Putin-Netanyahu talks to focus on rising Islamist power: Cairo then Damascus

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt – and soon, possibly, in Syria - will have pushed to the sidelines such obvious topics as Iran and gas when Monday, June 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin on a short visit to Israel meets Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

On this subject at least, the Russian and Israeli leaders will find common ground: Both are concerned, to put it mildly, by the chain of Muslim Brotherhood governments rolling out along Middle East shores – Libya, last year; Egypt, yesterday; and Syria, tomorrow. In their view, this process is a menace to regional stability which rivals even that of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Putin counts US President Barack Obama’s sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood power as a strategic threat to Russian national security because of it could be the match which lights the flame of radical Islam in the Caucasus and among the Russian Muslim populations of the Volga River valleys.

As for Netanyahu, his calm-sounding congratulations for the new, democratically-elected Egyptian president, disguise trepidation. After one domino fell in Cairo, he fears another will fall in Damascus leaving Jordan vulnerable to having its king pushed over by the kingdom’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel would then be under siege from three Islamist-ruled neighbors - “moderate” in Obama’s eyes, alarmingly “extremist and expansionist” in the view of Putin and Netanyahu.

In contrast to the Israeli prime minister, the Russian president makes no bones about his utter disapproval of the US President’s “pro-Islamic” policies. His blunt words in support of Syria’s Bashar Assad at the G20 in Mexico Sunday, June 18, were meant as a monkey wrench for US plans to continue to install Muslim power in Arab lands.

Not surprisingly, their conversation on the summit sidelines was described as “candid” – a euphemism for “difficult” – and must have raised a stop sign against the “reset” of ties heralded last year by Washington.

The Israeli Prime Minister keeps on smiling to Obama while grinding his teeth over the security avalanche set in motion at Israel’s front and back doors and wracking his brains for a plan of cooperation with Moscow to arrest the slide.

Israel has already had a foretaste of the trouble to come from Cairo. It bounced all the way from Libya’s Islamist regime to land this month with a sinister bang across Egyptian Sinai’s border with southern Israel.

In the past year, since a new regime took power in Tripoli, the strategic peninsula has been transformed into a major smuggling eden for the distribution of contraband arms and infiltrating Islamist terrorists, including Muslim Brotherhood adherents, into the Hamas-ruled the Gaza Strip and onward to other countries in the region.

For Putin the math is simple: If Libyan Islamists can travel 1,360 kilometers to reach Israel’s borders without anyone stopping them, why not 2,558 kilometers to the Russian Caucasian?

Ironically, the victim of the first suicide attack the Libyan terrorists mounted inside Israel from Sinai was an Israeli Muslim from Haifa, Said Fashasha, who died in a bombing-shooting ambush on Route 10 to Eilat Sunday, June 18. On the same day, the “candid” Obama-Putin conversation also took place at Los Cabos.

Now as then, President Obama continues to push the Russian leader to accept the compromise of Syria’s Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim, replacing Bashar Assad, with Assad’s brother-in-law, deputy chief of staff Gen. Shawqat Asif, serving alongside him. With those chips in place, Washington believes Assad might be persuaded to go into exile in Moscow.

What Putin hears is that Obama is so eager to have a Sunni Muslim installed in Damascus that he is willing to put up with retaining the Assad clan in power, even Gen. Asif, a chief instigator of the regime’s bloody savagery.

So both Putin and Netanyahu, when they talk in Jerusalem Monday, know they are stumped for a strategy to hold back the Islamist tide washing across this region and potentially farther afield – any more than a diplomatic solution has been found to stall Iran’s nuclear plans.

Obama's Harvard law professor says 'President MUST be defeated in 2012' (even though he's the man Barack used to have on speed dial)

* Roberto Unger, 65, is respected author and Brazilian politician
* Taught Obama about 'reinventing democracy' at Harvard Law School
* Professor was an adviser during the 2008 election campaign

By Daily Mail Reporter

A former professor of Barack Obama has turned against his one-time student and publicly urged voters not to re-elect him.

