BOOKS-US: When Neocons Ruled Washington
Global Intelligence News / IPS Michael Flynn GENEVA, Dec 16 (IPS) - In the first two pages of his book on the neoconservative movement, historian Stephen Sniegoski tells us that U.S. Mideast policy during the George W. Bush presidency has been ”colossally erroneous” and ”disastrous to U.S. interests”, that the Iraq War is a ”blunder of colossal proportions”, and that an attack on Iran is a ”highly likely” ”disaster” unless the country ”eschews all elements of the Middle East war policy”. It is hard to argue with these points. But the book's relentless, partisan rhetoric serves to confirm what is obvious ...
SPECIAL SERIES: Is a U.S.-Iran Deal on the Middle East Possible?
Global Intelligence News / IPS Gareth Porter* TEHRAN, Dec 15 (IPS) - Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think tank analysts is, ”Yes, but...” The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there's a big difference between Iranian and U.S. ideas of what such an accord would look like. Washington is fixated on what it would take to get Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. On the other hand, Iranians interviewed ...
TERRORISM & THE BUSINESS WORLD —AN UPDATE
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.481 Global Intelligence News by B. Raman ( A talk delivered at a symposium organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology at Delhi on December 13,2008) Terrorists target human beings---combatants and non-combatants (civilians)--- as well as capabilities---economic and strategic. 2. Till the 1980s, they focused more on targeting human beings. Targeting of capabilities----which may or may not cause human fatalities---- came into vogue in the 1980s, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out explosions in London's financial district. 3. Targeting of capabilities does not create the same kind of public revulsion against the terrorists as the targeting of human beings ...
RIGHTS-NEPAL: ‘Maoists Slow to Return Seized Property’
Global Intelligence News / IPS Renu Kshetry KATHMANDU, Dec 9 (IPS) - Tej Bahadur Roila, a member of the Nepal army, is unable to return to his home in the Khotang district of Eastern Nepal because his property, seized by Maoist rebels in the middle of the decade-long civil war they waged against the monarchy, has not been returned. The political arm of the rebels, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) -- which emerged as the largest political party elections held in April following the 2006 peace deal -- has done little to fulfil pledges to return property grabbed by ...
PAKISTAN DETAINS LET’S KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMAD?
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR--PAPER NO. 480 Global Intelligence News B.RAMAN Pakistani media and some foreign news agencies, including the Associated Press, reported on December 8,2008, that helicopter-borne Pakistani security forces raided a camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) located at a place called Shawai, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), on December 7 and detained 12 inmates of the camp, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, reportedly the operational chief of the LET. 2.Major-Gen.Athar Abbas, a spokesman of the army, while briefing the media, confirmed that the security forces had carried out " an intelligence-led operation against a banned militant organisation and ...
MUMBAI: ANSWERS TO READERS’ QUESTIONS
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.478 Global Intelligence News B.RAMAN (In this article, I will try to answer some of the questions, which I have received from readers of my articles on the Mumbai terrorist strikes) 1.How strong is the evidence of the involvement of Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) ? It is very strong.The evidence collected till now is partly direct and partly circumstantial. The direct evidence has come from the interrogation of one of the perpetrators (Mohammad Ajmal Amir, son of Mohammad Amir Imam, of village Faridkot in the Okara District of Pakistan's Punjab), who has been arrested and who is under interrogation. He has given details ...
SOUTH ASIA: Concern for Zardari’s Civilian Gov’t Stays India
Global Intelligence News / IPS Analysis by Praful Bidwai NEW DELHI, Dec 7 (IPS) - After United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to New Delhi and Islamabad, in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, India has added a new rationale for stepping up pressure on Pakistan for taking decisive action against jehadi extremists operating from its soil. However, India has still not determined what approach to adopt to achieve its objective, and is wary of using means which might escalate hostility with Pakistan in ways which would "play into the hands" of those responsible for acts of terrorism against its ...
Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate and Transition
Republished with permission on the Global Intelligence News A Global Geopolitics Net Site PDA, Project on Defense Alternatives 5 December 2008 Read the full article in pdf format with graphs and charts on the PDA site. The US defense policy paradox: less security at increasing cost The United States is entering a critical period of policy transition. Beginning with the advent of the Obama administration, and continuing through the end of 2010, all of America's national security and defense planning guidance will be revised. Certainly the need for change is broadly felt by the public. And it is not difficult to understand why. Recent defense ...
