By Imaan Ali, Muslim Mirror

File:  shoppers in  London.

London: New census data has been released in UK and it has some new facts:

-Islam is the fastest growing religion in UK
-Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity
-Indians are the largest ethnic minority
-Christianity is on rapid decline.

The census is held every 10 years in UK and the latest was conducted in 2011, whose results were made public this week. The facts are based on how people identify themselves in terms of religion and racial ethnicity. Although it is contested that not everyone may be what they identify themselves as especially when it comes to racial ethnicity.

The census was based on 56.07 million people, and 33.7 million people identified them as Christians, whereas the number of self-identifying Muslims rose to 2.7 million, that is a rise from 3% to 4.8% of the population in last 10 years.

The Muslim Council of Britain has welcomed the result, saying Muslims were playing “a significant part in the increasing diversity of Britain.”
Islam’s 2.7 million adherents make it the second-largest religion in England and Wales, far ahead of Hinduism (817,000), Sikhism (423,000), Buddhism (248,000) and Judaism (263,000). The other fringe religions are pagan, pantheist, wiccan, satanist, druid, “Jedi Knight” and others.

This comes after the latest U.S. Religion Census that was released on May 1, 2012, which also found Islam as the fastest growing religion in America. The data for the census was compiled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, and the results were released by the Association of Religion Data Archives.  From the year 2000 to the year 2010, the census found that the number of Muslims living inside the United States increased by about 1 million to 2.6 million – a stunning increase of 66.7 percent.

Thus Islam is the fastest growing religion in both US and UK according to the latest  census reports announced this year. No wonder Barack Obama had recently said ’we are no longer a Christian country’. He wasn’t much off the mark.

The biggest surprise of UK census was the phenomenal increase of people who said they do not follow any religion and they increased from 7.7 million to 14.4 million almost doubling in last decade, which means more then quarter of people identify themselves as adhering to no religion. The assumption is that majority of these people identified earlier as Christians. This resulted in decrease in Christian’s population from 7r% to 59% in last decade alone.

In the U.S., by contrast, a 2007 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey found 16.1 percent of respondents identified as “unaffiliated” with any particular religion.

Major Christian denomination put up a brave face saying that most of the people who identified as Christians are practising one rather than the ones who associate themselves as ‘cultural christians’.

The results of the UK 2011 census released this week apply to England and Wales only. Separate data from Scotland will be published shortly.

16-4

Officials count ballots after polls closed in Cairo, January 15, 2014. Polls across Egypt closed on Wednesday evening after a second and final day of voting on a draft constitution that could pave the way for a presidential bid by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

CAIRO (Reuters) – Polls across Egypt closed on Wednesday evening after a second and final day of voting on a draft constitution that could pave the way for a presidential bid by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Voting passed off more peacefully than on Tuesday, when nine people were killed, but officials said police arrested at least 79 people on Wednesday during protests by supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi, removed from power by Sisi in July.

State media reported that polls had closed, counting had begun, and unofficial results could filter out within hours.

The constitution was expected to be approved easily. There has been little sign of opposition to it following a fierce government crackdown on Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, and human rights groups said campaigning for a “no” vote had been repressed.

The draft constitution deletes Islamic language written into the basic law approved a year ago when Mursi was still in office. It also strengthens the state bodies that defied him: the army, the police, and the judiciary.

Sisi, who deposed Mursi after mass protests against his rule, appeared to link a decision on his presidential bid to the result. Analysts say his candidacy appears to be a foregone conclusion.

Officials have not indicated when the results of the poll will be announced.

The army-backed authorities said turnout was strong, but supporters of the jailed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood said their calls for a boycott of a “sham” vote had been observed.

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights criticized Egyptian media for “stoking hatred towards the Brotherhood” and contributing to a climate of intimidation.

At many polling stations across the Arab world’s most populous country, the referendum could have been mistaken for a vote on Sisi himself.

Women chanted his name and ululated as they stood in line to vote, while a pro-army song popularized after Mursi’s overthrow blared from cars.

The referendum is a key step in the political transition plan the interim government has billed as a path to democracy as it continues to take fierce measures against the Brotherhood, Egypt’s best organized party until last year.

The government last month declared the group to be a “terrorist organization”. Al Qaeda-inspired militants have stepped up attacks on security forces since Mursi’s removal.

A presidential election could be held as early as April.

“NARROWED POLITICAL SPACE”

High turnout would be seen as a strong stamp of approval for the new political order, which could see the return of military men to power – resuming the six-decade tradition in the country until the 2011 uprising against president Hosni Mubarak.

Turnout was about 30 percent in the 2012 referendum on the Islamist-tinged constitution adopted during Mursi’s year in office.

“God willing a large percentage of the public will vote ‘yes’, and for one main reason – we have been through great hardship and been worn out,” said Hisham Mohamed Moussa, waiting to vote in Cairo.

