+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Post Abbas? (See 1 below.)
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Venezuela is near Civil War because their dictator wants to impose Socialism. Trump has decided to send Bernie and Pocahontas to Venezuela to lecture their citizens on the beauty of a Socialist Dictator.
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Yesterday, Dennis Ross offered his idea of how to resolve the N Korean threat. He said we must demonstrate to China that we understand their fear of an invasion from N Korea should we take actions that cause more instability for that nation. Then, he said we could rightfully ask a return favor from China that they be more forthcoming.
Ross is a diplomat and, therefore, thinks only in diplomatic terms. Diplomats regard war as the consequence of failed diplomacy. War often is the result of believing diplomacy and appeasement works. Chamberlain bought peace in our time at the cost of Czechoslovakia. Clinton sent food to N Korea thinking Fat Boy's father gave a damn about the starvation of his people. Obama bought peace in Syria thinking he could do so by drawing and then disregarding his red lines.
N Korea's "Fat Man" understands only one thing - force and the destruction of his military ability.
Words do not matter, Sanctions mean nothing.
Fat Boy is wining and the world cowers. Same for Iran. We seem to learn nothing from history fearing the consequences of doing what needs to be done. (See 2 below.)
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In this morning's memo I posted some comments about the inequality gap. A dear friend and fellow memo reader sent this by way of his response:
"A guy looked at my Corvette the other day and said I wonder how many
people could have been fed for the money that sports car cost.
I replied I am not sure, it fed a lot of families in Bowling Green,
Kentucky who built it, it fed the people who make the tires, it fed
the people who made the components that went into it, it fed the
people in the copper mine who mined the copper for the wires, it fed
people in Decatur IL. at Caterpillar who make the trucks that haul the
copper ore. It fed the trucking people who hauled it from the plant to
the dealer and fed the people working at the dealership and their
families. BUT,... I have to admit, I guess I really don't know how
many people it fed.
That is the difference between capitalism and welfare mentality. When
you buy something, you put money in people's pockets, and give them
dignity for their skills. When you give someone something for nothing,
you rob them of their dignity and self-worth.
Capitalism is freely giving your money in exchange for something of
value. Socialism is taking your money against your will and shoving
something down your throat that you never asked for.
I've decided I can't be politically correct anymore."
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This is also from a dear friend and fellow memo reader and explains something about replacing Obamacare. You would think some Republican could explain this as easily as his daughter has. You would also think they could just figure out a dollar allocation formula and ship the money to each state and let them spend it as they wish.
Meanwhile, my liberal friends jump all over Trump accusing him of selling condos to Russians which remain empty and thus, claim he is engaged in/guilty of money laundering.
Actually our Federal Government is the largest money launderer in the world. They take trillions from tax payers, and then resend it to states after setting up bureaucratic agencies to do so. The Dept. of Education is a perfect example. Thousands of employees who do nothing to improve education but pass stupid rules etc.
In the recent local paper, The Savannah Classical Academy has been threatened they will lose their charter status if their students do not start doing better on the state exam. My friend and headmaster, Ben Payne, pointed out they teach world history and the state exam is based on Georgia history. The fact that SCA's students are learning discipline, are learning how to reason is overlooked and insignificant.
All of this is because those in charge of our dumbing down education system vote and pay for politicians and their campaigns and are upset when their bankrupt approach is challenged by an independent system that is better.
Screw the kids. They are just pawns in a power game. How utterly tragic.
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I received this invitation to hear my Israeli friend, Professor Boaz Gaynor, speak in New York. Boaz is an expert on Counter Terrorism. If you are nearby where he speaks I urge you to attend his lecture. Alas, I will be in New York this weekend but cannot stay to hear him.