SRI LANKA: No Calm After the Storm
Global Intelligence News / IPS IPS Correspondents COLOMBO, Dec 5 (IPS) - The only good thing about tropical storm ‘Nisha', that lashed northern Sri Lanka in the last week of November, was that it brought a lull to the fierce fighting between Tamil separatist rebels and the Sri Lankan army. According to the Disaster Management Centre, over 370,000 persons were affected by gale force winds and rains, and more than 50,000 houses were damaged -- 11,000 of them completely destroyed -- in nine districts in the country between Nov. 22 - 30 when Nisha struck. Eleven persons were known to ...
The ‘Other’, Older Palestinian Coup D’etat
Global Intelligence News By Nicola Nasser* Failing to substantiate for the President of the autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, a credible “legal” basis to extend his term from the Basic Law, which is the constitutional terms of reference that govern the rotation of power and the renewal of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the PA, Abbas in his capacity as the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) convened the rubber stamping Fatah –dominated Central Council (CC) of the PLO in the West Bank city of Ramallah to elect him also President of the State ...
RIGHTS: Ret. Officers Urge Obama to Expunge ”Stain of Torture”
Global Intelligence News / IPS William Fisher NEW YORK, Dec 3 (IPS) - As a group of retired military leaders prepared to urge U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to quickly put an end to the harsh interrogation practices inflicted on security prisoners, a new United Nations report charged that Iraqi authorities were committing ”grave human rights violations” in their treatment of thousands of detainees. ”Grave human rights violations ... remain unaddressed,” the U.N. report said. It cited ”ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amid pervasive impunity of current and past human rights abuses.” The U.N. report cast ...
Two Analysts of Global Terrorism Comment on Mumbai
Rohan Gunaratna and Larry C. Johnson Commentary Republished on the Global News Blog Learning from the Mumbai Tragedy Rohan Gunaratna The coordinated simultaneous attack in Mumbai on November 27, 2008 was a classic Al Qaeda-style attack. Although not perpetrated by Osama bin Laden's group, the attackers and their masterminds were influenced by Al Qaeda's methodology and ideology. The terrorists selected high profile, symbolic and strategic targets. It was a mass fatality - mass casualty attack where the terrorists were killing to kill and die. The attack primarily targeted India but also singled out Americans, its allies and friends. The subcontinental terrorists that staged an ...
INDIA: Mulling Tough Options Against Pakistan
Global Intelligence News / IPS Analysis by Praful Bidwai NEW DELHI, Dec 3 (IPS) - United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in the Indian capital Wednesday to try and soothe nerves frayed by last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, but is likely to face an uphill task in defusing mounting suspicion and tension between India and Pakistan. Many Indian policymakers have adopted a hardened posture against Pakistan in the belief that its state agencies, such as the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), were behind the attacks, which have killed nearly 200 people, including 28 foreign nationals. Conservative commentators have unleashed ...
POLITICS-THAILAND: Gov’t Falls As Court Bans Ruling Party
Global Intelligence News / IPS Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK, Dec 2 (IPS) - A legacy of Thailand's last military regime prevailed in a superior court's judgement Tuesday to dissolve the ruling party, which was elected at a December 2007 poll to succeed that very junta that had come to power following the country's 18th coup. Somchai Wongsawat, the country's 26th prime minister and the second person to hold that office this year, was also banned from politics for five years, along with 36 other executives of the People Power Party (PPP). Two other smaller political, which made up the six-party coalition government, ...
AFTER MUMBAI : POINTS FOR ACTION
INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO.474 Global Intelligence News B.RAMAN ( This incorporates some of the points coming to my mind, but is by no means a totally comprehensive list. I have deliberately not touched upon the Pakistan dimension. I would like to wait for some more details before commenting on the action that needs to be taken) POINT 1: Set up a National Commission of professionals with no political agenda, in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, to enquire into all the major terrorist strikes that have taken place in the Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) since November,2007, and ...