While Western states have criticized the crackdown and called for inclusive politics, they have put little pressure on Cairo. Egypt, which controls the Suez Canal, has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East since the 1970s, when it became the first Arab state to make peace with Israel.

The U.S.-based Carter Centre, which has monitored most of the votes held over the past three years of political upheaval, sent only a small observation mission after voicing concern at “narrowed political space” around the vote.

Another U.S.-funded group, Democracy International, had 83 observers deployed across the country. DI Programme Manager Dan Murphy told Reuters observers were reporting that “from a technical standpoint the process is proceeding normally”.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington warned that international players risked lending legitimacy to a “flawed and undemocratic progress.”

(Reporting By Sameh Bardisi, Tom Perry, Shadia Nasralla, Omar Fahmy and Reuters TV; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Andrew Roche)

16-4

People love their movies. The movie industry continues to rake in billions and billions of dollars each year despite economic downturns and the advent of home theater setups. These days, a major draw for theater audiences is 3D films. A far cry from the simplistic efforts of yesteryear, today’s 3D films are technologically impressive and, in many cases, incredibly lucrative for the studios that distribute them.

In this retrospective feature, we trace the evolution of 3D movies from their humblest beginnings in the early 20th Century to their massive popularity in today’s marketplace.

The motion picture industry began taking shape in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Almost from the beginning, studios and filmmakers were searching for ways to display their movies in three dimensions. The dominant technology to arise in this era was stereoscopic 3D. As described in William Friese-Greene’s original patent, stereoscopic 3D films were broadcast on two separate screens. Viewers could then view the screens through a stereoscope, merging the two images and creating the illusion of 3D.

Some debate still exists as to what technically qualifies as the first 3D film. The popular pick is a 1903 short called L’arrivee du train. This short by the Lumiere brothers depicted an oncoming train roaring into a station. The quality was apparently good enough to convince several members of the audience they were about to be run over.

The first commercially released 3D film was 1922’s The Power of Love. This was also the first 3D film to make use of anaglyph glasses. These glasses use lenses of opposite colors. When combined with a pair of corresponding film strips, viewers achieve the 3D effect. Red and Cyan are the most commonly chosen colors because that combination produces less image ghosting than others. Unfortunately, The Power of Love did not achieve wide release and the film has since been lost.

Filmmakers and theater owners continued to experiment with the growing 3D market. Laurens Hammond and William F. Cassidy debuted their Teleview System in late 1922. This form of projection rapidly alternated frames from two film reels. Small viewers attached to the seats were synchronized to open and close their displays in accordance with the projector. Because of the cumbersome nature of the format, only one movie was ever developed specifically for the Teleview System.

Experimentation continued for several decades, but high costs and the pressures of the Great Depression prevented studios from wholeheartedly adopting 3D. One notable success story during the Depression was Audioscopiks. This film relied on the red/cyan anaglyph format. Audioscopiks earned an Academy Award in 1936 in the Best Short Subject, Novelty category.

16-3

By Ilyas Choudry

Discussion & Prayers about the Current Situation

Save Bangladesh Program in Houston.

Houston, Texas (Press Release): Save Bangladesh General Discussion and News Conference took place on Saturday, December 28, 2013 at Shahnai Restaurant Party Hall in Houston, Texas, USA. The topics of discussion were the recent atrocities of Bangladesh, police brutality, killings and assassinations, political turmoil, election fiasco, and how to save the country, so that the general people can have a peaceful life. Community activists and leaders of various organizations participated in the discussion and about 250 people attended the event. Air Marshall (retd.) Sadruddin Ahmed, Dr. Enayet Rahim, Dr. Hannan Khan, and Dr. Nizam Meah served as Chief Guests and main speakers.

The meeting started with a Quran Tilwat followed by the National Anthem of Bangladesh. Then Dr. Mohammad Rob made a PowerPoint presentation highlighting crisis and atrocities of Bangladesh during the past five years, which included BDR massacre and formation of low-grade BGB, dropping Caretaker Government, Rana Plaza disaster and garments fire, defaming Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Padma Bridge Scandal, Controversial International Crime Tribunal, Shahbag, and Hefazat uprising,  Jailing Editor Mahmudur Rahman, Closing opposite party offices and jailing their leaders, brutal killing of people by police and other forces, as well as the one-party sham election. He also showed several videos of these atrocities during the meeting.

In addition to the speeches by the Chief Guests, the following community leaders spoke in the event: Dr. Abu Asad, Dr. Kabir Miah, Dr. Amirul Islam, Mr. Syed Badrul Alam, Mr. Emran Gazi, and Mr. Sajib Choudhury.

