Jerusalem News (27 January, 2014, 26 Shevet 5774)
Contents:
1. Meredith Carpenter: The Five Eyes and Spies
2. A Few Middle East Problems that Could Blow Up Any Day Now
The Sick Middle East by Daniel Pipes
3.Update from Syria: A Three-Way Power Struggle. Assad versus the Rebels and the Rebels Against Each Other.
The Syrian peace process: An exercise in futility by Jonathan Spyer
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1. Meredith Carpenter: The Five Eyes and Spies
Hi Yair,
A recent email mentioned that the US spies on Israel. The most powerful intelligence grouping in the world is made up of five countries known as The Five Eyes: The United States, The UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. There are many credible readings on the internet about The Five Eyes if anyone is interested. I was recently reading http://www.cdfai.org
Meredith
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2. A Few Middle East Problems that Could Blow Up Any Day Now
The Sick Middle East by Daniel Pipes
The Washington Times
January 24, 2014
http://www.danielpipes.org/13977/sick-middle-east
Extracts:
Water is running out. A dam going up on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia threatens substantially to cut Egypt's main water supply by devastating amounts for years. Syria and Iraq suffer from water crises because the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are drying up. Growing the narcotic qat plant absorbs so much of Yemen's limited water supplies that Sana'a may be the first modern capital city to be abandoned because of drought. Ill considered wheat-growing schemes in Saudi Arabia depleted aquifers.
On the flip side, the poorly constructed Mosul Dam in Iraq could collapse, drowning half a million immediately and leave many more stranded without electricity or food. Sewage runs rampant in Gaza. Many countries suffer from electricity black-outs, and especially in the oppressive summer heat that routinely reaches 120 degrees.
People are also running out. After experiencing a huge and disruptive youth bulge, the region's birth rate is collapsing. Iran, for example, has undergone the steepest decline in birth rates of any country ever recorded, going from 6.6 births per woman in 1977 to 1.6 births in 2012. This has created what one analyst calls an "apocalyptic panic" that fuels Tehran's aggression.
Poor schools, repressive governments, and archaic social mores assure abysmal rates of economic growth. Starvation haunts Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Islamism, currently the most dynamic and threatening political ideology, is summed up by a morbid Hamas declaration to Israelis: "We love death more than you love life." Polygyny, burqas, genital mutilation, and honor killing make Middle Eastern women the world's most oppressed.
... Slavery remains a scourge.
Conspiracy theories, political zealotry, resentment, repression, anarchy, and aggression rule the region's politics. Modern notions of the individual remain weak in societies where primordial bonds of family, tribe, and clan remain dominant.
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3. Update from Syria: A Three-Way Power Struggle. Assad versus the Rebels and the Rebels Against Each Other.
The Syrian peace process: An exercise in futility
by Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post
January 24, 2014
http://www.meforum.org/3727/syrian-peace-process
Extract:
The war in Syria has been at a bloody stalemate for about a year now. The regime controls the capital, Damascus and a contiguous land area stretching up to the Mediterranean cost in the west. Assad also still maintains his grip on the main cities of the country, with the exception of Raqqa in the east (controlled by the al-Qaeda affiliated ISIS group) and Aleppo, which is divided between the government and the rebels. Assad's allies, Iran and Russia, appear to still be standing firmly behind him. He has no incentive for compromise.
As for the rebels, they have similarly solid reasons not to submit.
They control an area of roughly equal size stretching from the border with Iraq up to the Turkish border in the north west.
Since early January, the opposition-controlled area has been engulfed in an internal civil war, with the al-Qaeda affiliated ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) resisting attacks from the Saudi-supported fighters of the Islamic Front. This fighting made possible relatively minor gains by government forces in the northern Aleppo area.
But the rebels, too, are not facing imminent defeat. They have no shortage of men willing to engage on their behalf. Assad failed to capitalize or expand on some modest military successes in the summer. So they too see no pressing reason to compromise their core demand that Bashar Asssad cannot form part of any transitional administration.
Rebel controlled areas have borne the brunt of extraordinarily brutal tactics employed by the regime over the last three years. These have included the use of chemical weapons against civilian targets, as took place in eastern Ghouta on August 21, 2013, with the loss of 1429 lives, according to US figures. A newly released report claims that the regime has carried out the mass slaughter of 11,000 detainees.