Roberto Unger posted a video on YouTube detailing the reasons why he believes the President does not deserve a second term in the White House.

Mr Unger, a prominent Brazilian politician and an adviser to Obama in 2008, said: 'President Obama must be defeated in the coming election. He has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States.'

The 65-year-old academic was in frequent contact with Mr Obama on his Blackberry throughout the last election campaign but has since decided that he no longer agreed with the President's decisions.

His list of complaints against the President is a long one in the video entitled 'Beyond Obama'.

The esteemed philosopher is scathing of Mr Obama's plans to salvage America's ailing economy, saying that his policy solely consists of 'financial confidence and food stamps'.

He adds: 'He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices.'

The politician admits that if Republican candidate Mitt Romney wins the election 'there will be a cost... in judicial and administrative appointments'.

However his most barbed remarks he reserves for the Democrat leader saying that Mr Obama has 'evoked a politics of handholding, but no one changes the world without a struggle'.

His summary of the past four years is equally scathing: 'Give the bond markets what they want, bail out the reckless so long as they are also rich, use fiscal and monetary stimulus to make up for the absence of any consequential broadening of economic and educational opportunity, sweeten the pill of disempowerment with a touch of tax fairness, even though the effect of any such tax reform is sure to be modest.'

Most of Mr Unger's comments seem to be politically to the left of Mr Obama, but he insists that the Republicans would be no more destructive than the Democrats as 'the risk of military adventurism' would remain the same.

And some would doubtless strike a chord with the President's GOP opponents, including the academic's attacks on Mr Obama's efforts to reform healthcare.

Mr Unger argues: 'He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care in the mistaken belief that he would be spared a fight.'

He also suggests that, despite their fierce rivalry, the Democrats' agenda is little different to that of the Republicans, saying the party aims 'to put a human face on the programme of its adversaries'.

The professor concludes his video by saying: 'Only a political reversal can allow the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life.'

Mr Unger is a renowned politician in his native Brazil. He has twice has run for president of Brazil and has served as Minister of Strategic Affairs.

Unger was one of the founding members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and drafted its founding manifesto.

He has also advised on politics throughout Latin America.

The professor is a respected author having published dozens of books on economics, philosophy and politics.

In philosophy, his arguments are said to focus on some the greatest problems of the human existence.

The video, which was posted three weeks ago, has been viewed 22,000 times.

Mr Unger has taught at Harvard Law since 1976.

Obama studied jurisprudence and reinventing democracy with the professor. 

The President attended Harvard Law School in 1988 and was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year.

Last week Obama announced that young immigrants who were brought into the U.S. illegally will no longer be deported.

The Obama administration said the policy change announced on Friday will affect as many as 800,000 qualified immigrants who have lived in fear of deportation.

The President also came in for sharp criticism last week after he combined fundraising events with an official event - and charged the bill to the taxpayer.

Obama raised a total of $4.5million at the fundraisers, one at Sex and the City actress Sarah Jessica Parker's house and the other at the five-star Plaza Hotel.

However, the President's re-election campaign will not have to pay the full cost of his jaunt to the Big Apple, because he scheduled a short visit to the World Trade Center site.

World cools towards Barack Obama

International approval of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy has dropped sharply during his term in office, a Pew Research survey suggests.

Among the 21 countries surveyed, the largest drop in approval - from 57% to 27% - was seen in China, the Global Attitudes Project reveals.

Most respondents in almost all countries opposed US drone strikes.

Despite these numbers, confidence in Mr Obama remains high among US allies, especially in Europe.

"I think where you see the real disappointment is when you deal with specific policies," said Richard Wike, associate director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

He added that the survey showed big gaps between expectation levels and action over Mr Obama's policies on climate change and treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Economic power

According to Mr Wike, confidence in Mr Obama and approval of his international policies has trended downward during the course of his presidency, but has not dropped sharply in a single year.

Besides China, the largest declines in foreign policy approval by 2012 included long-term ally Japan and neighbour Mexico.