Discussion focused in various areas such as:

i) Tribute to the Victory Day of Bangladesh,
ii) Arresting Muslims – it is difficult to grow beard, wear cap and going to Mosque – one can be arrested only for that reason,
iii) Almighty Allah will not tolerate Dhulam or injustice and a punishment for Dhulam is imminent,
iv) Garment Industry of Bangladesh is in the verge of collapse – 60% of garment industry got closed down and 40% of the business went to India.

Various posters were displayed during the meeting and Save Bangladesh program will continue. At the end, a prayer was led by Mr. Mazhar Hoq.

For further information, please Contact: Mr. Syed Badrul Alam, President of the Save Bangladesh Committee, 281-983-0658, emgt2001@yahoo.com      / Mr. Emran Gazi, Executive Member of the Save Bangladesh Committee, (713) 562-8143, advcomp@pdq.net

16-3

By Adil Daudi

… “For better or worse, for richer or poorer” … They always say it, but unfortunately it rarely happens. If you take a moment to think of all the people you know who in the last five years have gone through a divorce, I imagine you will be surprised by how high the number actually is. It is estimated that the average marriage in the United States lasts only 8.8 years, and the current divorce rate in the U.S. predicts that 1 out of 2 first-time marriages will end in divorce.  These are statistics that are concerning and scary, and if we believe that this trend doesn’t occur within our own community, then we are oblivious to what happens around us.

Because nobody plans for divorce, going through the process can be daunting and potentially costly.  Here is a non-exhaustive list of concerns most clients have:

•    What is the process for divorce cases?
•    Why/When will we be in court?
•    Do I have to talk at court?
•    What property will I get/give from the marriage?

The most common question posed during our initial consultations are the properties that are to be divided, and how/which ones can be split. Michigan law dictates that all marital property is to be equitably divided. This article will focus on some of the general factors that are considered to determine if the personal property (e.g. bank accounts, golf clubs, fine china, etc.) or real property (i.e. land) will be considered marital property or separate property for purposes of division of assets.  Please keep in mind that this article is only meant to serve as an introduction or overview; a comprehensive dissertation on this topic could fill volumes. Any detailed questions should be directed to an experienced family law attorney. 

General Rule for Marital Property v Separate Property

Generally, marital property is that which is acquired or earned during the marriage; separate property is that which is obtained or earned before the marriage.  MCL 552.19.  Therefore the Court’s first consideration when dividing property is the determination of marital and separate assets.  Byington v Byington, 224 Mich App 103, 114, n.4; 568 NW2d 141 (1997).  After such determination is made, the court may consider whether it is appropriate to “invade” the separate property of a spouse.

Some Exceptions to the General Rule

Generally, only the marital estate is divided between the parties, and each party takes away from the marriage that party’s own separate estate with no invasion by the other party.  Reeves v Reeves, 226 Mich App 490, 494 (1997). This rule of “non-invasion” has only two exceptions, both statutory.

1.    MCL 552.23(1): if the estate and effects awarded to either party are insufficient for the suitable support and maintenance of either party and any children of the marriage who are committed to the care and custody of either party, the court may also award to either party the part of the real and personal estate of either party and spousal support out of the real and personal estate, to be paid to either party in gross or otherwise as the court considers just and reasonable, after considering the ability of either party to pay and the character and situation of the parties, and all the other circumstances of the case.

2.    MCL 552.401: The circuit court of this state may include in any decree of divorce or of separate maintenance entered in the circuit court appropriate provisions awarding to a party all or a portion of the property, either real or personal, owned by his or her spouse, as appears to the court to be equitable under all the circumstances of the case, if it appears from the evidence in the case that the party contributed to the acquisition, improvement, or accumulation of the property.

This statutory exception contemplates a two-part test. First, the trial court is to consider all of the relevant circumstances of the case. Next, the court is to determine whether the non-holding party contributed to the acquisition, improvement or accumulation of the separate estate.

Although divorce is never a foreseen plan, those involved should see it as an ending, but with a new beginning. The horror stories we hear of how “ugly” the divorce went does not always need to be the case. Working with the ex-spouse can have numerous benefits, including saving on costs. However, there should be no reason anyone, who has a right to a property, does not receive what they are legally entitled to by law. Working with an attorney can help alleviate many of the concerns you may have, that is why it is important and strongly recommended to meet with an experienced family law attorney to protect your rights.

Adil Daudi is an Attorney at JKY Legal Group, P.C., focusing primarily on Asset Protection for Physicians, Physician Contracts, Estate Planning, Shariah Estate Planning, Health Care Law, Business Litigation, and Corporate Formations. He can be contacted for any questions related to this article or other areas of law at adil@josephlaw.net or (517) 381-2663.

16-3

By Chris Hedges

He got the memo: The National Security Agency director, Gen. Keith Alexander, testifies on Capitol Hill in December at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Continued Oversight of U.S. Government Surveillance Authorities.”

This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will see ourselves become a nation of captives.

