Baltic Blog......Security & Intelligence Briefs, International, Baltic & Russia News November 25, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving with thoughts of Gratitude and thanks to all!



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VIDEONETDAILY...A major victory for U.S. security

Surprise! See CAIR officials get slapped with summons
Terror-linked Muslim lobby's dinner turns into public relations nightmare
Posted: November 23, 20089:40 pm Eastern
By Joseph Farah© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Nihad Awad, director of CAIR, being served a subpoena
WASHINGTON – When the Council on American-Islamic Relations held its 14th Annual Banquet at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel tonight, it was planning to raise funds and honor some of its supporters, but instead several top officials of the Muslim lobby group were served with a summons and complaint for various civil and criminal offenses.The dramatic surprise, caught on video, was a result of the research work of the Mapping Sharia Project, headed by Dave Gaubatz. He personally served CAIR Director Nihad Awad at the banquet tonight while Democratic North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw, a CAIR national board member, was addressing the festivities.
Four CAIR clients have filed a federal civil complaint alleging criminal fraud and racketeering against CAIR, a self-described public interest civil rights law firm. The lawsuit also names CAIR's national leadership as individual defendants. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Morris Days, the "resident attorney" and "manager for civil rights" at the now defunct CAIR MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Va., was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for assistance and who had paid for CAIR legal services.
Be sure never to miss another hot WND exclusive like this, again! Sign up right now for FREE WND news alerts right now.While attorney David Yerushalmi represents the four plaintiffs in this particular lawsuit, two of whom are African-American Muslims, the complaint alleges that, according to CAIR internal documents, there were hundreds of victims of fraud scheme by CAIR and Days.According to the complaint, CAIR failed to conduct a background check on Days prior to hiring him and when the group discovered the fraud, it set about a cover-up. The suit charges CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations and the media. When CAIR got irate calls from clients about Days' failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR is charged with fraudulently deceiving clients about Days' relationship to CAIR, concealing the fact that CAIR had fired him for criminal fraud. "The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S.," Yerushalmi said referring to the fact that CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial. "But our investigation and this complaint makes clear that CAIR’s criminal activities know no bounds."Yerushalmi alleges CAIR has engaged in a massive cover-up of a criminal fraud in which hundreds of CAIR clients have been victimized."The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that CAIR is only looking out for CAIR and its ongoing effort to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization," he said.The complaint also alleges that in addition to covering up the Days fraud scheme, CAIR officials in D.C. forced angry clients who were demanding a return of their legal fees to sign a release that bought the client-victims' silence by prohibiting them from informing law enforcement or the media about the CAIR-Days fraud. According to the agreement, if the "settling" clients said anything to anyone about the fraud scheme, CAIR would be able to sue them for $25,000.The four plaintiffs contacted their attorney David Yerushalmi only after they had spoken to Gaubatz, a private researcher who had been investigating CAIR for its connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its ties to global jihad. The complaint identifies CAIR as a racketeering enterprise under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which is a criminal racketeering statute that allows victims to sue the defendants in civil court. In addition to damages, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief under this and other statutes to shut down CAIR and to prevent the individual defendants from engaging in public interest legal work in the future.The named defendants are: the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc. (dba CAIR); Nihad Awad aka Nihad Hammad, who serves as executive director of CAIR National; Parvez Ahmed, who was the chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period; Tahra Goraya, who was the national director of CAIR but who has since resigned; Khadijah Athman, who is the manager of the "civil rights" division of CAIR; and Nadhira al-Khalili, Esq., who is in-house legal counsel for CAIR. All were handed subpoenas this evening.According to the complaint, CAIR's in-house Washington, D.C.-based attorney Khalili was directly involved in taking the legal files out of the CAIR Virginia office and concealing them in the D.C. office. Also named as defendants are Ibrahim Hooper and Amina Rubin, CAIR's director of communications and coordinator of communications, respectively. According to the complaint, these two were directly responsible for issuing fraudulent press releases about the Days fraud scheme, thus aiding and abetting the CAIR cover-up.
CAIR officials were not available for comment tonight.Also addressing the dinner was Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the nation's first Muslim member of Congress. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, reportedly turned down an invitation to address the banquet.As WND previously reported, CAIR allegedly defrauded a number of Muslims recently seeking help with citizenship delays, and then threatened to sue them if they complained to the media, according to a security watchdog group which has obtained internal CAIR documents.The former legal director of CAIR's Maryland/Virginia chapter shook down Muslim hardship cases for thousands of dollars without providing promised services, officials with the Mapping Sharia Project charge.
CAIR, a nonprofit group, promoted the services of the employee, Morris L. "Jamil" Days, whom it publicly described as a civil-rights attorney, even after discovering Days was unlicensed and was fraudulently representing CAIR's clients.CAIR's board allegedly covered up the scandal by paying defrauded Muslim families partial restitution payments while insisting they sign agreements releasing CAIR from legal liability, officials said.Earlier this year, the board also fired Days and closed the chapter's offices in Herndon, Va. The chapter director, Khalid Iqbal, is no longer with CAIR.CAIR refused to respond to the allegations, which came to light only after American Muslims provided evidence to the Mapping Sharia Project."I really don't know anything about this," CAIR spokesman Ahmed Rehab said. He referred questions to CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper, who declined comment.Earlier this year, CAIR launched a $250,000 fundraising campaign that included a promotional on its website touting its mission to help Muslims, particularly those confronting citizenship problems."Everyday, CAIR works hard to defend the rights of American Muslims who encounter a delay in gaining citizenship," the group said.In fact, CAIR has "victimized" poor Muslim immigrants, says Gaubatz."CAIR continues to put Muslim Americans at risk through the pretense that they represent them in any way," Gaubatz said. "CAIR is receiving support from big foreign donors, not because of their effectiveness in discrimination cases, but because of their false image in the media."Gaubatz says CAIR, which last year was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal terror-financing case involving Hamas, controls some $7 million in real estate assets in Washington through a limited liability holding company that includes silent Middle Eastern investors.He says his group has filed a formal complaint against CAIR concerning the alleged fraud with the District of Columbia.WND has previously reported on CAIR's extensive ties to terrorism and extremism. Although CAIR is a nonprofit organization, it does not disclose complete directories of its staff or advisory boards, and even refuses to make its federal tax filings readily available to the public. But a review of federal criminal court documents, past IRS 990 tax records and Federal Election Commission records detailing donor occupations, reveals that Washington-based CAIR has been associated with a disturbing number of convicted terrorists or felons in terrorism probes, as well as suspected terrorists and active targets of terrorism investigations."Their offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters," said one FBI veteran familiar with recent and ongoing cases involving CAIR officials.WND has reported that at least 14 CAIR officials have been caught up in terror investigations.Congressional leaders say they are warning lawmakers and other Washington officials to disassociate from the group due to its growing terror ties."Groups like CAIR have a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from the United States," said U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., co-founder of the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus.CAIR itself recently was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged scheme to funnel $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas. In the Holy Land Foundation case, federal prosecutors also listed CAIR as a member of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that gave rise to Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. The government will retry the Holy Land case, which ended in a hung jury."There was a lot of evidence presented at the recent Holy Land Foundation trial which exposed CAIR and others as front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States," Myrick said.Still, CAIR is lobbying House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and other sympathetic members of Congress to pressure the Justice Department to expunge its name from the case, arguing the negative publicity has hurt membership and fundraising.The federal judge during the trial refused a written request by the group to strike its name from the list of co-conspirators. The petition is still pending before the court.Here is another brief clip showing the delivery of the legal documents:
CAIR, which runs 33 offices and chapters nationwide, also recently helped defeat an anti-terror plan by Los Angeles police to map the local Muslim community for extremist neighborhoods.Critics counter that CAIR has no legitimate voice to make such complaints, because the group is itself an extremist organization that has employed or appointed to its boards of directors and advisers an inordinate number of radical co-conspirators, suspected and convicted terrorists, and other criminals.

