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Grandpa started talking politics to Blake!
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Recep falls a bit flat. (See 1 below.)
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Darpa and fusion research. (See 2 below.)
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Self delusion is very dangerous! It is why Obama was elected not once but twice.
If we learn nothing else from Israel's experience with radical Islamists this alone would be valuable enough. (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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Two ironies:
a) We are currently defending Assad from ISIS and b) soon might be asked to protect Iran's nuclear secrets from getting into the hands of ISIS.
How perverse!
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The meaning of Hong Kong for the world economy! (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Erdoğan Fails to Conquer New York City
by Daniel Pipes
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appeared at an hour-long on-the-record event at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York yesterday afternoon. The complete – if not entirely coherent – transcript of the English-language simultaneous translation can be found at "A Conversation With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan." I attended the meeting along with many other members (so many attended that an overflow room was needed) and I offer some responses and reflections about him:
The Council hosts its fair share of heads of state and government, all of whom arrive surrounded by bodyguards and aides, but Erdoğan had a far more massive entourage than any I'd ever seen; by my estimate, they numbered 35, nearly all of them young men in dark suits. Odder yet, they took up the first three rows, where they sat spellbound to their leader's every word, as though they had never heard a word of it before. Even before he spoke, then, the profusion of fluttering staffers conveyed an aura of grandiosity – as was no doubt their intended purpose.
Also, the Council rarely permits teleprompters but Erdoğan relied on one, although it's unclear why it was necessary, given that he spoke in Turkish and gave his standard attack-dog speech berating many of Turkey's neighbors and going after such current favorite targets as Fethullah Gülen, the Moody's and Fitch credit-rating agencies, and the New York Times.
Perhaps most amusing was the argument that all was well when the Ottoman Empire ruled and things fell apart after its demise in 1923. "The Ottoman State had a very successful administration system, and for centuries, these areas of crisis today had maintained their existence without problems. The Palestinian issue, the problems in Iraq and Syria, Crimea, Balkans, are all issues that came about after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire."A protracted "I'm not an antisemite" defense was the only content specifically designed for a New York audience: "I am very sad to see that my country, myself, and my colleagues, sometimes, are labeled as being antisemitic." As he spoke about being labeled an antisemite, I admit to taking advantage of sitting directly in front of Erdoğan, just behind his three rows of dark-suited young men, vigorously nodding my head in assent, thinking all the while that I was glad to be in New York and not Istanbul.
The question period, as usual, held special interest because it is the only part of the meeting that is unscripted. The moderator, Fareed Zakaria, pressed Erdoğan on the quid pro quo for the release by ISIS of the 49 Mosul hostages; Erdoğan all but explicitly admitted that his government had exchanged prisoners for the hostages. Peter Galbraith asked about the possibility of Turkish recognition of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan, to which Erdoğan replied no, that he opposes any division of Iraq. On behalf of the International Press Institute and the Committee to Protect Journalists, Harold Evans of Reuters requested a meeting with Erdoğan to discuss the treatment of journalists in Turkey, to which Erdoğan gave his immediate assent. Margaret Warner of PBS asked about Turkish efforts to stop the flow of foreign jihadis going into Syria and Iraq, to which Erdoğan piously replied that the government is doing all it can, even professing to be insulted when Warner pressed him about Turkey's porous border with Syria.
I then asked my own question: "Your government as prime minister pursued a policy of 'zero problems with neighbors'. Now that that has failed, do you have a new policy towards the region?" My intent was to provoke the speaker by asserting the failure of this policy. Erdoğan replied that the "zero problems policy is still ongoing" and then insisted that the failures were those of the neighbors, rather than of Turkey, mentioning Iraq, Syria, and Egypt in this context. Especially noteworthy was the withering disdain he expressed for President Sisi of Egypt, to whom he referred as "a soldier in [Morsi's] cabinet [who] organized a coup."