The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive.

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.

The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

The corporate state, in our case, has used the law to quietly abolish the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution, which were established to protect us from unwarranted intrusion by the government into our private lives. The loss of judicial and political representation and protection, part of the corporate coup d’état, means that we have no voice and no legal protection from the abuses of power. The recent ruling supporting the National Security Agency’s spying, handed down by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, is part of a very long and shameful list of judicial decisions that have repeatedly sacrificed our most cherished constitutional rights on the altar of national security since the attacks of 9/11. The courts and legislative bodies of the corporate state now routinely invert our most basic rights to justify corporate pillage and repression. They declare that massive and secret campaign donations—a form of legalized bribery—are protected speech under the First Amendment. They define corporate lobbying—under which corporations lavish funds on elected officials and write our legislation—as the people’s right to petition the government. And we can, according to new laws and legislation, be tortured or assassinated or locked up indefinitely by the military, be denied due process and be spied upon without warrants. Obsequious courtiers posing as journalists dutifully sanctify state power and amplify its falsehoods—MSNBC does this as slavishly as Fox News—while also filling our heads with the inanity of celebrity gossip and trivia. Our culture wars, which allow politicians and pundits to hyperventilate over nonsubstantive issues, mask a political system that has ceased to function. History, art, philosophy, intellectual inquiry, our past social and individual struggles for justice, the very world of ideas and culture, along with an understanding of what it means to live and participate in a functioning democracy, are thrust into black holes of forgetfulness.

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his essential book “Democracy Incorporated,” calls our system of corporate governance “inverted totalitarianism,” which represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.” It differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader; it finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, replace decaying structures with new structures. They instead purport to honor electoral politics, freedom of expression and the press, the right to privacy and the guarantees of law. But they so corrupt and manipulate electoral politics, the courts, the press and the essential levers of power as to make genuine democratic participation by the masses impossible. The U.S. Constitution has not been rewritten, but steadily emasculated through radical judicial and legislative interpretation. We have been left with a fictitious shell of democracy and a totalitarian core. And the anchor of this corporate totalitarianism is the unchecked power of our systems of internal security.

Our corporate totalitarian rulers deceive themselves as often as they deceive the public. Politics, for them, is little more than public relations. Lies are told not to achieve any discernable goal of public policy, but to protect the image of the state and its rulers. These lies have become a grotesque form of patriotism. The state’s ability through comprehensive surveillance to prevent outside inquiry into the exercise of power engenders a terrifying intellectual and moral sclerosis within the ruling elite. Absurd notions such as implanting “democracy” in Baghdad by force in order to spread it across the region or the idea that we can terrorize radical Islam across the Middle East into submission are no longer checked by reality, experience or factually based debate. Data and facts that do not fit into the whimsical theories of our political elites, generals and intelligence chiefs are ignored and hidden from public view. The ability of the citizenry to take self-corrective measures is effectively stymied. And in the end, as in all totalitarian systems, the citizens become the victims of government folly, monstrous lies, rampant corruption and state terror.

The Romanian poet Paul Celan captured the slow ingestion of an ideological poison—in his case fascism—in his poem “Death Fugue”:

Black milk of dawn we drink it at dusk
we drink it at noon and at daybreak we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we are digging a grave in the air there’s room for us all

We, like those in all emergent totalitarian states, have been mentally damaged by a carefully orchestrated historical amnesia, a state-induced stupidity. We increasingly do not remember what it means to be free. And because we do not remember, we do not react with appropriate ferocity when it is revealed that our freedom has been taken from us. The structures of the corporate state must be torn down. Its security apparatus must be destroyed. And those who defend corporate totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits and a bankrupt press, must be driven from the temples of power. Mass street protests and prolonged civil disobedience are our only hope. A failure to rise up—which is what the corporate state is counting upon—will see us enslaved.

16-3

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – For weeks, American officials have lobbied to exclude Iran from the Geneva talks on the Syrian conflict in late January, pointing to Tehran’s military and financial aid to the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

But last Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry did an about-face: Iran could take part in the conference on the sidelines, he said, a move that could bolster the importance of the talks.

Kerry’s statement was dismissed by an Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman who said that Iran “will not accept any proposal that does not respect its dignity.”

Still, the comments could present an opening for Iranian officials who have long wanted the international community to acknowledge their role as a key regional power and have indicated that there will be no resolution to the conflict in Syria without their participation.

Most importantly, they may now be willing to make some unprecedented compromises in negotiations to end the conflict, including removing Assad from power, diplomats and analysts say.

“I don’t think it’s a red line for them,” said a diplomat who recently met with senior Iranian officials.

“They would be ready to see some alternative to Mr. Assad provided that alternative is credible and does not generate chaos,” said the diplomat, who asked that he not be identified because of the sensitivity of his discussions.