Indeed, the list is long and growing, and includes:
Muthanna al-Hanooti: The CAIR director's home was raided last year by FBI agents in connection with an active terrorism investigation. Agents also searched the offices of his advocacy group, Focus on Advocacy and Advancement of International Relations, which al-Hanooti operates out of Dearborn, Mich., and Washington, D.C.
FAAIR claims to be a consulting firm raising awareness of Sunni grievances in Iraq, but investigators suspect it's a front supporting the Sunni-led insurgency.
Muthanna al-Hanooti, wearing traditional headgarb
Al-Hanooti, who emigrated to the U.S. from Iraq, formerly helped run a suspected Hamas terror front called LIFE for Relief and Development. Its Michigan offices also were raided last September. In 2004, LIFE's Baghdad office was raided by U.S. troops, who seized files and computers.
Al-Hanooti is related to Shiek Mohammed al-Hanooti, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He currently leads prayers at a Washington-area mosque that aided some of the 9/11 hijackers.
The FBI alleges al-Hanooti, an ethnic-Palestinian who also emigrated from Iraq, raised money for Hamas. In fact, "Al-Hanooti collected over $6 million for support of Hamas," according to a 2001 FBI report, and was present with CAIR and Holy Land officials at a secret Hamas fundraising summit held last decade at a Philadelphia hotel.
Prosecutors recently added his name to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case.
Al-Hanooti denies supporting Hamas, although he's praised Palestinian suicide bombers as "martyrs" who are "alive in the eyes of Allah."
Earlier this year, his younger brother, Hamid al-Hanooti, was found dead in Iraq after reportedly being held by local security forces as a suspected terrorist.

Laura Jaghlit: A civil-rights coordinator for CAIR, her Washington-area home was raided by federal agents after 9/11 as part of an investigation into terrorist financing, money laundering and tax fraud. Her husband Mohammed Jaghlit, a key leader in the Saudi-backed SAAR network, is a target of the still-active probe.
Last decade, Jaghlit sent two letters accompanying donations – one for $10,000, the other for $5,000 – from the SAAR Foundation to Sami al-Arian, now a convicted terrorist. In each letter, according to a federal affidavit, "Jaghlit instructed al-Arian not to disclose the contribution publicly or to the media."
Investigators suspect the funds were intended for Palestinian terrorists via a U.S. front called WISE, which at the time employed an official who personally delivered a satellite phone battery to Osama bin Laden. The same official also worked for Jaghlit's group.
In addition, Jaghlit donated a total of $37,200 to the Holy Land Foundation, which prosecutors say is a Hamas front. Jaghlit subsequently was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing case.

Abdurahman Alamoudi: Another CAIR director, he is serving 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism. Alamoudi, who was caught on tape complaining bin Laden hadn't killed enough Americans in the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, was one of al-Qaida's top fund-raisers in America, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Nihad Awad

Nihad Awad: For the first time, wiretap evidence from the Holy Land case puts CAIR's executive director at a Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and activists that was secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants allegedly hatched a plot to disguise payments to Hamas terrorists as charitable giving.
During the meeting, according to FBI transcripts, Awad was recorded discussing the propaganda effort. He mentions Ghassan Dahduli, whom he worked with at the time at the Islamic Association for Palestine, another Hamas front. Both were IAP officers. Dahduli's name also was listed in the address book of bin Laden's personal secretary, Wadi al-Hage, who is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in the U.S. embassy bombings. Dahduli, an ethnic-Palestinian like Awad, was deported to Jordan after 9/11 for refusing to cooperate in the terror investigation.
Awad's and Dahduli's phone numbers are listed in a Muslim Brotherhood document seized by federal investigators revealing "important phone numbers" for the "Palestine Section" of the Brotherhood in America. The court exhibit shows Hamas fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook listed on the same page with Awad.
Omar Ahmad

Omar Ahmad: U.S. prosecutors also named CAIR's founder and chairman emeritus as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Ahmad too was placed at the Philly meeting, FBI special agent Lara Burns testified at the trial. Prosecutors also designated him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Palestine Committee" in America. Ahmad, like his CAIR partner Awad, is ethnic-Palestinian.
(Though both Ahmad and Awad were senior leaders of IAP, the Hamas front, neither of their biographical sketches posted on CAIR's website mentions their IAP past.)

Nabil Sadoun: A current CAIR board member, Sadoun has served on the board of the United Association for Studies and Research, which investigators believe to be a key Hamas front in America. In fact, Sadoun co-founded UASR with Hamas leader Marzook. The Justice Department added UASR to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case.
Mohamed Nimer

Mohamed Nimer: CAIR's current research director also served as a board director for UASR, the strategic arm for Hamas in the U.S.
(Tellingly, CAIR neglects to mention Nimer's and Sadoun's roles in UASR in their bios.)

Rafeeq Jaber: A founding director of CAIR, Jaber was the long-time president of the Islamic Association for Palestine. In 2002, a federal judge found that "the Islamic Association for Palestine has acted in support of Hamas." In his capacity as IAP chief, Jaber praised Hezbollah attacks on Israel. He also served on the board of a radical mosque in the Chicago area.

Rabith Hadid: The CAIR fund-raiser was a founder of the Global Relief Foundation, which after 9/11 was blacklisted by Treasury for financing al-Qaida and other terror groups. Its assets were frozen in December 2001. Hadid was arrested on terror-related charges and deported to Lebanon in 2003.
Siraj Wahhaj
Siraj Wahhaj: A member of CAIR's board of advisers, Wahhaj was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The radical Brooklyn imam was close to convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and defended him during his trial.
He was also a featured speaker at tonight's dinner.
Randall "Ismail" Royer: The former CAIR communications specialist and civil-rights coordinator is serving 20 years in prison in connection with the Virginia Jihad Network, which he led while employed by CAIR at its Washington headquarters. The group trained to kill U.S. soldiers overseas, cased the FBI headquarters, and cheered the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. Al-Qaida operative Ahmed Abu Ali, convicted of plotting to assassinate President Bush, was among those who trained with Royer's Northern Virginia cell.