Jul 31 at 10:55 AM
View this email in your browserThe American Friends of IDC Invites You to:
Professor Boaz Ganor speaking about Global Terrorism Threats and the American Counter-Terrorism Policy
Dean of the Lauder School of Government & Founder and Director of the International Institute of Counter-terrorism
Monday, August 14th
6:30-9:00 PM
130 E. 59th St, at Lexington Ave.
7th Floor Conference Room
New York, NY 10022
Click here to RSVP
Dick
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1)Five post-Abbas possibilities
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
|
Every time Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gets sick, commentators rush to wonder what will come next when the 82-year old leader leaves office. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was briefly hospitalized July 29 for what various sources said was fatigue and a routine checkup.
Each time Abbas gets sick, commentators rush to wonder what will come next after the 82-year old leader leaves office. The question of succession has both a sense of urgency and also dread, with one official describing it in 2014 as like “Samson in the temple,” ready to bring it all down.
Abbas was reelected president of Fatah in 2016, but analysts also see his reign as stifling democracy and becoming more authoritarian.
They worry that he has not named a successor, that elections have been postponed too long, and freedom of the press has been eroded in the PA. All of that, combined with lack of realization of a Palestinian state, leads to a combustible situation should he leave office.
Here are a few scenarios of what might be expected.
The next generation?
Palestinians in their 50s born after the 1948 war whose formative years were post-1967, contain some possibilities for post-Abbas leadership.
Fatah insiders such as Majid Faraj, head of PA intelligence has had his name tossed around. Grant Rumley, research fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies and coauthor of a biography on Abbas, told Reuters in 2014: “The Americans love him and the Israelis love him.”
Another name that always comes up is Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in prison. Rumley and others have pointed to Jibril Rajoub, currently sports czar and a former security chief; Mohammad Shtayyah, a politician and economic expert and Mahmoud Aloul, a new Fatah vice president.
Chaos or Hamas
In 2015, Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst with the International Crises Group, wrote in the London Review of Books that there would be a new round of Israeli-Palestinian violence at the “end of the Abbas era.”
He claimed that Palestinians were taking “matters into their own hands,” doing so “gradually at first, in areas outside PA control: Jerusalem, Gaza, Israeli prisons and villages and refugee camps.”
The street protesters were “crushed and divided,” he said, but even in weakness they pursued national goals.
This depiction of bubbling leaderless chaos, is one many fear will come after Abbas.
Without an authoritarian center and absent democratic elections, Palestinian politics might devolve onto the village and city level.
This would feed the interests of new salafist or religious extremist groups that might like to inch into the vacuum or of existing opposition such as Hamas, which, for instance, is not well liked in Gaza after a decade of failed rule but in the West Bank presents itself as the younger and active anti-corruption “change” party.
Case in point is its new leader Yahya Sinwar, born in 1962. Journalist Khaled Abu Toameh told the Israel Public Diplomacy Forum in November 2016 that a weak Fatah “provides Hamas with a golden opportunity to boost standing in this area.”
The old guard
When the British Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM), in 2016, presented the question of what happens after Abbas, Paul Scham, an academic, responded: “Of the half dozen likely candidates and a similar number of dark horses, there is none currently more likely to be chosen than the others.”
Names such as Saeb Erekat are sometimes raised; born in 1955, he isn’t the oldest of the older players in the PA. Ahmed Qurei, who is 80, would be more representative.
So would Yasser Abed Rabbo, a PLO insider who was born in 1945.
But there is a chance that a post-Abbas era could include a triumvirate of elderly Fatah members, jealous of one another and seeking to cling to power and perpetuate the stagnation of the Abbas era.
“I do think the likeliest result of a chaotic transfer of power is a situation where multiple parties have multiple levels of legitimate claims to the leadership,” said Rumley.
This involves organs such as the Central Committee of Fatah, the Constitutional Court, the 120 members of the PLO Central Council and 22 members of the PLO Executive Committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council.
This might be in the interests of the international community, but it doesn’t bring good tidings in terms of building civil society, elections or giving young people a voice.
What about Dahlan?