Since the conflict broke out in 2011, Iran has firmly backed Assad with weapons, shipments of oil and military advisers. As the Syrian civil war took on an increasingly sectarian character, Shi’ite Iran has seen Assad as a bulwark against the spread of hostile Sunni Muslim militancy across the Arab world. Assad is a member of the Alawite minority sect, an offshoot of Shi’ism.

Nevertheless, there has been a price to pay for Iran in losing support in Arab countries where Sunnis are the majority, and in the rise of sectarian hostility in Syria’s volatile neighbors like Lebanon and Iraq.

The new suggestions that Iran might consider loosening its support for Assad come after a year in which the Syrian leader markedly improved his position both on the battlefield and in the diplomatic arena, with firm Iranian help.

A year ago rebels were steadily advancing on Damascus and many Western countries were openly proclaiming that Assad’s days were numbered. But since then Syrian government forces have won battlefield victories with the support of thousands of fighters from Iran’s allies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah Shi’ite militia.

If Iran is now open to a compromise on Syria, it is likely to find the West far more receptive than before. Western countries that once demanded Assad be removed as a pre-condition to any settlement are showing reservations about their support for his foes as al Qaeda-linked fighters have seized control of rebel-held areas.

In September, U.S. President Barack Obama called off missile strikes to punish Damascus for using chemical weapons, ending more than two years of speculation that the West might join the war against Assad as it did against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

Iran’s own relationship with the West has also been transformed with the election of President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate. Secret negotiations with the United States culminated in an historic deal in November to ease some sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear program.

However, even if they were to accept the removal of Assad it is unlikely that Iranian leaders would agree to a successor government hostile to Tehran or one that would threaten their logistical pipeline through Syria to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

“The person of Bashar Assad is expendable for Iran,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in an email. “The question is whether Iran believes it can preserve its strategic interests in Syria and the Middle East if the Assad regime were to collapse.”

SECTARIAN BACKLASH

Despite Iran’s steadfast support of Assad, there have been occasional signs that it was keeping its options open: last February, then foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi met with Moaz Khatib, the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition at the time, on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.
There have also been signs that support for Assad was divisive among senior Iranian government officials.

In late August, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a veteran politician who heads the Expediency Council advisory body, was quoted as blaming the Assad government for a chemical attack in Damascus which killed hundreds of people and nearly led to U.S. armed intervention.

“From one side the people are chemically bombed by their own government and from another side they wait for the bombs of America,” Rafsanjani said in an audio clip leaked on the internet which was quoted by a semi-official news agency. The news agency later changed the comments and Rafsanjani claimed he had been misquoted.

Iranian officials are also taking stock of the high price the country is paying for its involvement in the Syria conflict which has inflamed sectarian divisions across the region.

In late November, the Iranian embassy in Beirut was hit by a double suicide bombing which killed at least 23 people. Among the dead was the cultural attaché at the embassy. The group that claimed responsibility was the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a militant group which supports hardline Sunni rebels in Syria.

And in Iraq, a Shi’ite-led government with close ties to Tehran is facing one of its strongest challenges yet as Sunni militant fighters allied with Syria’s rebels have taken control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. The attacks sufficiently alarmed Iranian officials that a top military official offered to send military aid to the Iraqi government on Monday.

“What has changed is that the Iranians for the time being have so many strategic and security problems on their hands,” said Walter Posch, an Iran expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“Any security apparatus would be stretched with these problems. So you concentrate on these regional problems and come out as unscathed as possible and try to weather the storm.”

On a visit to Tehran last month, European Parliamentarian Marietje Schaake heard Iranian parliamentarians and other officials express support for a political resolution to the Syrian conflict.

NO BACKING AWAY FROM INTERESTS

“There is a general sense of openness to being a part of the Geneva talks but without preconditions. And that the future of Syria should be left up to the Syrian people,” said Schaake.

Still, even if Assad goes, the Iranian government will not back away from their interests in Syria, particularly if it means ties to Hezbollah are threatened. One hardline Iranian lawmaker Schaake spoke to praised Hezbollah and said the militant group should be given a prize for its work.

“So these discussions weren’t always at the solution-oriented level that we might wish to see,” Schaake added.

The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mohammad Ali Jafari, made clear last month how important Syria remains to Iran: “We will take whatever action we can and is necessary to protect Syria and we will do this with pride,” he said, according to the Tabnak news site.

There are indications that Iran is already preparing for a post-Assad scenario: for months Iran has been training and organizing local militias in Syria modeled after the Basij militia in Iran. These militias have been set up to support the Syrian government but if a government hostile to Iran’s interests follows Assad they could be used to fight it.

“They train these militias as a backup,” said Posch.

When the United Nations announced the list of participants for the conference last Monday, Iran was not on the list of countries invited in the first round. Whether Iran is ultimately invited or chooses to participate on the sidelines, the conference will be only the beginning.