Bassam Khafagi: Another CAIR official, Khafagi was arrested in 2003 while serving as CAIR's director of community affairs. He pleaded guilty to charges of bank and visa fraud stemming from a federal counterterror probe of his leadership role in the Islamic Assembly of North America, which has supported al-Qaida and advocated suicide attacks on America. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison and deported to his native Egypt.
Ghassan Elashi

Ghassan Elashi: One of CAIR's founding directors, he was convicted in 2004 of illegally shipping high-tech goods to terror state Syria, and is serving 80 months in prison. He's also charged with providing material support to Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation trial. He was chairman of the charity, which provided seed capital to CAIR. Elashi is related to Hamas leader Marzook.

Hamza Yusuf: The FBI investigated the CAIR board member after 9/11, because just two days before the attacks, he made an ominous prediction to a Muslim audience.
"This country is facing a terrible fate and the reason for that is because this country stands condemned," Yusuf warned. "It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands."
CAIR, which receives financial backing from Saudi and Emirati royalty, denies charges that it has a secret agenda to Islamize America. But a Muslim Brotherhood document declassified in the Holy Land case reveals that CAIR's parent was among Muslim organizations enlisted in a secret plot to destroy the American system from within and eventually take over the country.
Written early last decade in Arabic, the manifesto lays bare the subversive role of CAIR's forerunner, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and other Muslim groups in America to carry out a "grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
CAIR's founder Ahmad, while claiming to be a moderate and patriotic American, last decade told a group of Muslims in Northern California that they are in America to help assert Islam's rule over the country.
"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant," a local reporter quoted him as saying, adding, "The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
Ahmad insists he was misquoted. However, an FBI wiretap transcript quotes Ahmad agreeing with terrorist suspects gathered last decade at the secret Philly meeting to "camouflage" their true intentions.
He compared it to the head fake in basketball. "This is like one who plays basketball: He makes a player believe that he is doing this, while he does something else," Ahmad said. "I agree with you. Like they say, politics is a completion of war."
What's more, Hooper, CAIR's communications director, also has expressed his wish to overturn the U.S. system of government in favor of an "Islamic" state.
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," Hooper said in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
Though conceding he made the remark, Hooper argues that he's never advocated violence. He says he and Muslims like him should work instead through the media and use "education" to help turn America into an Islamic state.
For media inquiries, e-mail Tricia, or call (910) 270-8966.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81863
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Monday, November 24, 2008
Interviews with Saul Anuzis, Michael Steele
Posted by: Amanda Carpenter at 7:35 AM
I had the chance to sit down with two men running to become Republican National Committee Chairman last week. I wanted to talk to them about why they wanted the job and how they could rebuild the party.
Here is the link to my interview with Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis.================================================================