In the last few years Mohammad Dahlan, the one-time Gaza strongman, has made an interesting comeback among commentators and Palestinians, to be considered for a leadership role. He was the former head of the Palestinian security services in Gaza, but was unceremoniously expelled by Hamas in 2011 (conveniently, while he was abroad).
In what seemed like a terrible defeat from which one cannot return, his forces were crushed by the Islamists.
However, years make memory grow different, and in 2017 there is talk of his return.
Dahlan is supported abroad by governments in the region such as the UAE and Israelis know him from the 1990s and 2000s.
Annexation
In May, Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and Environment Protection Ze’ev Elkin said Israel must prepare for the post-Abbas era. “The Palestinian Authority will not survive Abbas’s departure because he oppressed any political culture in the PA,” he was quoted as saying.
What does Israel do in such a scenario? Voices on the Right have been arguing for annexation of Area C for years and, if Abbas leaves, a power vacuum might provide an excuse to act.
A new “victory caucus” in the Knesset and other voices that believe Palestinians need to accept Israeli “victory” over them could push the government toward a new paradigm in the West Bank.
This inevitably also leads other voices to conclude that the chances for a Palestinian state have faded and a onestate solution is all that is on the menu.
In such a scenario, the international community may ramp up pressure on Israel as former US secretary of state John Kerry prophesied it would in his December 2016 speech before leaving office.
If history teaches us anything, it is that there is always another leader – no one is irreplaceable. However, the recent era in the Middle East also teaches us that chaos can be unleashed by unseating long-serving leaders and that when nationalist paradigms break down they often are not replaced by more democratic and secular forms, but rather by religious extremism and sometimes localized factions or ethnic violence.
Those watching the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians themselves all wonder what comes next.
Each time Abbas gets sick, commentators rush to wonder what will come next after the 82-year old leader leaves office. The question of succession has both a sense of urgency and also dread, with one official describing it in 2014 as like “Samson in the temple,” ready to bring it all down.
Abbas was reelected president of Fatah in 2016, but analysts also see his reign as stifling democracy and becoming more authoritarian.
They worry that he has not named a successor, that elections have been postponed too long, and freedom of the press has been eroded in the PA. All of that, combined with lack of realization of a Palestinian state, leads to a combustible situation should he leave office.
Here are a few scenarios of what might be expected.
The next generation?
Palestinians in their 50s born after the 1948 war whose formative years were post-1967, contain some possibilities for post-Abbas leadership.
Fatah insiders such as Majid Faraj, head of PA intelligence has had his name tossed around. Grant Rumley, research fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies and coauthor of a biography on Abbas, told Reuters in 2014: “The Americans love him and the Israelis love him.”
Another name that always comes up is Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in prison. Rumley and others have pointed to Jibril Rajoub, currently sports czar and a former security chief; Mohammad Shtayyah, a politician and economic expert and Mahmoud Aloul, a new Fatah vice president.
Chaos or Hamas
In 2015, Nathan Thrall, a senior analyst with the International Crises Group, wrote in the London Review of Books that there would be a new round of Israeli-Palestinian violence at the “end of the Abbas era.”
He claimed that Palestinians were taking “matters into their own hands,” doing so “gradually at first, in areas outside PA control: Jerusalem, Gaza, Israeli prisons and villages and refugee camps.”
The street protesters were “crushed and divided,” he said, but even in weakness they pursued national goals.
This depiction of bubbling leaderless chaos, is one many fear will come after Abbas.
Without an authoritarian center and absent democratic elections, Palestinian politics might devolve onto the village and city level.
This would feed the interests of new salafist or religious extremist groups that might like to inch into the vacuum or of existing opposition such as Hamas, which, for instance, is not well liked in Gaza after a decade of failed rule but in the West Bank presents itself as the younger and active anti-corruption “change” party.
Case in point is its new leader Yahya Sinwar, born in 1962. Journalist Khaled Abu Toameh told the Israel Public Diplomacy Forum in November 2016 that a weak Fatah “provides Hamas with a golden opportunity to boost standing in this area.”
