shahzad also was sued last year by Hoffman Fuel for $793.14, records show.
Neighbor Brenda Thurman, 37, said Shahzad dressed nicely and claimed to work on Wall Street.
Thurman said she spoke sporadically with Shahzad and that it took three years for the wife to admit she too spoke English.
"They seemed a little strange but not to the point of this," Thurman said.
Thurman added that he left the family’s home every morning, wearing a shirt and tie.
"Other than that he didn’t come out much," Thurman said. He said he didn’t like daylight. When he came out at night he was always in black, full length dress. He would go jogging like that. I thought it was strange."
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Pakistan Makes Quick Arrests In NYC Bomb Attempt
4 05 2010Pakistan makes arrests connected to NYC bomb attempt
Zeeshan HaiderISLAMABAD
(Reuters) – Pakistan on Tuesday made several arrests in connection with the failed Times Square car bomb attack in New York, security sources said.
"We have picked up a few family members" related to Faisal Shahzad, the chief suspect in the attempted attack, a security official in Karachi said. A friend of Shahzad was also arrested.
Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American, was arrested late on Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after being removed from a plane as it was about take off for Dubai, American officials said.
Another intelligence official in Pakistan said Shahzad received militant training in northwest Pakistan near the garrison town of Kohat. The area around Kohat is a stronghold of Tariq Afridi, the main Pakistani Taliban commander in the region.
Pakistan, which could come under renewed U.S. pressure to crack down harder on militants after the Times Square incident, vowed on Tuesday to help the United States bring Shahzad to justice
Shahzad will appear in Manhattan federal court later on Tuesday to face charges "for allegedly driving a car bomb into Times Square on the evening of May 1," according to a statement by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, FBI agent George Venizelos and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
"We will cooperate with the United States in identifying this individual and bringing him to justice," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Reuters.
U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson met Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Malik and talked about the issue, Pakistani government officials and the U.S. Embassy said.
"We have an ongoing cooperation with the United States on anti-terrorism efforts. If required by the United States, we will extend full cooperation to them in this regard," Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said.
‘HE BELONGS TO PABBI’
Malik said Faisal’s family came from northwestern Pakistan which is mainly inhabited by Pashtuns and where Islamic militants are active.
"He belongs to Pabbi," he said, referring to a small town near the main northwestern city of Peshawar about an hour’s drive from Islamabad.
"He has Pakistani identification documents. We are making further checks."
He added there had been no arrests in Pakistan so far.
A source familiar with the investigation in the United States said Faisal was of Kashmiri descent.
Pakistan is a key ally of the United States and has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda operatives and handed over many of them to the United States after it signed up to the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
The Taliban in Pakistan said on Sunday it planted the bomb in Times Square to avenge the killing in April of al Qaeda’s two top leaders in Iraq as well as U.S. interference in Muslim countries.
Some officials voiced scepticism about the claim. But former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, who last year oversaw an Obama administration strategy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, cautioned against dismissing a possible role by the Taliban.
(Editing by Chris Allbritton)
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Antony C. Sutton, Documented Wall St. Backing of Communism and Nazism
4 05 2010[Professor Sutton led the way in exposing the treacherous duplicity of America's financial and political leaders. Never before in history has mankind produced national leadership in any country which allowed the financial powers to manufacture and strengthen enemies, to wage war against their own countrymen. Sutton documented this, producing detailed research which implicated the international bankers, especially those with American citizenship, even though he endured public charges of "anti-Semitism" for daring to expose powerful Jewish interests.
Further investigations by Dr. Sutton into American secret societies like the Skull & Bones, and shadowy organizations like the Trilateralists shone light where none had been before, from his insider positions in academia. His work showed us that America's secret leaders have been sowing subversion and creating America's own enemies long before today's "Islamists" came along. We need more insiders like him to dig through the real records of the infinite crimes committed in their quest for a global empire.]
— Feb. 14, 1925 – June 17, 2002
Antony Sutton has been persecuted but never prosecuted for his research and subsequent publishing of his findings. His mainstream career was shattered by his devotion towards uncovering the truth. In 1968, his Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development was published by The Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Sutton showed how the Soviet state’s technological and manufacturing base, which was then engaged in supplying the North Vietnamese the armaments and supplies to kill and wound American soldiers, was built by US firms and mostly paid for by the US taxpayers. From their largest steel and iron plant, to automobile manufacturing equipment, to precision ball-bearings and computers, basically the majority of the Soviet’s large industrial enterprises had been built with the United States help or technical assistance. Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard said in his book, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America’s Future (Simon & Schuster;1984): “In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology . . . [Antony] Sutton comes to conclusions that are uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work tends to be either dismissed out of hand as ‘extreme’ or, more often, simply ignored.”
The report was too much and Sutton’s career as a well-paid member of the academic establishment was under attack and he was told that he “would not survive”.
His work led him to more questions than answers. “Why had the US built-up it’s enemy? Why did the US build-up the Soviet Union, while we also transferred technology to Hitler’s Germany? Why does Washington want to conceal these facts?”