Obama: First Moves
By George Friedman
Related Special Topic Page
The 2008 U.S. Presidential Race
Three weeks after the U.S. presidential election, we are getting the first signs of how President-elect Barack Obama will govern. That now goes well beyond the question of what is conventionally considered U.S. foreign policy — and thus beyond Stratfor’s domain. At this moment in history, however, in the face of the global financial crisis, U.S. domestic policy is intimately bound to foreign policy. How the United States deals with its own internal financial and economic problems will directly affect the rest of the world.
One thing the financial crisis has demonstrated is that the world is very much America-centric, in fact and not just in theory. When the United States runs into trouble, so does the rest of the globe. It follows then that the U.S. response to the problem affects the rest of the world as well. Therefore, Obama’s plans are in many ways more important to countries around the world than whatever their own governments might be planning.
Over the past two weeks, Obama has begun to reveal his appointments. It will be Hillary Clinton at State and Timothy Geithner at Treasury. According to persistent rumors, current Defense Secretary Robert Gates might be asked to stay on. The national security adviser has not been announced, but rumors have the post going to former Clinton administration appointees or to former military people. Interestingly and revealingly, it was made very public that Obama has met with Brent Scowcroft to discuss foreign policy. Scowcroft was national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush, and while a critic of the younger Bush’s policies in Iraq from the beginning, he is very much part of the foreign policy establishment and on the non-neoconservative right. That Obama met with Scowcroft, and that this was deliberately publicized, is a signal — and Obama understands political signals — that he will be conducting foreign policy from the center.
Consider Clinton and Geithner. Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq war — a major bone of contention between Obama and her during the primaries. She is also a committed free trade advocate, as was her husband, and strongly supports continuity in U.S. policy toward Israel and Iran. Geithner comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he participated in crafting the strategies currently being implemented by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Everything Obama is doing with his appointments is signaling continuity in U.S. policy.
This does not surprise us. As we have written previously, when Obama’s precise statements and position papers were examined with care, the distance between his policies and John McCain’s actually was minimal. McCain tacked with the Bush administration’s position on Iraq — which had shifted, by the summer of this year, to withdrawal at the earliest possible moment but without a public guarantee of the date. Obama’s position was a complete withdrawal by the summer of 2010, with the proviso that unexpected changes in the situation on the ground could make that date flexible.
Obama supporters believed that Obama’s position on Iraq was profoundly at odds with the Bush administration’s. We could never clearly locate the difference. The brilliance of Obama’s presidential campaign was that he convinced his hard-core supporters that he intended to make a radical shift in policies across the board, without ever specifying what policies he was planning to shift, and never locking out the possibility of a flexible interpretation of his commitments. His supporters heard what they wanted to hear while a careful reading of the language, written and spoken, gave Obama extensive room for maneuver. Obama’s campaign was a master class on mobilizing support in an election without locking oneself into specific policies.
As soon as the election results were in, Obama understood that he was in a difficult political situation. Institutionally, the Democrats had won substantial victories, both in Congress and the presidency. Personally, Obama had won two very narrow victories. He had won the Democratic nomination by a very thin margin, and then won the general election by a fairly thin margin in the popular vote, despite a wide victory in the electoral college.
Many people have pointed out that Obama won more decisively than any president since George H.W. Bush in 1988. That is certainly true. Bill Clinton always had more people voting against him than for him, because of the presence of Ross Perot on the ballot in 1992 and 1996. George W. Bush actually lost the popular vote by a tiny margin in 2000; he won it in 2004 with nearly 51 percent of the vote but had more than 49 percent of the electorate voting against him. Obama did a little better than that, with about 53 percent of voters supporting him and 47 percent opposing, but he did not change the basic architecture of American politics. He still had won the presidency with a deeply divided electorate, with almost as many people opposed to him as for him.
Presidents are not as powerful as they are often imagined to be. Apart from institutional constraints, presidents must constantly deal with public opinion. Congress is watching the polls, as all of the representatives and a third of the senators will be running for re-election in two years. No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, their first loyalty is to their own careers, and collapsing public opinion polls for a Democratic president can destroy them. Knowing this, they have a strong incentive to oppose an unpopular president — even one from their own party — or they might be replaced with others who will oppose him. If Obama wants to be powerful, he must keep Congress on his side, and that means he must keep his numbers up. He is undoubtedly getting the honeymoon bounce now. He needs to hold that.
Obama appears to understand this problem clearly. It would take a very small shift in public opinion polls after the election to put him on the defensive, and any substantial mistakes could sink his approval rating into the low 40s. George W. Bush’s basic political mistake in 2004 was not understanding how thin his margin was. He took his election as vindication of his Iraq policy, without understanding how rapidly his mandate could transform itself in a profound reversal of public opinion. Having very little margin in his public opinion polls, Bush doubled down on his Iraq policy. When that failed to pay off, he ended up with a failed presidency.
Bush was not expecting that to happen, and Obama does not expect it for himself. Obama, however, has drawn the obvious conclusion that what he expects and what might happen are two different things. Therefore, unlike Bush, he appears to be trying to expand his approval ratings as his first priority, in order to give himself room for maneuver later. Everything we see in his first two weeks of shaping his presidency seems to be designed to do two things: increase his standing in the Democratic Party, and try to bring some of those who voted against him into his coalition.
In looking at Obama’s supporters, we can divide them into two blocs. The first and largest comprises those who were won over by his persona; they supported Obama because of who he was, rather than because of any particular policy position or because of his ideology in anything more than a general sense. There was then a smaller group of supporters who backed Obama for ideological reasons, built around specific policies they believed he advocated. Obama seems to think, reasonably in our view, that the first group will remain faithful for an extended period of time so long as he maintains the aura he cultivated during his campaign, regardless of his early policy moves. The second group, as is usually the case with the ideological/policy faction in a party, will stay with Obama because they have nowhere else to go — or if they turn away, they will not be able to form a faction that threatens his position.
What Obama needs to do politically, then, is protect and strengthen the right wing of his coalition: independents and republicans who voted for him because they had come to oppose Bush and, by extension, McCain. Second, he needs to persuade at least 5 percent of the electorate who voted for McCain that their fears of an Obama presidency were misplaced. Obama needs to build a positive rating at least into the mid-to-high 50s to give him a firm base for governing, and leave himself room to make the mistakes that all presidents make in due course.
With the example of Bush’s failure before him, as well as Bill Clinton’s disastrous experience in the 1994 mid-term election, Obama is under significant constraints in shaping his presidency. His selection of Hillary Clinton is meant to nail down the rightward wing of his supporters in general, and Clinton supporters in particular. His appointment of Geithner at the Treasury and the rumored re-appointment of Gates as secretary of defense are designed to reassure the leftward wing of McCain supporters that he is not going off on a radical tear. Obama’s gamble is that (to select some arbitrary numbers), for every alienated ideological liberal, he will win over two lukewarm McCain supporters.
To those who celebrate Obama as a conciliator, these appointments will resonate. For those supporters who saw him as a fellow ideologue, he can point to position papers far more moderate and nuanced than what those supporters believed they were hearing (and were meant to hear). One of the political uses of rhetoric is to persuade followers that you believe what they do without locking yourself down.
His appointments match the evolving realities. On the financial bailout, Obama has not at all challenged the general strategy of Paulson and Bernanke, and therefore of the Bush administration. Obama’s position on Iraq has fairly well merged with the pending Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq. On Afghanistan, Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus has suggested negotiations with the Taliban — while, in moves that would not have been made unless they were in accord with Bush administration policies, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has offered to talk with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and the Saudis reportedly have offered him asylum. Tensions with Iran have declined, and the Israelis have even said they would not object to negotiations with Tehran. What were radical positions in the opening days of Obama’s campaign have become consensus positions. That means he is not entering the White House in a combat posture, facing a disciplined opposition waiting to bring him down. Rather, his most important positions have become, if not noncontroversial, then certainly not as controversial as they once were.