“The real work will not take place on the 22nd of January,” the diplomat said. “This is to kick some political momentum into a process. The real work will begin after the 22nd of January if they get to that stage.”

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Peter Graff)

16-3

By Patricia Zengerle

Syrian refugee women sit in front their tent at Al-Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria December 31, 2013. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic and Republican U.S. senators called on Tuesday for the country to take in more of the millions of people forced from their homes during Syria’s nearly three-year civil war.

Only 31 Syrian refugees – out of an estimated 2.3 million – were allowed into the United States in the fiscal year that ended in October.

At a Senate hearing a week before an international donors conference in Kuwait, U.S. officials and senators discussed the crisis in Syria, and the burden of housing hundreds of thousands of refugees for neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon.

“This is the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis and the worst refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and perhaps since World War Two,” said Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on human rights, who said the United States has a “moral obligation” to assist.

So far, 135,000 Syrians have applied for asylum in the United States. But strict restrictions on immigration, many instituted to prevent terrorists from entering the country, have kept almost all of them out.

Washington has provided $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance to aid Syrian refugees.

The United Nations is also trying to relocate this year 30,000 displaced Syrians it considers especially vulnerable.

Witnesses testified that Washington would normally accept half, but they do not expect significant numbers to be admitted this year despite the extent of the crisis.

‘SUICIDE OF SYRIA’

“We’ve seen a country lose about 35 years of development. In a sense it’s the suicide of Syria,” said Anne Richard, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the top Republican on the subcommittee, said he was particularly concerned about the plight of Christian refugees and said they should be considered as Washington decides how to deal with the demand for more visas.

Durbin, Cruz and other senators said Washington should remain zealous about screening would-be immigrants to make sure that no potential terrorists were allowed into the United States as part of any program for Syrians.

However, several said they believed it was possible.

“I think we should be making it easier, while still checking everything that we need to check,” Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said.
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives last year engaged in a bitter debate over whether Washington should intervene to assist rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Durbin in September was one of several members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted to authorize limited military intervention to punish Assad’s government for a chemical weapons attack on civilians.

But plans for any U.S. military action were put on hold after Syria agreed to abandon its chemical weapons. The war has raged on, but the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said on Tuesday Damascus had started moving chemical weapons materials out of the country.

Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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By Geoffrey Cook, TMO

Berkeley–The American diplomat and author, Dennis B. Ross, (b. 1948) has worked in the capacity of Director of Planning in the (U.S.) State Department under President George H.W. (“Daddy”) Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President William “Bill” Clinton, and was a special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (which includes Iran) to the former Israel-leaning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Ross is no stranger to this region of Northern California from where this reporter interacted with him, for he was born in San Francisco, and raised just north across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County.  

Although he was raised in a secular household with one Jewish and one Roman Catholic (Christian) parent, he later became religiously Jewish after the Six Day War. In 2002, he even co-founded a synagogue in Maryland which only demonstrates why the he has failed to fulfill himself as a fair broker for the settlement of the injustices in the now overwhelmingly Islamic Palestine.

During the Palestinian-sympathetic President James “Jimmy” Carter’s Administration, Ross worked under the stringently Neo-Conservative pro- Israeli chauvinist, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, within the Pentagon itself.  There, he co-authored a study which recommended greater American adventurism in “the Persian Gulf Region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil and because events in Persian Gulf directly affected the Arab-Israeli conflict” (Sic!) to a great degree.”  Following, during the Reagan Administration, Ross served as the director for Near East and South Asian affairs under the National Security Council (NSA) and Deputy Director of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (1982–1984).

He, further, worked with the Right-of-Center Secretary of State James Baker to convince both Arab and Israeli leaders to attend the 1991 Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid (Spain).

Even though his curriculum vitae did not merit it, President William (Bill) Clinton named Ross as his Middle East envoy during 1993.  To his credit, he assisted the Palestinians and Israelis to reach the 1995 Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has been marred by innumerable Israeli incursions since that date, and brokered the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron during 1997. Further, he facilitated the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace, and he, also, labored on talks between Israel and Syria.

Ambassador Ross is currently at the Washington Institute for Peace.  The Ambassador has played a central role shaping American policy for the region, and his Judeophilia only demonstrates the failure of that policy, and this author in retrospect encourages Muslim-Americans to join the State Department to counter the vicious prejudice and misunderstandings towards the Islamic World in the Occident within that central governmental institution of American policy.

A question with Ross, who embraced Judaism, has been whether he is too close to the American Jewish community and Israel to be an honest broker with Iran or the Arabs.  Further, he was one of the rare full supporters of the Iraq War!

So, the event at Berkeley’s law school, Boalt Hall, expressed the American Jewish position on the Arab-Israeli crisis, and may not be too hopeful for the American Islamic Diaspora – except to comprehend the position at the other end of the table. 