U.S.: Diplomacy, Multilateralism Stressed by Obama Team
Global Intelligence News / IPS Jim Lobe* WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (IPS) - Introducing the top figures in his national security team in Chicago Monday, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama promised a ”new dawn of American leadership” that will be marked by much greater emphasis on diplomacy and multilateralism than was accorded by the incumbent, George W. Bush. Obama said all of his appointees, who featured current Pentagon chief Robert Gates and Obama's former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, shared a ”core vision of what's needed to keep the American people safe and to assure ...
Will Israel attack Iran?
Global Intelligence NewsThis article was originally published on opendemocracy.net under a Creative Commons license. Read the article in its original form. Paul Rogers The eight-week window before the new United States president takes office is causing high nervousness among those wondering about Tel Aviv's intentions vis-à-vis Tehran, says Paul Rogers 27 - 11 – 2008 The discussion in the last few years about a possible United States assault on Iran's nuclear facilities has often been accompanied by the coda that if Washington refrained from targeting this member of the "axis of evil" proclaimed by George W Bush in January 2002, then Israel might ...
POLITICS-THAILAND: Violence Shakes Elite Myth of Thai Unity
Global Intelligence News / IPS Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK, Nov 30 (IPS) - Stories of Thai men getting into fatal fights during a night of drinking are common in the local press. But the killing of Somchai, a 37-year-old man, reveals something more ominous. The murder justified the fears of some Thai analysts that the country is being torn apart by Thais attacking each other in political rage stemming from the clashes between a right-wing, anti-government protest movement and pro-government sympathisers. On Nov. 27, Somchai and two male friends had been drinking on the side of a road in a residential part of ...
Analysis
US-MIDEAST: Regional Players Key to Salvaging Peace Process
Global Intelligence News / IPS Ali Gharib WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) – One of...
Read More Posts From This CategoryCommentary
The ‘Other’, Older Palestinian Coup D’etat
Global Intelligence News By Nicola Nasser* Failing to substantiate for the President...
Read More Posts From This CategoryNews and Reports
RIGHTS-LIBERIA: ‘We Will Use Our Children as Shields’
Global Intelligence News / IPS By Rebecca Murray Children play at the Harbel marketplace. HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) – “We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that,” exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living... [Read more of this article]
RIGHTS: Bipartisan U.S. Panel Offers Blueprint to Prevent Genocide
Global Intelligence News / IPS Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (IPS) – A bipartisan task force of former top national security policymakers is calling on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to make the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities overseas a top U.S. foreign policy priority. In a report released here Monday,... [Read more of this article]
INDIA/PAKISTAN: Hoax Call Hyped by Media – Get Hostilities to Brink
Global Intelligence News / IPS Beena Sarwar KARACHI, Dec 7 (IPS) – A hoax phone call from India to Pakistan’s President threatening military reprisals in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai city, hyped up by media, brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to conflict. However, analysts believe that the hostilities arising... [Read more of this article]
US-IRAQ: Immunity Recedes for Private Contractors
Global Intelligence News / IPS William Fisher NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) – The virtually total impunity from prosecution accorded to private contractors in Iraq may be coming to an end. Under the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi government last week, U.S. contractors will be subject to Iraqi law for the first time. Moreover,... [Read more of this article]
U.S.: Mumbai Massacre Seen as Major Blow to Regional Strategy
Global Intelligence News / IPS Jim Lobe* WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) – A week after the massacre of more than 170 people by armed militants in Mumbai, U.S. officials are scrambling to prevent the incident from blowing up into a full-fledged confrontation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent Wednesday... [Read more of this article]
ENVIRONMENT: Modified Habitats Pose Threat of Zoonotic Diseases
Global Intelligence News / IPS Diego Cevallos MÉRIDA, Mexico, Dec 3 (IPS) – A breakout of yellow fever among monkeys caught authorities in Argentina and Brazil, and the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), off-guard in October. As in dozens of cases that occur every year, the outbreak was the result of growing interaction between wild... [Read more of this article]
RIGHTS-MAURITANIA: ‘Chains Are Jewellery For Men’
Global Intelligence News / IPS Ebrimah Sillah DAKAR, Dec 3 (IPS) – Mauritania’s security forces are again accused of routine and systematic torture of political opponents and Islamists accused of links with international terrorist groups. A report released by Amnesty International today details cruel violations of human rights, poor prison... [Read more of this article]
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