Among five European countries surveyed both in 2009 and 2012, approval of Mr Obama's international policies dropped from 78% to 63%. In five Muslim countries surveyed in both years, the approval rate dropped from 34% to 15%. Russia also joined the countries with double-digit declines, from 40% of respondents approving US international policies to 22%, an 18% decrease.

While Mr Obama generally has higher approval ratings than President George W Bush did at the end of his second term, their approval ratings are now matched in Pakistan and Mr Obama's remain only slightly better in Lebanon.

Among the countries surveyed there was widespread opposition to US drone strikes. At least 50% of respondents in 17 countries disapproved of such strikes, with the largest percentages in the Middle East, Mexico and Greece.

In recent weeks, Mr Obama has become more closely associated with the US drone programme, with a New York Times report noting he personally approves each strike, and that the US keeps a "kill list" of potential strikes against militants.

In addition to changes in sentiment towards Mr Obama and his policies, the survey records a shift in the way economic power is perceived.

Majorities in Germany, Britain, France and Spain now regard China as the world's leading economic power, not the US. In the UK, this percentage has doubled since 2008.

Mr Wike told the BBC the US had seen a downward trend in its perceived economic power since the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, despite Mr Obama receiving "reasonably good marks on global economic issues".

However, American "soft power" gets higher marks, especially among young respondents.

The American way of doing business is popular in the Middle East, with more than 50% in Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt saying they like this part of US image.

Majorities or pluralities in 18 of 20 countries admire US science and technology, according to the survey. American ideas about democracy are more popular among respondents under 30 in several countries, including Tunisia and China.

US, EU fake Iran’s consent to discussing enrichment to fend off Israeli action

DEBKAfile Special Report

A spokesman for EU foreign executive Catherine Ashton, who heads the six-power group in nuclear negotiations with Iran, reported Monday night, June 11, that Tehran is now willing to discuss high-grade uranium enrichment in the next round of nuclear talks in Moscow on June 18-19.

The claim is false. Tehran consistently refuses to discuss its “right to enrichment” and threatened not to turn up for the Moscow session after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded last week that Iran come to the table with “concrete plans” for curbing uranium enrichment up to 20 percent purity.

Iran has not backtracked: Ashton got nothing new from an hour of tense conversation with senior negotiator Saeed Jalili and had to be satisfied with issuing the noncommittal statement, “The Iranians agreed on the need for Iran to engage on the (six powers') proposals, which address its concerns on the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program."

Enrichment remained unmentioned – least of all, any reference to the international inspectors’ discovery that Iran was enriching uranium up to 27 percent - and the “exclusively peaceful nature” of Iran’s nuclear program was endorsed.

From the outset, the talks between the six powers (US, China, Russia, Germany, France and Britain) in Istanbul (April 14) and Baghdad (23.5) and Tehran were falsely presented by the US and the European Union as different from previous diplomacy in that Tehran was now prepared to discuss the controversial aspects of its nuclear program.

This sham presentation of Iran puts diplomacy on artificial life support. Admission of is demise would leave the powers face to face with the only remaining path, i.e., military action - to which President Barack Obama is committed if all other options failed - either by the United States or Israel with US support.

The International Atomic Energy Agency Director Yukiya Amano toed the line Monday, June 11, by denying that IAEA negotiations with Iran had broken down Friday, June 8, of IAEA on inspections of its suspect nuclear sites, particularly the Parchin military complex where nuclear-related explosives tests are believed to have been conducted.

It wasn’t the first time that Amano put a good face on a failure to get anywhere with Iran. On May 2, after coming away from a visit to Tehran empty-handed, he claimed a deal on inspections was clinched and close to signing. It never was. But the next day, the P5+1 were enabled to launch talks with Iran in Istanbul.

Still, Iran made sure that those talks got exactly nowhere. The next session in Baghdad was seriously stalled from the word go by a long-winded harangue by chief negotiator Jalili on the historical connotations of the 30-year old Khorrmanshahr battle, in which revolutionary Islamic Iran trounced Iraq although the world powers and Gulf states solidly backed Saddam Hussein.