Instead, the most important issue facing Obama is one on which he really had no position during his campaign: how to deal with the economic crisis. His solution, which has begun to emerge over the last two weeks, is a massive stimulus package as an addition — not an alternative — to the financial bailout the Bush administration crafted. This new stimulus package is not intended to deal with the financial crisis but with the recession, and it is a classic Democratic strategy designed to generate economic activity through federal programs. What is not clear is where this leaves Obama’s tax policy. We suspect, some recent suggestions by his aides notwithstanding, that he will have a tax cut for middle- and lower-income individuals while increasing tax rates on higher income brackets in order to try to limit deficits.
What is fascinating to see is how the policies Obama advocated during the campaign have become relatively unimportant, while the issues he will have to deal with as president really were not discussed in the campaign until September, and then without any clear insight as to his intentions. One point we have made repeatedly is that a presidential candidate’s positions during a campaign matter relatively little, because there is only a minimal connection between the issues a president thinks he will face in office and the ones that he actually has to deal with. George W. Bush thought he would be dealing primarily with domestic politics, but his presidency turned out to be all about the U.S.-jihadist war, something he never anticipated. Obama began his campaign by strongly opposing the Iraq war — something that has now become far less important than the financial crisis, which he didn’t anticipate dealing with at all.
So, regardless of what Obama might have thought his presidency would look like, it is being shaped not by his wishes, but by his response to external factors. He must increase his political base — and he will do that by reassuring skeptical Democrats that he can work with Hillary Clinton, and by showing soft McCain supporters that he is not as radical as they thought. Each of Obama’s appointments is designed to increase his base of political support, because he has little choice if he wants to accomplish anything else.
As for policies, they come and go. As George W. Bush demonstrated, an inflexible president is a failed president. He can call it principle, but if his principles result in failure, he will be judged by his failure and not by his principles. Obama has clearly learned this lesson. He understands that a president can’t pursue his principles if he has lost the ability to govern. To keep that ability, he must build his coalition. Then he must deal with the unexpected. And later, if he is lucky, he can return to his principles, if there is time for it, and if those principles have any relevance to what is going on around him. History makes presidents. Presidents rarely make history.
http://www.stratfor.com/
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20081124_obama_first_moves/?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_campaign=none&utm_medium=email
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November 24, 2008
Two Presidents Say They Encountered Gunfire
By OLESYA VARTANYAN and ELLEN BARRY
TBILISI, Georgia — Presidents Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia and Lech Kaczynski of Poland said they were met with machine-gun fire when they visited a Russian checkpoint near the South Ossetian boundary on Sunday. Russia denied the claim.
No one was harmed in the encounter, but Mr. Saakashvili said it should convince Europe that Russia was in “the most extreme violation” of a French-brokered cease-fire. Kakha Lomaya, secretary of Georgia’s Security Council, said on Georgian television that Russia “endangered the life of our head of state and the president of a country that is part of the E.U. and NATO.”
The South Ossetian and Russian authorities denied any shooting had taken place, and said the two presidents intentionally provoked their forces. Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told the Interfax news agency that Mr. Saakashvili’s account of shooting was “one more instance of wishful thinking on the part of Georgia.”
Mr. Saakashvili and Mr. Kaczynski, a passionate supporter of Georgia in its conflict with Russia, had arranged the trip on the fifth anniversary of the Rose Revolution, the wave of pro-Western street protests that brought Mr. Saakashvili to power. They assembled a convoy of officials and journalists to visit refugees in a Georgian-held village, but changed their plans just after 5 p.m. to visit the checkpoint.
Mr. Saakashvili said he had proposed the visit so that Mr. Kaczynski could see the Russian presence firsthand.
Fighting in South Ossetia and a second breakaway region, Abkhazia, broke out between Georgia and Russia in August. As part of a cease-fire, Russia has withdrawn its forces from positions in Georgia outside the two regions.
Maria Stepan, a reporter for Radio Zet in Poland, said as journalists were going to the front of the convoy to photograph the presidents getting out of their car, they heard machine-gun fire, though it was not clear whether it was aimed at the presidents’ car, she said.
At a news conference with the Polish president in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, Mr. Saakashvili said he was caught “Frankly, I didn’t expect the Russians to open fire,” Mr. Saakashvili said. “The reality is you are dealing with unpredictable people. It seems they weren’t happy to see our guest and they weren’t happy to see me either.”
Mariusz Handzlik, a Polish official traveling with the convoy, said he heard three bursts of machine-gun fire, and that the party turned back.
“Our European colleagues should pay attention to it and draw conclusions before it is too late,” Mr. Kaczynski said at the news conference.
Irina Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for the South Ossetian government, offered a different account. She said 30 vehicles had approached the border post at the village of Mosabruni, and one person got out and asked permission to cross the border. They were denied, and after a 15-minute conversation, they left, she said. “There were no shots fired on either side,” she said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its troops “have opened no fire, least of all in the direction of Georgian territory.”
Olesya Vartanyan reported from Tbilisi, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from Berlin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/world/europe/24georgia.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=print
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Putin offers end to standoff over Eastern European missile systems
Posted on : 2008-11-24 Author : DPA News Category : Europe
Moscow - Russia is prepared to make plans to deploy missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave "disappear" if the United States drops plans to base part of its missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia's prime minister said Monday. If the new administration of US president-elect Barack Obama drops deployment plans for a missile shield in what Russia considers to be within its sphere of influence, then "questions of our retaliatory measures will disappear by themselves," Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told journalists at a forum in St Petersburg.
Putin is considered by many to have the last say on Russian foreign policy.
Washington has failed in multiple rounds of negotiations to calm Moscow's concerns about the missile system it says needs to be based in eastern Europe to protect against threats from rogue state's such as Iran.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on November 5 that Russia would deploy semi-ballistic missiles to its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, bordering NATO members Poland and Lithuania, if US plans went ahead.
Putin added on Monday that Russia was hoping for "more constructive" negotiations on a key nuclear arms treaty set to expire next year.
The comments came as Medvedev eased his tone, saying at an Asia- Pacific forum in Peru that he was open to compromise with the new US administration.
"Dialogue is possible, a change of position is possible," Medvedev was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying in Lima, where current US President George W Bush was also in attendance. Obama has shown signs he may even rescind the shield plans, Medvedev said.
Obama and his advisors have not staked out a position on the missile defence issue ever since a Polish statement was released stating that the matter had been decided. http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/243035,putin-offers-end-to-standoff-over-eastern-european-missile-systems.html#
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Official: Russians want to search for oil off Cuba
1 day ago
HAVANA (AP) — Russian oil companies could soon begin searching for oil in deep Gulf of Mexico waters off Cuba, a top diplomat said just days before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits the island.
Russian oil companies have "concrete projects" for drilling in Cuba's part of the gulf, said Mijail Kamynin, Russia's ambassador to Cuba, to the state-run business magazine Opciones.
Kamynin also said Russian companies would like to help build storage tanks for crude oil and to modernize Cuban pipelines, as well as play a role in Venezuelan efforts to refurbish a Soviet-era refinery in the port city of Cienfuegos, according the article published this weekend.
Medvedev comes to former Cold War ally Cuba on Thursday, part of a tour of Latin America to strengthen his country's economic and political ties in the region. Kamynin said trade between Russia and the island would top $400 million this year.
Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo prohibits U.S. companies from investing on the island. But Cuba's state-run oil concern has signed joint operating agreements with companies from several countries to explore waters that Cuban scientists claim could contain reserves of up to 20 billion barrels of oil.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Cuba in October for the signing of agreements allowing state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA to invest $8 million initially for a seven-year, deep-water exploration project north of the famed beach resort of Varadero. If reserves are confirmed, Brazil would produce oil and natural gas recovered there over the next 25 years.