The old guard
When the British Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM), in 2016, presented the question of what happens after Abbas, Paul Scham, an academic, responded: “Of the half dozen likely candidates and a similar number of dark horses, there is none currently more likely to be chosen than the others.”
Names such as Saeb Erekat are sometimes raised; born in 1955, he isn’t the oldest of the older players in the PA. Ahmed Qurei, who is 80, would be more representative.
So would Yasser Abed Rabbo, a PLO insider who was born in 1945.
But there is a chance that a post-Abbas era could include a triumvirate of elderly Fatah members, jealous of one another and seeking to cling to power and perpetuate the stagnation of the Abbas era.
“I do think the likeliest result of a chaotic transfer of power is a situation where multiple parties have multiple levels of legitimate claims to the leadership,” said Rumley.
This involves organs such as the Central Committee of Fatah, the Constitutional Court, the 120 members of the PLO Central Council and 22 members of the PLO Executive Committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council.
This might be in the interests of the international community, but it doesn’t bring good tidings in terms of building civil society, elections or giving young people a voice.
What about Dahlan?
In the last few years Mohammad Dahlan, the one-time Gaza strongman, has made an interesting comeback among commentators and Palestinians, to be considered for a leadership role. He was the former head of the Palestinian security services in Gaza, but was unceremoniously expelled by Hamas in 2011 (conveniently, while he was abroad).
In what seemed like a terrible defeat from which one cannot return, his forces were crushed by the Islamists.
However, years make memory grow different, and in 2017 there is talk of his return.
Dahlan is supported abroad by governments in the region such as the UAE and Israelis know him from the 1990s and 2000s.
Annexation
In May, Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and Environment Protection Ze’ev Elkin said Israel must prepare for the post-Abbas era. “The Palestinian Authority will not survive Abbas’s departure because he oppressed any political culture in the PA,” he was quoted as saying.
What does Israel do in such a scenario? Voices on the Right have been arguing for annexation of Area C for years and, if Abbas leaves, a power vacuum might provide an excuse to act.
A new “victory caucus” in the Knesset and other voices that believe Palestinians need to accept Israeli “victory” over them could push the government toward a new paradigm in the West Bank.
This inevitably also leads other voices to conclude that the chances for a Palestinian state have faded and a onestate solution is all that is on the menu.
In such a scenario, the international community may ramp up pressure on Israel as former US secretary of state John Kerry prophesied it would in his December 2016 speech before leaving office.
If history teaches us anything, it is that there is always another leader – no one is irreplaceable. However, the recent era in the Middle East also teaches us that chaos can be unleashed by unseating long-serving leaders and that when nationalist paradigms break down they often are not replaced by more democratic and secular forms, but rather by religious extremism and sometimes localized factions or ethnic violence.
Those watching the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians themselves all wonder what comes next.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) New Iran sanctions simply don't add up
The base line is how effective these sanctions are going to be. Iran is not new to US sanctions and its economy does not depend on trade or investment from the US. In sum, the US lawmakers are hoping to impose the sanctions via the international community.
2) New Iran sanctions simply don't add up
By M.K. Bhadrakumar
The new legislation by the venerable lawmakers in the United States, imposing sanctions against Iran (along with Russia and North Korea), has an air of inevitability. But what is inevitable doesn’t always have to be logical.
The base line is how effective these sanctions are going to be. Iran is not new to US sanctions and its economy does not depend on trade or investment from the US. In sum, the US lawmakers are hoping to impose the sanctions via the international community.
But the main difference this time as compared to previous US sanctions is that the POTUS happens to be Donald Trump and the international community regards him with profound skepticism bordering on bewilderment. The world opinion is unlikely to rally behind Trump in an enterprise to punish Iran – or on any issue.