Sutton, following his leads, proceeded to research and write his three outstanding books on Wall Street, FDR, the Rise of Hitler, and The Bolshevik Revolution. Then, someone sent Antony a membership list of Skull and Bones and “a picture jumped out”. And what a picture! A multigenerational foreign-based secret society with fingers in all kinds of pies and roots going back to ‘Illuminati’ influences in 1830′s Germany.
Further investigations by Dr. Sutton into American secret societies like the Skull & Bones, and shadowy organizations like the Trilateralists shone light where none had been before, from his insider positions in academia. His work showed us that America's secret leaders have been sowing subversion and creating America's own enemies long before today's "Islamists" came along. We need more insiders like him to dig through the real records of the infinite crimes committed in their quest for a global empire.]
Antony C. Sutton
— Feb. 14, 1925 – June 17, 2002Antony Sutton has been persecuted but never prosecuted for his research and subsequent publishing of his findings. His mainstream career was shattered by his devotion towards uncovering the truth. In 1968, his Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development was published by The Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Sutton showed how the Soviet state’s technological and manufacturing base, which was then engaged in supplying the North Vietnamese the armaments and supplies to kill and wound American soldiers, was built by US firms and mostly paid for by the US taxpayers. From their largest steel and iron plant, to automobile manufacturing equipment, to precision ball-bearings and computers, basically the majority of the Soviet’s large industrial enterprises had been built with the United States help or technical assistance. Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard said in his book, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America’s Future (Simon & Schuster;1984): “In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology . . . [Antony] Sutton comes to conclusions that are uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work tends to be either dismissed out of hand as ‘extreme’ or, more often, simply ignored.”
The report was too much and Sutton’s career as a well-paid member of the academic establishment was under attack and he was told that he “would not survive”.
His work led him to more questions than answers. “Why had the US built-up it’s enemy? Why did the US build-up the Soviet Union, while we also transferred technology to Hitler’s Germany? Why does Washington want to conceal these facts?”
Sutton, following his leads, proceeded to research and write his three outstanding books on Wall Street, FDR, the Rise of Hitler, and The Bolshevik Revolution. Then, someone sent Antony a membership list of Skull and Bones and “a picture jumped out”. And what a picture! A multigenerational foreign-based secret society with fingers in all kinds of pies and roots going back to ‘Illuminati’ influences in 1830′s Germany.
Published Works of ANTONY C SUTTON |
| THE VIEW FROM 4-SPACE 1998 FTIR . . . . $50.00 COLD FUSION; SECRET ENERGY REVOLUTION 1997 FTIR . . . . $50.00 YOLLSRIT I BOLSHEVETSKAYA REVOLUTSIYA 1996 Moscow . . . . Russian TRILATERALS OVER AMERICA 1995 CPA Get it from Amazon KAK ORDEN ORGANICHET VOINIYA I REVOLUTZIYA 1995 Moscow . . . . Russian DUTCH NATIONAL TV Two-part documentary on financing Hitler. Detailing Bush/Harriman role. Commentator Daniel de Wit . . . . Dutch THE FEDERAL RESERVE CONSPIRACY 1995 CPA Get it from Amazon THE TWO FACES OF GEORGE BUSH 1988 Out of print. AMERICAS SECRET ESTABLISHMENT 1986 Liberty House Press . . . . $20.00 406-652-3326 / 406-652-3329 (fax) AMERICAS SECRET ESTABLISHMENT Updated hardcover 2002 edition. TrineDay P.O. Box 577 Walterville, OR 97489 800.556.2012 http://www.trineday.com THE BEST ENEMY MONEY CAN BUY 1986 Liberty House Press . . . . $12.50 Get it from Amazon THE DIAMOND CONNECTION 1979 FTIR . . . . $20.00 ENERGY; THE CREATED CRISIS 1979 Out of print THE WAR ON GOLD 1977 Arlington House (New York) and Sandton (South Africa) Out of print You may be able to get it from Amazon DER LOSE SELBSTMORD; AMERIKAS MILITARHILFE AN MOSKAU 1976 Swiss East Institut, Berne . . . . German WALL STREET AND FDR 1976 Arlington House 1999 Buccaneer Books NATIONAL SUICIDE; MILITARY AID TO THE SOVIET UNION 1973 Out of print You may be able to get it from Amazon |  WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER1976 Arlington House. 1999 Buccaneer Books http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/ Get it from Amazon WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION 1974 Arlington House 1999 Buccaneer Books WHAT IS LIBERTARIANISM? 1973 Out of print. WARS AND REVOLUTIONS; a comprehensive list of conflicts including fatalities 1973 Part One 1820 to 1900 1974 Part Two 1900 to-1972 Out of print. WESTERN TECHNOLOGY AND SOVIET ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 1968 Volume One 1917-1930 1971 Volume Two 1930-1945 1973 Volume Three 1945-1965 In print available from Hoover Institution Press. Get it from Amazon UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT THE STATE, WAR AND REVOLUTION in three volumes. PERIODICALS FUTURE TECHNOLOGY INTELLIGENCE REPORT Monthly 8-page newsletter $65.00 a year. INVESTMENT SUPPLEMENT to FTIR $ 100.00 A YEAR. ADDRESSES FOR PUBLISHERS
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