Opciones did not give details on what the Russian proposals would entail.
The Soviet Union was communist Cuba's chief economic benefactor until it disbanded, throwing the island's economy into disarray. Cuba-Russia relations soured after that, but warmed when President Vladimir Putin visited in 2000.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ib67DphIFXuGKiaDYSC4gKWqAzwAD94KQEK01
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Russia president, warships to Venezuela to counter U.S.
Sun Nov 23, 2008 2:24pm EST
By Frank Jack Daniel
CARACAS (Reuters) - Warships, nuclear power, arms sales and perhaps cooperation on oil prices -- Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev is in Venezuela this week with an alarming sounding list to wave under Washington's nose.
The U.S. government dismisses the importance of Medvedev's visit on Wednesday to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the deployment of several Russian warships for joint military exercises with Venezuelan forces in the Caribbean. It says Russia's weak navy is no threat and downplays its rivals' blooming friendship.
But OPEC-member Venezuela is Russia's first firm ally in the Americas since the Cold War and Moscow sees ties to Chavez as a way to answer U.S. influence close to its borders in the Caucasus.
Russia's aim to grow its Latin American presence may be hurt by falling oil prices and Barack Obama's U.S. election win, which could help the United States regain influence lost in the region during the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush.
Still, Chavez has made a career of opposing the U.S. "empire" and he welcomes a heavyweight partner like Russia as an alternative to ties with his main oil client Washington.
"Compared with Russia, we are territorially a small country, but comparing our reserves of oil and gas we are two giants uniting," Chavez said on a trip to Russia this year.
Although it is Venezuela's main weapons supplier, Moscow was for years wary of Chavez's radical anti-Washington stance. But it warmed to him after the war in Georgia in August and U.S. missile-shield deals with Poland and the Czech Republic.
Since then, Caracas's glitziest hotels have filled with successive delegations of Russian businessmen and politicians, while top Venezuelan officials have tag-teamed in and out of Russia. Chavez has made three trips in 12 months.
Moscow now promises to help Chavez build a civilian nuclear reactor and has set up a $4 billion joint investment fund. In return, Venezuela gives access to gas and gold reserves.
Russian officials say the creation of a joint consortium to further develop Venezuela's Orinoco oil field will be a central issue of Medvedev's visit.
He is also likely to discuss cooperating on oil supply with OPEC, where Chavez is a leading price hawk. Both nations depend on energy exports and are worried by oil's fall to around $50 a barrel from $147 in July.
Chavez chased away many private investors with a spate of nationalizations in the last year, and likes Russian promises to help develop Venezuelan resources.
"UP THE ANTE"
Medvedev will also visit Cuba and Brazil this week after meeting Bush at a weekend summit meeting in Peru. His visit to Venezuela is the first ever by a Russian president and coincides with the joint naval exercises in the Caribbean.
Along with a visit by two bombers to a Venezuelan base in September, the exercises are Russia's first in the Americas since sending missiles and ships to Cuba during the Cold War.
"The Russians are communicating that if we make decisions in Georgia that they find threatening, Russia would be prepared to up the ante in America's backyard," said Dimitri Simes, who heads the Nixon Center in Washington.
The U.S. government has shrugged off Russia's renewed interest in the Americas, sneering at its notoriously accident-prone navy and inviting Moscow to work constructively in the region.
"No one should doubt where the preponderance of military power in the hemisphere lies," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
McCormack wondered if Russia's nuclear powered Peter the Great ship, which suffered an accident killing several sailors some years ago, would "actually make it" across the Atlantic.
In recent weeks, part of U.S. Navy's newly relaunched Fourth Fleet has conducted aid missions in the Caribbean.
Former U.S. National Security Council member Stephen Sestanovich said Moscow's Venezuelan adventure was mostly talk.
"The generals and admirals may get a brief, giddy kick out of their Caribbean cruises and bomber patrols (but) the region doesn't really fit into anybody's definition of Russian strategic priorities," he said. "The reality is that their economic position is worsening by the day."
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington; Editing by Kieran Murray)
http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSTRE4AM1Z720081123
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Mercy That Eludes Medvedev
By Masha LipmanThursday, November 20, 2008; A23
MOSCOW -- Nearly 86,000 people have signed a letter asking President Dmitry Medvedev to pardon Svetlana Bakhmina, a former lawyer for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil company, Yukos. Bakhmina, who is due to give birth within weeks, is in a prison camp in the province of Mordovia, about 400 miles southeast of Moscow.
Bakhmina's conviction and the entire affair with Yukos and Khodorkovsky, who was once Russia's richest man but has been jailed since 2003, have radically corrupted the Russian justice system. By not pardoning her, Medvedev emerges as a proponent of the Soviet system of justice, which presumed that any ties to an "enemy of the state" were themselves a crime.
The number of signatures attracted by Bakhmina's pardon plea is enormous for Russia's generally apathetic and compliant society. But the inhumanity of Bakhmina's treatment has sparked understandable sympathy. She is the mother of two boys, ages 11 and 7. The charges against her are painfully thin; she was convicted of corporate theft, even though the "injured party" did not claim a loss of funds during her trial.
Bakhmina is no political figure. She is simply suffering collateral damage from the harsh campaign against Khodorkovsky, who through his immense wealth and clout came to be regarded as a serious challenger to the state.
When asserting control over political and public affairs at home, the Kremlin generally opts for subtle manipulation, but in the rare cases in which it resorts to naked repression, it shows no mercy -- and little regard for legal procedure. Bakhmina was initially sentenced to seven years. A higher court then reduced her sentence by six months. Had it been cut six more months, to six years, she would have been eligible for amnesty. The 6 -1/2 -year term conveyed the government's determination to keep her behind bars.
Bakhmina is such a well-behaved prisoner that she was allowed to spend a few days at home with her husband and children this year (which is when she became pregnant). In May, when she had served half of her sentence, she applied for parole. Contrary to routine practice, her request was denied. She applied again but was denied parole a second time. Last month she sought a presidential pardon.
What happened next has yet to be explained: According to prison authorities, Bakhmina withdrew her plea for a pardon. There is no way of knowing why. Bakhmina is not allowed to communicate with the outside world, and prison administrators refused to give explanations. Critical commentators here suggested that Bakhmina was forced to abandon her plea so Medvedev would be spared the need to react.
Russia's first head of state, Boris Yeltsin, used his presidential power to pardon generously because he sought to make up for the inadequate justice system inherited from the Soviet era of state terror and unlawful reprisals. Every year, he dutifully signed thousands of pardons submitted to him by the Pardons Commission, a panel of liberal writers, journalists and academics. Yeltsin offered clemency even to his political enemies: The coup plotters of 1991, as well as those who attempted to overthrow him in 1993, were released not long after they were arrested.
Early in his first term, Vladimir Putin moved to disband the Pardons Commission, and the number of presidential pardons fell sharply. While Yeltsin had viewed part of his mission as showing tolerance and helping his nation overcome the crippling experience of the Soviet regime, his successor apparently did not.
The rule of law is simply not part of the Russian tradition. The attempt made after the collapse of communism to build a system with checks and balances and an independent judiciary has failed. Today, justice is routinely corrupted by executive authority or bribes. In politically sensitive cases -- the Khodorkovsky affair is the most significant example -- court rulings have been bent to the desires of the executive branch in a way that recalls the Soviet courts taking instructions from Communist party bosses. Intolerance and a lack of mercy are other elements of the Soviet legacy in Putin's Russia.
The Russian people in general have limited sympathy for Bakhmina. Tens of thousands might be asking Medvedev to show mercy, but to many Russians, Bakhmina is, first and foremost, someone who worked for Khodorkovsky and is therefore associated with the wealthy, who are broadly regarded in Russia as thieves. Many begrudge Bakhmina the attention she receives from her supporters, and it is not uncommon to hear callous or even contemptuous remarks about this woman who has been kept away from her husband and two sons for four years.
This week, the government suddenly softened its treatment of Bakhmina. Prison system authorities offered little information but said she was transferred to a civilian hospital near Moscow, where she will give birth. She may have even been allowed to see her husband. Rumors have it that she may be released on parole after the child is born.
But even if the government has finally decided to show some humanity toward Bakhmina, state officials' primary concern seems to be that Medvedev must not appear to be bowing to public pressure. As he ignores the humble call for mercy from tens of thousands of Bakhmina's supporters, Medvedev stands personally responsible for her suffering and encourages the intolerance and immorality of those who gloat at her plight.
Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Pro et Contra journal, writes a monthly column for The Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111903530_pf.html
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Window on Eurasia: Russians' Experience with Soviet Lines Blocks Rise of Civil Society Today