Summing up, experiencing Erdoğan in person confirmed my sense of him as an ambitious and aggressive populist whose electoral successes have gone to his head and spell trouble both for his country and the world. (September 23, 2014)
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2) US targets novel fusion research
A US government agency has launched a new $30m programme to support alternative approaches to generating energy from nuclear fusion. The initiative has been created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which falls under the auspices of the Department of Energy (DOE). In August, the DOE invited researchers to "develop and demonstrate low-cost tools to aid in the development of fusion power". Research teams need to outline their proposals by 14 October with three-year grants ranging from $250,000 to $10m up for grabs.
Fusion researchers have welcomed the new programme, which comes as fusion research in the US faces severe budget constraints. As one of seven partners in the €16bn ITER fusion project, the country has to provide 9% of the reactor's components – at a cost of $3.9bn – despite a flat overall national fusion budget, which has put a squeeze on domestic fusion facilities. Next year's budget is also far from certain after the White House recommended static spending, the House of Representatives called for an increase and the Senate even voted to kill the US contribution to ITER.
Budget casualty
One of the casualties of this ongoing budget squeeze was a DOE project called High Energy Density Plasma (HEDP), which was cancelled in 2013. This programme had supported projects lying between the low-density, long-duration approach of magnetically confined fusion – like ITER – and the very fast, very high density of inertial-confinement fusion, as carried out at the US's National Ignition Facility. The demise of HEDP ended projects at several US national laboratories that used electrical pulses, magnetic fields, lasers and even high explosives to achieve fusion.
The new programme from ARPA-E will tap into this middle ground, focusing both on "targets" (methods for containing plasmas) and "drivers" (systems for heating and compressing plasmas). "I have long advocated that the parameter space in-between conventional [magnetic-fusion and inertial-fusion] regimes is clearly where the advantages of [both] can be combined, while eliminating some of the disadvantages," says plasma physicist Glen Wurden of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who works on magnetized plasmas.
"Members of the HEDP fusion community, especially those previously working in the area of magneto-inertial fusion before the funding was cut, were thrilled to finally see the ARPA-E funding opportunity announced," he adds.
- The Canadian company General Fusion is taking a similar approach to fusion and is profiled in the article "Firm takes middle ground to fusion"
About the author
Daniel Clery is a science writer based in the UK
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3)Ya'alon remembers Yom Kippur War: We mustn't delude ourselves about our enemies' intentions
Speaking at annual Yom Kippur War memorial in Jerusalem, defense minister warns of threats from far and near; Rivlin says war's failures taught Israel that leaders must be questioned constantly.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said Sunday that while Israel's leaders are obligated to always seek peace with the Jewish state's neighbors, they must not delude themselves as to the intentions of the country's enemies.
Speaking at memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Yom Kippur War at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, Ya'alon warned that "from far and near their are attempts by organizations, states and entities to harm us in various ways."
The defense minister said that the threats come in the form of rockets and missiles, terror, delegitimization and ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. "We must know how to battle back at any place and in any arena, whether militarily or diplomatically, if, heaven forbid, we are forced to do so," he said.
"This is our obligation to our sons and daughters who have fallen, and our obligation to you, dear families," Ya'alon said to the bereaved relatives attending the ceremony. "You serve as an example to all of us, with your ability to return to a life of doing and creating. If this is not human heroism, I don't know what human heroism is," he concluded.
President Reuven Rivlin also spoke at the memorial ceremony, saying that the failures of the Yom Kippur War were brought on by a lack of self-criticism - something that we must not let repeat itself today.
"The Yom Kippur War happened, among other reasons, because the various watchdogs of democracy were too full, and did not bark at night."
Rivlin said that "the Israeli leadership must be exposed at all times to difficult questions. We don't have to wait for a war or operation. The wisdom is in a constant probing by the oversight committees, the media and the entire public."
Rivlin said that it was the public's obligation to ask difficult questions of its leadership.
The secret nuclear negotiations that have been going on recently between Iran and the States have, to date, yielded no results. But given the recent statements from both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry indicating their continuing zeal for a deal with Tehran, one shouldn’t discount the possibility that sometime in the coming month or those that follows, they will yield enough to the ayatollahs to secure some kind of agreement. If so, the question Americans will have to answer is whether they want to live in a world in which the administration’s drive for détente with Iran yields a new nuclear power.
