Новости за 30.03.2016

Sarah Whitson, LA Times
It's relatively well known that the U.S. and Britain are contributing to the war effort as the lead providers of the Saudi coalition's arsenal. Saudi Arabia has been on a global arms shopping spree and is now the world's largest purchaser of weapons. It contracted for at least billion in weapons from the U.S. and almost .3 billion in weapons from Britain in 2015. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia's main partner in the Yemen war, is not far behind, as the world's fourth-largest purchaser of weapons... Читать дальше...

George Will, Wash Post
Republican peculiarities in this political season are so numerous and lurid that insufficient attention is being paid to this: The probable Democratic nominee’s principal credential, her service as secretary of state, is undermined by a debacle of remarkable dishonesty.

Andrew Kramer, NYT
In Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan, they routinely burn or demolish the houses of people suspected of being insurgents or terrorists. Most strikingly, whole extended families are rounded up in high-profile cases, and are often held until the militant either gives up or is killed.

Jan Puhl, Der Spiegel
Poland's national-conservative government was quick to sideline the country's high court. Now, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his party have their sights set on complete control of the state.

Mahmut Bozarslan, Al-Monitor
According a news report on March 29, senior PKK commander Murat Karayilan admitted that the PKK’s trench warfare was wrong. He reportedly told a pro-PKK news agency that there was no need for such intensive combat in towns. Karayilan signaled that the PKK would return to rural terrain.

Downes & Salisbury, Conversation
Belgium’s counter-terrorism efforts are once again being called into question following the recent tragedies in Brussels. The attacks were carried out against soft targets – the public check-in area of Brussels Airport and Maelbeek metro station – but a series of unusual and suspicious occurrences were also reported at nuclear facilities in the country.

Lake & Rogin, BV
When Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits Washington this week, it will be an opportunity for President Barack Obama, as well as most of the Washington foreign policy establishment, to ponder how they so misread a man they had touted only a few years ago as a great reformer.

Nick McKenzie, et.al, The Age
As tens of thousands of secret emails reveal, Al Jarah and Unaoil were at the heart of a global bribery operation funded, sometimes wittingly, by dozens of US, British, European and Australian multinationals. These firms paid huge sums to Unaoil. In return, Unaoil used its friends in high places to win billions of dollars worth of government contracts.

L. De Winter, Pol. EU
What did “we” do to “them”? We opened up our cities, our houses, our wallets. And in our secular temples of progress — our metro stations and airports and theaters — their sons are killing themselves, and taking our sons and daughters with them. There is nothing for which we need to apologize. “Occidentophobia” originated in the Muslim community. We need to demand they abandon it.

Rafia Zakaria, New York Times
Not far from the house where I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, there was a children’s amusement park. It sat on top of a hill, its slides and swings beckoning children from the houses below. As summer vacations dragged on, my brother and I would hear the gleeful screams of other children, and we begged my mother to take us. It wasn’t an easy sell. “The swings are so rickety,” she would say one day. “Aren’t you afraid you will fall out of the spinning wheel?” she would say on another. Читать дальше...

Wall Street Journal
They absolutely need [NATO]. This is a real test for Europe. I'm not sure they are going to wake up even after the Paris attacks, even after the attack in Brussels. We don't see evidence of a change. I think the European Union is in part responsible. I think it has made Europe less than the sum of its parts. That's why I favor the British exit from the European Union. I think it would be a stronger ally of the United States. I think it would be more secure on its own. There's a lot at play here... Читать дальше...

K. Coates Ulrichsen, WPR
In seeking to implement subsidy reforms and raise revenue, Kuwait must navigate a far more challenging domestic political environment than all other GCC states bar Bahrain.

Jacob Shapiro, Geopolitical Futures
The purpose of a soldier is to fight a war, and the purpose of an army is to defend a state from the hostile intentions of another power. But the military establishments that grow out of the need for these institutions also have lives of their own. Like any institution or bureaucracy, they grow and change with time, and the relationship between state and military is never static.

Alexander Motyl, World Affairs Journal
Each of these three variants has the inestimable advantage of giving Ukraine the initiative. Kyiv would propose bold solutions that are consistent with human rights and democratic norms, and Russia and the West would have to respond.

John McManus, Irish Times
The comparisons between 1916 and Islamic State are superficial and can only be pushed so far before breaking down. The most obvious flaw being that the rebels were not terrorists and set out to engage the British army in conventional combat. The civilian deaths were collateral damage, a term which is often heard emanating from the mouths of those engaged in the war on terror.

Christopher Reuter, Spiegel
The people behind this terror are proving to be surprisingly farsighted, patient planners and not rash actors -- and this applies in both Europe and Syria. This is the new and long underestimated side of IS.

J. Parkinson, BBC
Scientists have long pointed out the extraordinary scale of genetic differences between octopuses and most other animals. But the creatures also had the power to inspire terror in Victorian Britain.

R. Fisk, Independent
Putin noticed this, and talked about it, and accurately predicted the retaking of Palmyra. His aircraft attacked Isis - as US planes did not - in advance of the Syrian army's conquest. I could not help but smile when I read that the US command claimed two air strikes against Isis around Palmyra in the days leading up to its recapture by the regime. That really did tell you all you needed to know about the American "war on terror". They wanted to destroy Isis, but not that much.

Economist
If the government really wanted to accelerate this shift, it could change its own ways. Various laws steer a big share of bank deposits into low-yielding government debt and agricultural loans. That, in turn, means that Indians earn little interest on their savings, enhancing gold’s relative appeal. Such financial repression helps the government fund itself cheaply. But it means that Indians are sitting on gold equivalent in value to four months of economic output. That could be financing productive investments instead.

R. Pape & W. Gunning, Chi. Tribune
After 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney said that even a 1 percent chance of a terrorist attack would justify preemptive invasion, mass torture and the trampling of civil liberties. The result of this "1 percent doctrine" was the Iraq war. The Islamic State today is a product of that destabilizing conflict.

J. Lewis, Foreign Policy
If you were a Belgian terrorist, why settle for a dirty bomb, when you have the option of stealing an honest-to-goodness nuclear bomb? The United States “forward deploys” about 180 B61 nuclear bombs at bases in Europe — including a small number at a Belgian air base known as Kleine Brogel, about an hour outside of Brussels.

David Shulman, New York Review of Books
In Israeli parlance, Breaking the Silence is one of a group of so-called “leftist NGOs” (amutot hasmol) that are the object of a new bill now making its way through the Knesset, an initiative of the fanatical minister of justice, Ayelet Shaked, possibly the least just person in the country. Like many right-wing NGOs, leftist groups such as B’Tselem receive funding from donors both in Israel and abroad; the new law aims at forcing leftist and human rights... Читать дальше...

Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
The two leading Republican presidential candidates both suggest that America has a problem with Islam. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz sometimes frame the problem that they have diagnosed as one having to do with “radical Islam,” rather than simply “Islam,” though Cruz has called for increased police patrols of “Muslim neighborhoods,” not of “radical Muslim neighborhoods.”

M. Gilbert, BV
The world's museums -- mostly those of rich countries with a history of overseas pillaging -- are stuffed with artifacts plundered from other countries. It's time they started being returned to their rightful homes where they can be seen in their native context, even if that means some viewers miss out on seeing culturally significant objects while others have to add more stamps to their passports.

David Ignatius, Washington Post
Economic sanctions have become the “silver bullet” of American foreign policy over the past decade, because they’re cheaper and more effective in compelling adversaries than traditional military power. But Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warns of a “risk of overuse” that could neuter the sanctions weapon and harm America.