Paul Goble

Kuressaare, November 21 – Standing in line, which Soviet citizens did from three to eight hours every day, formed "not only the worldview but the behavioral strategy" of Soviet citizens, and that socializing experience continues to shape the attitudes of post-Soviet Russians and thus make the emergence of a civil society there far more difficult.
In a remarkable article in this week's "New Times" magazine, Vladimir Nikolayev examines an activity which he argues had such "a powerful socializing impact" on the Russian people that it continues to affect how they think and act even at a time when lines have become a less prominent feature in their lives (newtimes.ru/magazine/2008/issue092/doc-59795.html).
Lines, the Moscow sociologist says, were where people "formed their ideas about the society in which they lived." It was in them that "an individual understood what his compatriots though about themselves and how he (or she) played a role in this system." And lines communicated to those in them just what kind of a struggle for existence they faced.
And perhaps especially important with regards to its continuing impact on the lives of Russians now, he continues, "standing in line was an activity whose outcome was unclear: the Soviet customer could not be certain than when his turn came there would be something left for him."
But lines not only formed the worldview of those who stood in them, they also dictated "a behavioral strategy." Those standing in line were compelled to use force against others in the line or engage in open deception. And every individual in line had to keep track of who was ahead of him and who was behind, lest his own position be threatened.
Such behavior strategies continue to function now, Nikolayev says, as anyone can see who looks at a line not waiting to buy sausages as in the past but to get a passport or a bus. Moreover, even those who were not born in Soviet times follow this pattern because "the older generation by its behavior gives the young a model for emulation."
On the one hand, that means that the attitudes and behaviors learned in Soviet lines will not die out with the first generation or even the second or third. And on the other, these things helped to explain the specific nature of "'wild Russian capitalism,'" a phenomenon very different than its Western counterpart.
The difference between Russia and the West in this regard, the sociologist suggests, reflects the reality that people in Russia "simply do not know other means of living in a competitive milieu, and in this sense, contemporary Russian capitalism as a way of life is a Soviet and in no way a Western product."
Lines, of course, are "a means of organizing the inter-relationship and interaction of people in concrete situations for deficit goods of a material or symbolic character. The main thing in these interrelationships is how people conduct themselves toward others and how they group themselves and with whom they stand up against competitors."
In Soviet times, family members were terribly important because members of one family often had to stand together in order to be in a position to carry away whatever they hoped to get or alternatively to stand in more than one line for goods that the family need. Thus, lines at that time made the family especially important.
Now, Nikolayev writes, "the character of lines has changed because deficits have changed from something universal to something specific." Consequently, people no longer stand in line for almost everything but rather for things like "heart transplants" or "obtaining a passport or a car." And that has changed some things but far from all.
One thing it has not changed, the sociologist says, is the way in which people view the lines: they are "barricades, on one side of which stands a dependent population and on the others, sellers who [are in a position to] take decisions which are important for the buyers."
In this arrangement, the sellers are hated by the buyers, but at the same time, in the Soviet period, "many wanted to become sellers in order to have the magical possibility of participating in the distribution of deficit goods." Now, the same attitudes inform the Russian population with regard to members of the militia or the FSB.
Lines in Soviet times were thus "a wall which separated the people from the government and in this way defined the status of the individual in the state." The only "path to goods and services for the majority of people lay through a single mechanism: the line," and as a result, the line defined who an individual was.
According to Nikolayev, "the link between the line, the people and goods was so clear that a Soviet man, when seeing a line, would say: 'the people are standing for something.'" That was all the more so because some groups – the party elite and its allies – did not have to stand in line because they got their goods via special stores.
"Soviet life was constructed so that the government [which consisted of these groups] and the people never came into contact," Nikolayev writes. And "in this sense, little has changed." The only difference is that those who did not have to wait in line in Soviet times were part of the nomenklatura, while those who do not have to do so now have money.
And another thing that has not changed, he insists, is the way in which those standing in lines feel toward others. They expend their energy "not in cooperation with one another but in a struggle with one another," and that experience "interferes with the formation of the horizontal ties needed for the formation of civil society."
Indeed, what the line taught in Soviet times and what it teaches now, Nikolayev concludes, is hatred of those in power, hatred of the successful, and the need to behave in whatever way it takes to achieve "egoistic goals." In this sense, he says, "a large part of the Russian population remains Soviet consumers … with all the ensuing consequences."
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HONORING THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLODOMOR 1932-1933
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER, 22, 2008, 75TH COMMEMORATION

"I call upon all who are not indifferent to the feelings of mercy,
compassion and justice, who crave the victory of good over evil,
to light up their own candles of remembrance and to join us in
honoring the victims of the Holodomor." President Yushchenko
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Aegis Trust, Laxton, Newark, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom, Sat, Nov 22, 2008
UNITED KINGDOM - Today is the official day of remembrance marking the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Soviet-made famine which caused the deaths of an estimated four to six million Ukrainians in the period 1932-1933. The Aegis Trust joins with the survivors and the people of Ukraine in mourning the men, women and children whose lives were cruelly taken from them.The Holodomor involved Soviet confiscation of grain and other foodstuffs from most of rural Ukraine, combined with border closures which prevented the starving from fleeing to find food and stopped international aid from reaching them.In 1933, the lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize such mass atrocities against a particular group as an international crime. He was ignored. A few years later, the Nazi regime murdered six million Jews, including Lemkin’s own family.In 1943, Lemkin created a new word to describe such mass killing. He combined the Greek and Latin words, ‘geno’ (race or tribe) and ‘cide’ (killing). He proposed the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, approved in 1948.According to the Convention:Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The first draft of the Convention included political groups as well as those defined by nationality, ethnicity, race or religion, but following objections from the Soviet Union and several other countries, political groups were left out.It is argued that motivation for Soviet policy to bring about mass starvation in the Ukraine was the destruction of Ukrainian nationalism. However, whatever the motivation in targeting them, the victims were defined by their Ukrainian ethnic identity. The Soviet regime succeeded in its intention to inflict on the group conditions calculated to bring about massive physical destruction. This falls within the definition of genocide provided by the UN Genocide Convention. Lemkin himself described the Holodomor as “perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification – the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”Regrettably, the debate over whether or not the Holodomor constitutes genocide often becomes overlaid with political considerations and continues to distract governments and policy makers around the world from simply honouring the memory of its victims – and from reflecting on the lessons it holds for a world in which genocide continues.NOTE: The Aegis Trust is the leading UK-based international genocide prevention organization. Based at the UK Holocaust Centre, it coordinates the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Genocide Prevention and is responsible for the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda. Aegis is at the forefront of the international campaign to end the Darfur crisis. For more information, contact David Brown in the media office at the Aegis Trust on +44 (0)7921 471985, email: david.brown@aegistrust.org, link: http://www.aegistrust.org/. ==========================================================
Permanent news address: http://www.regnum.ru/english/1088461.html