Jalili did not mention Iran's nuclear program but, tacitly pointing at the delegations present, he commented: “The weapons that they provided to Saddam's Ba’athist regime included German Leopard tanks, British Chieftain tanks, French Exocet missiles and Super Etendard aircraft, Russian MIG fighter-planes and Scud-B missiles, German and British chemical weapons, American Sidewinder missiles and AWACS aircraft, Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Emirati dollars.

He concluded with a declaration that the Islamic republic would "never be bullied into surrendering" to “illegal and unjust demands.”

The tight lid kept on proceedings at the nuclear negotiations keeps embarrassing disclosures out of the public domain and supports the pretense of progress, when in fact Tehran has adamantly refused to open its nuclear program to real discussion.

Iran’s real attitude toward the current round of diplomacy is summed up by debkafile’s Iranian and intelligence sources in five points:

1. The US has run out of unilateral options for dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons program and depends now on the cooperation of Moscow and Beijing to achieve any progress. Tehran infers this from Washington’s turn to the Russians for help in resolving the Syrian crisis.

2. The world powers facing Iran at the nuclear negotiations in Istanbul and Baghdad are not united as depicted by the Obama administration but split three ways between Russia, China and the West. It is therefore in Tehran’s interest to keep the talks dragging on for as long as possible and so widen the divisions and isolate America.

3. Tehran is aware of US plans to impose harsher sanctions very soon, including an air and marine blockade, and is not dismayed. In fact, Iranian strategists are busy figuring out ways to get around them. They also calculate that the tougher the sanctions, the higher the price they will exact for every nuclear concession. From this perspective, tougher sanctions will buy Iran more time and a faster route to a nuclear bomb.

4. Tehran regards the staging of the "P7 Talks" as part of a wider picture. A high-ranking Iranian source said: ‘If the negotiations were just about nuclear issues, why bring in the major powers? The talks could have been handled by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Iran’s leaders are nonetheless capitalizing on those talks as a short cut to broad global recognition of the Islamic Republic’s status as a major world power.

“We are already more than half way to achieving this,” they say in Tehran.

5. In view of the first four points, Tehran believes it is on a winning roll and can afford to stand fast against giving ground on a single one of its nuclear and technological advances.

The question asked by debkafile is why is Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeping silent on this charade and even going along with it.

Obama speeds up limited air strike, no-fly zones preparations for Syria

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

US President Barack Obama has ordered the US Navy and Air Force to accelerate preparations for a limited air offensive against the Assad regime and the imposition of no-fly zones over Syria, debkafile reports. Their mission will be to knock out Assad’s central regime and military command centers so as to shake regime stability and restrict Syrian army and air force activity for subduing rebel action and wreaking violence on civilian populations.

debkafile’s sources disclose that the US President decided on this step after hearing Russian officials stating repeatedly that “Moscow would support the departure of President Bashar al-Assad if Syrians agreed to it.” This position was interpreted as opening up two paths of action:

1. To go for Assad’s removal by stepping up arms supplies to the rebels and organizing their forces as a professional force able to take on the military units loyal to Assad. This process was already in evidence Friday, June 8, when for the first time a Syrian Free Army (which numbers some 600 men under arms) attacked a Syrian army battalion in Damascus. One of its targets was a bus carrying Russian specialists.

2. To select a group of high army officers who, under the pressure of the limited air offensive, would be ready to ease Assad out of power or stage a military coup to force him and his family to accept exile.
The US operation would be modulated according to the way political and military events unfolded.
Washington is not sure how Moscow would react aside from sharp condemnations or whether Russia would accept a process of regime change in Damascus and its replacement by military rule.

Obama Gets Left Behind

Come on now. Is Obama really a “psychopathic megalomaniac”?

I learned of Obama’s problems today. Not from Ron Paul supporters. Not from Glenn Beck‘s Drudge wanna-be news site The Blaze. I read about Obama’s psychosis from left wing Democrats.

Everyday I get emails from former members of Move On, a pro-Democratic Party group that was famously active during the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003. They’re complaining about one man: President Obama.