The president’s rhetoric on Iran has always been good. He pledged to stop Iran when he first ran for president in 2008 and went even further in 2012 as he vowed not to terminate its nuclear program. But last year’s interim nuclear revealed that his desire to “engage” Iran is clearly greater than any fears about giving the Islamist regime the ability to achieve their nuclear ambition if they are determined to do so. Last year’s deal was achieved only by the U.S. abandoning the considerable economic and military leverage it had over Iran. If Obama is to get another, he will have to go further and gut sanctions altogether while allowing Tehran to retain its nuclear infrastructure in exchange for precautions that cannot be enforced and can easily be reversed by the Iranians. The farcical nature of some of the proposals intended to ensure that Iran will not get a bomb indicates just how desperate the U.S. is to get any sort of deal that could allow the president to pretend that he had kept his promises.
But for the moment, let’s ignore the details and just think about what it will mean for the U.S. to end Iran’s isolation. Advocates for Iran, such as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen consider a “thinkable ally.” Cohen has long been besotted with the Islamist regime, going so far in 2009 to write a series of embarrassing columns in which he sought to argue that Jews were actually treated well by one of the planet’s most anti-Semitic regimes. Now he has returned to his dream and normalizing relations with the Islamist tyranny and believes the president can make it a reality if only he will stop worrying about Iran lying about its nuclear dreams and the fact that it is the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamist terrorism.
A world in which such a result is thinkable is one in which the United States will, despite the president’s stated goal of fighting ISIS, be complicit in the transformation of the Middle East into one dominated by Iran and its allies which include Bashar Assad’s murderous Syrian regime, Hezbollah and Hamas. It is one in which both moderate Arab regimes and Israel will rightly fear for their safety and which a newly empowered Iran will be able to threaten the West with the ballistic missiles, the U.S. isn’t interested in negotiating about and a nuclear program that will be easily converted to a weapon.
Americans are rightly afraid of ISIS and applaud the president’s desire to eliminate it. But if the U.S. surrenders to Iran in the nuclear negotiations, what will follow will be far more perilous than anything that ISIS could possibly achieve. This is not something sane persons should consider “thinkable.”
In the next 24 hours, Jews around the world will observe Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, during which they will contemplate their shortcomings and ask forgiveness for their sins. But we hope the president and those implementing his policies toward Iran will do the same about their plans. We don’t know what the world will look like a year from now. But if the U.S. does not step back from its course of appeasement of Iran, we know it will be even more dangerous than it is now.
3b)Hamas leader Al-Zahar:
If Hamas were to transfer "what it has [in Gaza] or just a small part of it to the West Bank" it would destroy Israel "with a speed that no one can imagine."
"We will build an Islamic state in Palestine, all of Palestine"
New Poll: Hamas leader Haniyeh would defeat Abbas in elections
in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Haniyeh - 55%, Abbas - 38%
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Last week, Hamas Political Bureau member Mahmoud Al-Zahar stated that Hamas wants to build an Islamic state in all of Palestine, meaning it would replace Israel:
"[Some] have said Hamas wants to create an Islamic emirate in Gaza. We won't do that, but we will build an Islamic state in Palestine, all of Palestine."
[Al-Ayyam, Oct. 1, 2014]
Al-Zahar further said that if Hamas had a military foothold in the West Bank as it does in the Gaza Strip it would be able to destroy Israel. He alluded to a possible future war of destruction against Israel by citing a Surah from the Quran about "the final promise", which speaks of destroying "the enemies" and "what they had taken over with [total] destruction" [Surah 17:7]:
"Al-Zahar said that if his movement [Hamas] were to 'transfer what it has or just a small part of it to the West Bank, we would be able to settle the battle of the final promise with a speed that no one can imagine.'"
His expression "The final promise" is taken from Surah 17:7 of the Quran: "Then when the final promise came, [We sent your enemies]... to enter the temple in Jerusalem, as they entered it the first time, and to destroy what they had taken over with [total] destruction.'" (trans. Sahih International) Hamas using it in the context of Israel is promising a future war of destruction against Israel.