The purposes of his comments were to outline his ideas for Middle Eastern peace. Most of these ideas few of us on these pages can fully embrace.

He confirmed the tension between the United States and the Saudi Arabian Kingdom.  In fact, this tension has been prevalent from Eisenhower’s Presidency (during the 1950s) onward.  Now, the Saudis are merely going public with their complaints.  At the same time the States shares commonality with the Arabian Peninsula’s desert Kingdom – such as an overriding distrust of Iran.

As Washington, Riyadh has a marked fear of radical Islamism.  Yet the Saudis accuse the American’s national ideology as alien to the Ulema.  Still, our militaries embody an ideological commonality.  The U.S.A. has managed to estrange almost all the players in the Middle East, but through it all is this abiding connection to our mutual armed forces.

Neither we nor the Saudis will tolerate the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (which your author feels is a grave error), and the Cairo coup was bankrolled in Islam’s sacred Kingdom (of Islam’s founding).         

Although Ross, personally, feels D.C. should influence the Egyptian Army to allow political parties and NGOs (Non-governmental Agencies), the SCAF (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) should be tolerated at the same time by the U.S.

Regarding Syria, he does not feel that that country will emerge united after the civil war is resolved.  President Assad’s factions control large swaths of Syrian territory while ten percent of Jordan’s population now consists of Syrian refugees. 

At the same time, the mistakes of Iraq must not be allowed to repeat themselves allowing Syria to become a magnet for Jihadists. 

America has to change the balance of power on the ground.  The question must be what our ultimate objective is.  The Obama Administration is disinclined to commit itself, for the rest of the world is not mobilized towards a solution of the Syrian question.  Syria, although the Israelis claim 30,000 Jihadists, are about Damascus at this moment making any move hostile precarious for the International Imperial powers as in fear the Sunni religious right react toward the Shia majority in neighboring Iraq which only reinforces the State establishment there.

He talked about the “grand” nuclear deal which has since has been brokered between the U.S and the (Shia) Islamic Republic of Iran.  The recent new Iranian President, Ruoahani, could not have won the poll without the support of the (Ayatollah) supreme Leader for Iran is still very much a democratic theocracy.

“The greatest issue… [for the] publics’ involved is [was] the [the public’s general] disbelief [that it] will happen.”

Talking about negotiations in general, “We, [the U.S.] as a nation, have to address that disbelief, for we “have two streets with different movements.”  Both sides, though have to compromise.  Central to this is the Palestinians should be allowed to depart the confining camps, but this is far from the Right of Return which is pivotal to the contemporary Law of War, and a basic responsibility of an occupying power which Tel Aviv is at this historical point very much is.

Although he made the demand that the Palestinians develop the rule of laws when, as M.K. Gandhi’s pointed out between the Great Wars of the last Century that the Jewish peoples had had a right to immigrate into the Mandate of Palestine in an orderly manner because of the horrors of Europe, but they must obey the prevailing Arabic law, and any land must be willingly alienated for a fair exchange of money or an equivalent exchange of acreage, and, in no way should have happened with the violence that in fact the Jews inflicted.

It is true that on both sides organized youth groups have to interact and work together to help younger generation to understand the hopes and goals of each peoples through face-to-face meetings as they develop into leaders of their respective different divergent civil and cultural societies over our Sacred Lands.

Ross believes these civil society encounters will hopefully build trust that will blossom into long-term relationship between the Settler Colonialists and primordial Arab nation.  Sources of disbelief are enduring. They can multiply which can cause conflict.  Succinctly, though, Ross vision is naïve, and is one coming from the oppressor to make the repressed to feel the persecutor’s vision be the norm for the beloved land.

Dennis Ross, traveling to West Arabian Africa stated that Egypt cannot become a “failed” State.  In the Arab monarchies and in the non-monarchies, there is a desire to establish sincere stable infra-structure.

The Saudis amazingly do not have a firm “Constitutional” rule for secession.

The focus is on the Tunisians because currently they seem to have the best chance of succeeding within the Arab Awakening.  “We [the U.S., need to be] more active [in that country].”  Back to the Iran nuclear arms understanding; President Obama sees the Iran crisis more of an “issue” than a conflict.  His Presidency has spent more effort with Tehran than any previous Administration. If the Iranians get the Bomb, the Saudis will follow, also:  (A train of logic that does not follow suit.)

Speaking of his own short-comings, in the Hebron Accord which he hashed out, even though it was a reasonable security arrangement the Israelis have not followed through to their signature upon the paper.

He believes a negotiated peace in the Levant is possible even now. There have been changes made on the ground:  “If you don’t have that faith, you can’t do it!”  Although the Muslim Brotherhood has received a violent hit by playing the democratic constitutional game in Egypt, they are still clinging on in the other successful nations of the Arab Awakening amongst which is Hamas in the mini-Palestinian State within the Gaza Strip, but blockaded by an hostile Israeli Navy on the Mediterranean Sea and an intimidating Egypt and an inimical Israel surrounding its fragile land borders.