In these emails, one thing is apparent. When it comes to the left wing liberals, Obama is being left behind.

The left was mostly raptured into political heaven four years ago when they elected Obama on bended knee. He spoke about things dear to their hearts: closing Guantanamo Bay. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting tough on bankers.

Guantanamo is still open. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, but the military presence remains. (Smacks of imperialism. That’s something the left hates as much as libertarians do.) Then there’s the president’s bit about getting tough on bankers. Where has the White House come down hard on Wall Street? Fuhgeddaboudit. This is New York!

One anti-Obama Saturday in my inbox:

Re: Write-in Kermit the Frog!

If being a ‘pragmatist’ or a ‘realist’ means choosing only amongst evils, count us OUT. Obama betrayed the American voters who expected he would not gut the US Constitution. Both parties are the same. And, in a world of infinite possibilities we choose not between the lesser of two evils. In fact, those of us who are not into denial and work at the human rights front lines prefer to face the Republican snake head-on then the confused and gutless Democrat chameleon whining about being a progressive when they are NOT.” — Ezili Danto, human rights lawyer at the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Re: Obama is a psychopath; reminds me of Stalin

There’s a cancer in the presidency called Barack Obama. We have a psychopathic megalomaniac occupying the White house who could be compared to Nero, Caligula, Stalin, or Pol Pot in his disdain for human life. He and his coven of other like minded DC psychopaths and sociopaths are on a murdering spree and like a third world dictator Obama can have someone and their family (including you) executed or blasted to smithereens with a thumbs up or down. This is sickening to me. They are so blase about murdering that they refer to the hit list photos as “baseball cards”. Killing is a game or a sport to them. There is a “cancer on the Presidency” and that cancer has metastasized throughout Washington DC. It was there before Obama arrived but he brought a whole new and virulent strain with him. Every time there is a shameful incident or embarrassing event perpetrated by “a few bad apples” we hear from the DC psychopaths that “That is not who we are”. They are incorrect. It is who they are in DC. It is not who we the real everyday thinking feeling Americans are. I certainly am not one of the people to be included in their cumulative we.” — Alexander Cockburn, writing for his online publication Counterpunch. Alexander is also a columnist at The Nation, though I have a hard time believing this missive will make it passed Katrina Vanden Heuvel. Alex is a firebrand. I’ve written for him once or twice, and he was kind enough to comment on my reporting about the Iraq War for The Boston Globe in 2003 in his Beat the Devil column. This sounds like Alex being Alex, alright. Gotta love his fire.

Re: Bush mighta been better.
Hello!

“Why should the public believe what the Obama administration says about the people being assassinated by drones? Especially since, as we learn in the New York Times, the administration came up with a semantic solution to keep the civilian death toll to a minimum: simply count all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants. The rationale, reminiscent of George Zimmerman’s justification for shooting Trayvon Martin, is that “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” Talk about profiling! At least when George Bush threw suspected militants into Guantanamo their lives were spared.” — Medea Benjamin, CodePINK

Obama’s dealings with the working stiff, or the perceived lack thereof, plus his foreign policy has caused much of the anger against him among the left wing of the party.

I’m not a blue dog democrat. I’m a hard hat Democrat from Massachusetts; like the guys who climb telephone poles after hurricanes that vote for Kennedy. That’s where I cast my lot.

I voted for Obama through the U.S. Consulate in São Paulo. Obama was different. He was inspiring. I watched the votes unfold on two laptops — one on CNN, one on MSNBC with emails from my American friends flooding in every minute. My Blackberry was on my lap, blowing up with texts – can you believe North Carolina? It never happens!

Obama’s winning was like a moon landing. You noticed it more when you’re overseas. America did it again, Brazilians told me. The world can elect women presidents. It’s happened before. But what advanced economy has ever elected a black man? None. Not Europe. Not Latin America. Not Australia. Not even close. They’re not even on the ballot. Only in America. What a country.
On next page: Yes, You Can My #@$%!…

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