There is a big contradiction in the Trump administration’s approach to Iran because it is legislating sanctions while also certifying that Iran’s compliance with the 15 July 2015 nuclear deal [JCPOA] is satisfactory. And for the world community, JCPOA is a vital platform in international security and is the top priority.
Trump doesn’t have the ghost of a chance to get the UN Security Council to sanctify new sanctions against Iran (on whatever pretext). And in the absence of UN mandate, this becomes an issue of his “America First” foreign policy.
Things will be different if Iran retaliates against these sanctions by exiting the JCPOA, pleading that Washington is backing out from the deal. But Tehran is instead playing an astute game. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif said yesterday that Iran will not give a “gift” to Trump.
Zarif signaled that: a) Iran can live with Trump’s sanctions; b) Iran stands to gain more by complying with the JCPOA and earn international goodwill (especially among the world powers); and, c) Iran is utterly free anyway to pursue its missile program (which is indigenous and does not depend on Western technology).
What matters to Iran is that its successful (re)integration with the international community does not suffer any setback. So long as Iran can sell its oil and gas in the world market and so long as there is no sanctions regime with a cutting edge such as the one Barack Obama brilliantly succeeded in imposing (by getting even China and Russia on board), Iran can advance its development agenda.
In fact, Russia’s Gazprom just signed an agreement with Iran’s Oil Industries’ Engineering and Construction to develop Azar and Changuleh oil fields, Iran’s most recent discoveries located in the western province of Lorestan, which are believed to hold an in-place reserve of about 3.5 billion barrels of oil. (Azar is a joint field Iran shares with Iraq.)
Clearly, in the developing global scenario with the US-Russia relations nose diving – and no improvement possible in a foreseeable future – Russian military technology reaches Iran more freely than ever before. Iran’s strategic defiance of the US matters to the Russian strategy.
Equally, China views Iran as the regional hub in its Belt and Road Initiative. Only last week, China agreed to provide $1.5 billion as funding for the upgrade of the Tehran-Meshaad trunk railway line which connects Central Asia.
Suffice to say, if Iran can sell oil in the world market to generate income and with full-throttle cooperation with Russian and Chinese (and even some EU countries), Tehran will be doing reasonably well against Trump’s best-laid plans to “isolate” it.
The EU is giving an unmistakable signal to Trump through the announcement on Saturday in Brussels that EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will be travelling to Tehran on August 5 to attend the inaugural ceremony of President Hassan Rouhani in her capacity as the head of the Iran-5+1 Joint Commission monitoring the JCPOA. (In addition to Mogherini, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has also announced his intention to participate in the event.
However, this is not to say that Trump will back off from his enterprise to punish Iran and bring about a ‘regime change’. Knowing Trump, he might well be planning to score a hat-trick by dumping the JCPOA sometime around September when the next certification on Iran’s compliance is due – thereby completing a trifecta of withdrawals from international agreements that he inherited from Obama (the other two being Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris accord on climate change.)
How does it all add up? By withdrawing from JCPOA, Trump will the isolating the US in international opinion. The political optic will be simply “disastrous” – to borrow Trump’s favourite idiom. The US will be the outlier.
Trump’s biggest challenge is that while the US’ allies support strict and verifiable implementation of the JCOPA by Iran, they disapprove of Trump’s game plan to create a pretext to collapse or renegotiate the deal. Even for proposing a renegotiation of the JCPOA, Washington needs five of the eight members of the Joint Commission (comprising US, UK, France, Britain, Germany, EU, Russia and China) to back the proposal.
Finally, as the Bible says, “Behold, a little cloud, like a man’s hand is rising” on the horizon – pressure is building over the release of Americans under detention in Iran. Some Iranian news reports recently mentioned the names of several Iranian citizens in jail in the US for sanctions violations.
Tehran could be signalling interest in a quiet conversation over a potential political prisoner exchange similar to what Obama administration once negotiated. Which, of course, requires the Trump administration to engage directly with the government of Iran.
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