A recent Palestinian poll shows that Hamas indeed has a strong base of support in the West Bank. Last week, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research found that were elections to be held now between Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Haniyeh would win with 55% support compared to 38% for Abbas. Interestingly, Haniyeh would win with only 50% - 47% in Gaza but on the West Bank Hamas' Haniyeh is even stronger winning 57% to 33% over Abbas:
"If new presidential elections are held today and only two were nominated, Ismail Haniyeh [of Hamas] and Mahmoud Abbas, the former [Haniyeh] would win a majority of 55% (compared to 61% a month ago) and the latter 38% (compared to 32% a month ago). Votes for Abbas and Haniyeh are close in the Gaza Strip with the former receiving 47% and the latter 50%. In the West Bank, Abbas receives 33% and Haniyeh 57%." [http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/496 Sept. 29, 2014]
The following is a longer excerpt of the report on Al-Zahar's statements about using the Wset Bank to destroy Israel and establishing an Islamic state in place of Israel:
Headline: "Al-Zahar: The Hamas movement will build an Islamic state in all of Palestine"
"Hamas Political Bureau member Mahmoud Al-Zahar emphasized thatHamas would 'build an Islamic State in all of Palestine.' During a ceremony for the relatives of policemen killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, Al-Zahar said: '[Some] have said Hamas wants to create an Islamic emirate in Gaza. We won't do that, but we will build an Islamic state in Palestine, all ofPalestine.' Al-Zahar said that if his movement were to 'transfer what it has or just a small part of it to the West Bank, we would be able to settle the battle of the final promise (an allusion to Surah 17:7 of the Quran, see note below) with a speed that no one can imagine.'
He continued by saying: 'We know exactly how to liberate the land ofPalestine, and we know how to hit every inch of Palestine with our hands, brains, and money.' Al-Zahar promised 'to protect the resistance project, including all its military, police, security and civilian wings.'
On the [issue of the] PA and the transfer of control of the Gaza Strip to the unity government, he said: 'They relinquished these positions, but we look out for our citizens and our homeland. In no way whatsoever will we allow anyone to harm the resistance project or the dignity of any citizen.'
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4) What Hong Kong Means for the Global Economy
-Will the tensions in Hong Kong be the straw that breaks the global economy’s back? That question is on many investors’ minds as they watch the Chinese government's response to one of the biggest sociopolitical challenges it has faced in recent years. The answer is far from straightforward.
It is already a tentative time for the world economy. Growth is faltering in Europe and Japan. The U.S. economy, while doing better, has yet to lift off. Emerging economies have slowed, and are unlikely to return to higher growth anytime soon.
Meanwhile, pockets of excessive risk-taking have multiplied in financial markets, adding to concerns about future volatility. And the central banks in advanced countries have already ventured deep into the terrain of experimentation; the effectiveness of their policies is far from assured. The world cannot afford a politically induced slowdown in China.
Yet this view ignores two more recent historical insights.
First, the combination of the Internet, social media and better mobility makes it easier to coordinate and sustain protests, while also reinforcing individuals’ confidence in meeting their aspirations. The outcomes of the ensuing collective actions become much more difficult to predict.
Second, China has been engaged in the delicate task of revamping its growth model. This includes reducing its reliance on external sources of demand and on excessive state and credit-led investments, and toward unleashing greater domestic grass-roots engines of growth, investment, consumption and prosperity.
This is not to say that the stability of the government is in any danger today from the protest movement and that an economic contraction in China is about to send tremors through the world economy.
Indeed, the Chinese government is likely to prevail over the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong. But in doing so, it will probably be inclined to slow certain economic reforms for now, seeking instead to squeeze more growth from the old and increasingly exhausted model — similar to how Brazil's government responded to protests there ahead of the World Cup a few months ago. And while this would be part of a broader political strategy to defuse tensions and avoid an immediate growth shock to both China and the global economy, it would undermine the longer-term economic vibrancy of both.
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