New NPP in Lithuania will not cover demands for energy in all Baltic countries – Estonian expert
Andres Mäe, researcher of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, Estonia, answered questions about prospects of energy security and nuclear industry of the Baltic region.
Estonia is taking part in a nuclear power plant construction project in Lithuania, so is nuclear generation considered to be a good and stable source of electricity?
The Estonian government has supported plans of the state-owned energy company (Eesti Energia) to participate in the new nuclear power plant in Lithuania, in order to use electricity produced there to cover some of Estonia’s energy demand in the future.
Estonia has not yet adopted any official position on the development of nuclear energy. Still, individual members of the parliament and the government and scientists have recommended taking into consideration building a nuclear power plant in Estonia.
Construction of a nuclear power plant usually takes much time. In terms of energy security of the region may the Baltic States and Estonia feel lack of electrical energy before the new NPP is constructed in Lithuania?
Yes, there will be a small deficit in electrical energy production in the Baltic states after the closure of the Ignalina NPP. Latvia is already importing one third of electricity from Estonia, Russia and Lithuania, it will have to find another source to replace Lithuania in 2010. Lithuania will cover part of its domestic consumption with Elektrenai thermal power plant working on natural gas but it will also have to start to import electricity from Russia and Belarus. Estonia will cover its base load consumption by itself and will import electricity from Latvia’s hydropower plants to cover its peak load demand as it does nowadays. Estonia has also an opportunity to import electricity from Scandinavia via underwater cable EstLink.
Do you think generation capacity of the new NPP will be enough to meet electricity needs of Estonia in particular and all the Baltic states or other sources of electricity will be needed in a long-term prospect?
The new nuclear power plant in Lithuania will not be able to cover the electrical energy demand of the Baltic states and main reason for that is participation of Poland in the same project. One NPP is simply not enough for all four participants. Yes, there is urgent need for additional power generating capacities in the Baltic states.
Speaking about energy security of the Baltic region, theoretically may the Baltic NPP in the Kaliningrad region also become a source of electricity for the Baltic States and Estonia?
The Baltic NPP in Kaliningrad Region is already planned to produce electrical energy for export to Poland and the Baltic states. The region itself is too small to consume the total amount of electricity produced at the NPP.
http://www.regnum.ru/english/1088461.html?forprint
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Industrial orders growth in Lithuania and in Latvia – the highest in EU in September 2008
Danuta Pavilenene, BC, Vilnius/Luxemburg, 24.11.2008.
In September 2008 compared with August 2008, the euro area (EA15) industrial new orders index fell by 3.9%. In the EU27 new orders declined by 4.6% in September 2008, Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, informs.
In September 2008 compared with September 2007, industrial new orders fell by 1.1% in the euro area and by 0.9% in the EU27.
In September 2008 compared with August 2008, new orders for textiles & textile products rose by 0.4% in the euro area and by 0.5% in the EU27. Chemicals & chemical products grew by 0.1% in both zones. Electrical & electronic equipment decreased by 1.1% in the euro area, but gained 0.2% in the EU27. Manufacturing of machinery & equipment dropped by 1.9% and 1.0% respectively. Transport equipment fell by 3.8% in the euro area and by 8.9% in the EU27. Manufacturing of basic metals & fabricated metal products declined by 5.1% and 6.1% respectively.
In September 2008, among the Member States for which data are available, total manufacturing working on orders rose in eight, fell in ten and remained stable in the Czech Republic. The highest increases were recorded in Latvia (+13.9%), Bulgaria (+12.5%) and Romania (+8.2%), and the largest decreases in Germany (-9.4%), Portugal (-4.9%) and Lithuania (-4.2%).
In September 2008 compared with September 2007, new orders for chemicals & chemical products grew by 9.2% in the euro area and by 9.0% in the EU27.
Manufacturing of basic metals & fabricated metal products increased by 4.4% and 3.3% respectively. Electrical & electronic equipment gained 1.2% in the euro area and 0.9% in the EU27. Manufacturing of textiles & textile products fell by 3.5% and 3.6% respectively. Machinery & equipment declined by 3.9% in the euro area, but increased by 1.7% in the EU27. Transport equipment dropped by 14.8% and 13.9% respectively.
In September 2008, among the Member States for which data are available, total manufacturing working on orders rose in nine and fell in ten. The highest increases were registered in Latvia (+48.1%), Romania (+43.1%) and Lithuania (+18.3%), and the most significant falls in Spain (-9.1%), Sweden (-9.0%) and France (-4.9%).
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Baltic Navy commanders to meet in Latvian Liepaja
Today and tomorrow, on November 25, Naval Forces commanders of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia will meet in Liepaja (south-western Latvia).
Participants in the meeting will be Estonian Navy Marine Commander, Captain Igor Schvede, Latvian Navy Commander, Captain Aleksandrs Pavlovics and Lithuanian Navy Commander, Captain Olegas Marinicius, as well as the Captain-Commander of the Baltic Naval Squadron "Baltron" Eugenijus Valikovas of Lithuania. The navy chiefs will discuss recent minesweeping operations carried out by "Baltron" and the schedule for year 2009.
Among the discussion topics will be also the Baltic Navy headquarters staffing procedure, as the Latvian Navy spokeswoman Iveta Kraukle informed LETA.
Meetings of Baltic States' Navy commanders take place twice a year, the previous meeting was held in July this year in Tallinn, Estonia.
http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/baltic_news/?doc=2076
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Lithuanians and Estonians feel happier than Latvians
Nina Kolyako, BC, Riga, 22.11.2008.
Nordic people are the happiest Europeans, while their least-happy counterparts can be found in the Balkans, a European Union lifestyle survey released Wednesday suggests. Latvia, both regarding residents' life satisfaction at 6 out of 10 and happiness with 6.8 out of 10, ranked fourth from the bottom of the list, behind Lithuania and Estonia.
Danes' ranking of their own happiness came out tops, followed by Swedes, Finns and Norwegians. Bulgarians came bottom of the table, with Macedonians and Turks just ahead of them, reports LETA/AFP.
The European Quality of Life Survey, carried out by the Dublin-based EU research agency Eurofound, reveals that Europeans were generally satisfied with their quality of life – though levels varied considerably across countries.
On average, Europeans rated their life satisfaction at seven out of 10 – and their happiness at 7.5 out of 10. Danes put their happiness at 8.3 out of 10 and their life satisfaction at 8.5, while for Bulgarians the averages were 5.8 and five respectively.
Latvia, both regarding residents' life satisfaction at 6 out of 10 and happiness with 6.8 out of 10, ranked fourth from the bottom of the list, behind Lithuania and Estonia.
Lithuanians evaluate their life satisfaction at 6.3 and happiness at 7.3 points out of 10, whereas for Estonians these figures are 6.7 and 7.4, respectively.
Eurofound conducted more than 35,000 interviews in the 27 EU member states, candidate countries Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey, plus Norway from September 2007 to February 2008 – well before the current economic downturn.
http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/analytics/?doc=7326

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Lithuanian immigrants urged to come home
RONAN McGREEVY
Sat, Nov 22, 2008
THE LITHUANIAN government has begun a recruitment drive to try to encourage some of the estimated 70,000 immigrants living here to return home.
Like Ireland, Lithuania has had some good times, but they have come to a dramatic halt. Economic growth at a respectable 4.5 per cent this year is likely to fall to 0.5 per cent next year. House prices have fallen by 20 per cent and wages, which went up by 15 per cent last year, are static.
However, the government there is hoping the worsening unemployment situation in Ireland and the homesickness many immigrants feel after several years here will persuade them to return home.
There were more exhibitors than prospective returning immigrants at a jobs fair in the Burlington hotel in Dublin last night, but organisers are hoping to attract thousands of Lithuanians at the Burlington hotel today and at the Four Seasons hotel in Monaghan town tomorrow. Monaghan has the highest proportion of Lithuanians, many of whom work in the mushroom industry.
The conference is being run by the International Organisation for Migration on behalf of the Lithuanian ministry of social security and labour. Conference organiser Ieva Búdvytyté said the purpose was as much to give information to returning emigrants as to offer jobs.
"A lot of Lithuanians are now unemployed in Ireland and we are saying it is easier to live in a crisis in your country where you are near to your family and friends," she said.
Recruitment firms for sales, information technology and engineering positions, real estate giant Remax and the Lithuanian police and army are among the exhibitors at the Burlington.
Polivas Kytra of CV Markets, Lithuania's biggest online recruitment firm, said they had about 1,000 jobs available, especially in sales, which is still enjoying a boom despite the economic crisis. Although the average net wage in Lithuania is about €700 a month, he says there is no shortage of expatriates looking to return home.
"In recent months, we have noticed there are more people coming back from Ireland than going there," Mr Kytra said. "The economic crisis might be even bigger in Lithuania, but they tell us they miss the country and especially the good weather."
Marija Bakunaite said she returned from Britain to take up a hotel job in the capital Vilnius in March and had been promoted from receptionist to front-of-house manager. "In Lithuania, you are local - when you are abroad, you are just an immigrant. The wages may be half but it is worth it."
Jacinta Bacuskaite, who has lived in Ireland for six years, said she was prepared to move home although she had a good job working in human resources.
"I'm single and there is nothing here to keep me. I like Ireland, but I miss Lithuania. We have real seasons in Lithuania."
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1122/1227293431505_pf.html