The Brotherhood seems to be more effective out of office than in – due to the Arabic principle of Da’wa.  Further, the contemporary mythologies between Middle Eastern peoples are shifting which is altering the geopolitical patterns of the region.

While Hama’s influence is waning in Gaza, it is in ascendance curiously; on the West Bank this produces a weakened American influence over the area.

By Gulsen Solaker and Orhan Coskun

The sun sets over the Ottoman-era Suleymaniye mosque in Istanbul January 8, 2014. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s deputy police chief has been sacked, the most senior commander yet targeted in a purge of a force heavily influenced by a cleric accused by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of plotting to seize the levers of state power.

Erdogan’s AK Party meanwhile submitted plans to parliament to allow government more say over the naming of prosecutors and judges. Erdogan argues that a judiciary and police in the sway of the Hizmet (Service) movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen contrived a graft investigation now shaking his administration.

The police website said the deputy head of the national police, Muammer Bucak, and provincial chiefs, among them the commanders in the capital Ankara and the Aegean province of Izmir, were removed from their posts overnight.

The government has ousted hundreds of police since the graft affair erupted on December 17 with the detention of dozens of people including businessmen close to the government and three cabinet ministers’ sons. Among the dozens questioned, most have been released. A remaining 24, including two of the ministers’ sons, remain in custody, according to local media.

The scandal has shaken investor confidence in Turkey before elections this year and heightened concern about the erosion of judicial independence, something which in the longer term could damage Ankara’s bid for membership of the European Union.

“We urge Turkey, as a candidate country committed to the political criteria of accession…, to take all the necessary measures to ensure that allegations of wrongdoing are addressed without discrimination,” a spokesman for the European Commission said when asked in Brussels about the affair.
Details of the corruption allegations have not been made public, but are believed to relate to construction and real estate projects and Turkey’s gold trade with Iran, according to Turkish newspaper reports citing prosecutors’ documents.

The affair, exposing a deep rift within the Turkish political establishment, has shaken markets, driving the lira to new lows. Ratings agency Fitch warned that “strains on institutional integrity” were among the factors which could weaken Turkey’s creditworthiness.

Moody’s, which raised Turkey to investment grade last May, said domestic political risk was already factored into its rating, suggesting it plans no imminent change.

Continued uncertainty or even instability could present hazards for the region, where Ankara has extended its role under Erdogan. Turkey borders Iraq, Iran and Syria and hosts hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

GRIP ON JUDICIARY

Erdogan has cast the graft investigation, which poses arguably the biggest challenge of his 11-year rule, as an attempted “judicial coup” backed by foreign forces. His allies argue that the accusations have been fabricated.

Zekeriya Oz, an Istanbul prosecutor who initially led the case but has been reassigned, said he was indirectly threatened by Erdogan through two people he met in a hotel in Bursa province. He said they asked him to halt the investigation.

“These people I met … told me that the prime minister was angry at me and that…I should write a letter to him to apologize. They said the investigations against the government should immediately be halted, otherwise I would be harmed and there would be grave consequences for me,” Oz said in a statement reported by local media.

Sources in Erdogan’s office denied Oz’s statement, saying the premier had sent no such people to meet the prosecutor.

The corruption scandal exposed a long-standing rift between Erdogan and Hizmet, which exercises influence through a network of contacts built on sponsorship of schools and other social and media organizations. The two have accused each other of manipulating police and judiciary and threatening stability.

Gulen, who lives in the United States, denies involvement in launching the investigation, which broke into the public view three months before local elections that will constitute a test of Erdogan’s long-standing popularity.

The ruling party bill on the judiciary, published on parliament’s website, proposes changes to the structure of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), the body responsible for appointments in the judiciary, which Erdogan has criticized since the corruption scandal erupted last month.

It allows the undersecretary of the justice minister to be elected as chairman of the HSYK board, a move which would give the government a tighter grip over the choice of judges.

Mustafa Sentop, a deputy chairman of the AKP, said the bill was meant to stop a “parallel structure” – a term Erdogan’s supporters use to refer to Hizmet – from wielding influence.

“We aim to ensure the independence and neutrality of the judiciary and to prevent a parallel structure, groups within the HSYK, from achieving political goals through the judiciary,” he told Reuters. “This is not an attempt to intervene against an independent judiciary,” he said.

But the dispute is damaging faith in Turkey’s institutions.

“All this will act as a drag on investment, growth and development, while weighing against the EU accession drive,” said Timothy Ash, head of emerging markets at Standard Bank.

“This has been a gift to Turkey’s opponents and critics in Europe.”

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