RUTHFULLY YOURS

Despite two decades of elections and growth, democracy has stalled, militaries are resurgent, and autocrats are in control.

On the same November morning when Boko Haram seized yet another village in Nigeria’s north, police in riot gear surrounded the country’s House of Representatives in the capital city of Abuja. But they weren’t guarding the country’s parliament against an assault by the notorious Islamist insurgency; they were there to block a politician from casting his vote.

Nigeria’s Speaker of the House, Aminu Tambuwal, had recently defected to the opposition—a risky move in a government dominated by one party. A court had ruled that he could keep his speaker’s chair, but police at the barricades outside said that he couldn’t. They stopped his car at the gate.

Nigerian lawmakers were scheduled to vote on whether to renew a bill that allows soldiers to detain suspects without cause in areas threatened by Boko Haram’s gunmen. Mr. Tambuwal expected to lead the legislative bloc opposed to this grant of sweeping state powers. Instead, the police fired tear gas and effectively shut down the Nigerian parliament.

Nigeria’s political drama is just one example of a disquieting trend across the continent. Two decades of elections and economic progress in Africa haven’t erased the vast power that militaries have long wielded in many countries, large and small. In much of Africa, in fact, the armed forces have gained influence in recent years as battling Islamist terrorists has become a priority.

“There are signs of the predatory nature of military rule” returning to Africa, said Larry Diamond, director of Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. “This is a calamity for a number of these countries.”

To friends of democratic development, Africa’s 54 countries pose perhaps the world’s most important test of whether representative institutions can flourish amid low living standards and rapidly changing economies. Leaders from the U.S., Europe and Latin America have visited the continent to promote open, politically accountable government. They know that China, Africa’s biggest trading partner, is offering a rival model in the form of market-powered autocracy.

For now, the advance of democracy in Africa appears to have stalled. In 1990, just three of Africa’s 48 countries were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy advocacy group. By 1994, that number had leapt to 18. Two decades later, only 19 qualify.

Erdogan deliberately overlooked a significant difference between Hamas and Turkey’s Islamist parties: Hamas specifically advocates violence, while Turkish parties operate within democratic politics.

Hamas is coordinating its efforts in the West Bank with logistical support from a command center in Istanbul.

In 2004, Turkish President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan labelled Israel “a terrorist state.” Two years later, he hosted Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’s leader. Alluding to Turkey’s experience with Islamist parties, including his own, coming to power through elections, Erdogan said: “The choice of the people (at the ballot box) should be respected.” Erdogan, citing Hamas’s election victory in Gaza, apparently wanted to legitimize Hamas and terrorism.

However, he deliberately overlooked a significant difference between Hamas and Turkey’s Islamist parties: Hamas specifically advocates violence, while Turkish parties operate within democratic politics.

Eight years after Mashaal’s visit to Turkey, Hamas is coordinating its efforts in the West Bank with logistical support from a command center in Istanbul — a fact that apparently annoys even the Palestinian Authority [PA], Hamas’s “governing partner” in the Palestinian territories.

Turkey is also host to Salah al-Aruri, a Hamas commander whom the PA accuses of planning multiple attacks against Israeli targets.

According to the Israeli media, the Shin Bet has evidence that the deadly attacks against Israelis were planned at the Hamas headquarters in Istanbul. Turkish diplomats deny the claims, unconvincingly. Israel has reportedly requested NATO and the American government to take steps against Turkey’s support for a terrorist organization.

““If you want to point to a success of private enterprise, and how the capitalist system works for the benefit of the total U.S. economy,” he says, “I can’t come up with a more glowing example.”

The ‘accidental CEO’ Mark Papa says even he underestimated the shale revolution, which will continue despite lower prices.

On Wednesday, an OnCue Express in Oklahoma City became the first U.S. filling station since 2010 to sell regular gasoline for under $2 a gallon. The national average—hovering around $2.74 this week, also the lowest since 2010—is down 51 cents in a year and continues to fall, which Goldman Sachs pegs as equivalent to a $75 billion tax cut over the past six months. Consumers can thank Mark Papa, the oilman whose role in creating this income windfall remains, for the most part, unsung. The same goes for the many other benefits of the modern American energy boom.

Mr. Papa retired last July as CEO of EOG Resources, the drilling company that he made into the largest crude-oil producer in the lower 48 over his decade and a half as chief. “They were among the pioneers of the unconventional oil and gas revolution,” says the peerless energy historian Daniel Yergin —a company that advanced new frontiers in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, allowing producers to tap dense, hard-to-extract shale.

“I can’t think of any other single event that has caused such a positive economic benefit to the nation as a whole as shale oil and shale gas,” Mr. Papa says on a visit to New York this week from his home near Houston. “The fact that oil prices have collapsed as much as they have is directly attributable to the shale revolution.”

As Mr. Papa reads the global market, the price slump is the result of “a bit more production” that has made all the difference—an additional million or so barrels of new oil daily amid world-wide demand of about 92 million barrels a day. Some of that is “unanticipated supply coming out of places such as Libya,” he says, but the major driver is U.S. shale oil.

In 2012, Mr. Papa explains, the year-over-year growth of domestic shale oil was about a million barrels daily, and last year growth slowed to 800,000. “The general feeling was that we’ve had flush production and the easy stuff had been had, and as you got into the third year, it was becoming a little more difficult to achieve this tremendous boost in production.” About 700,000 barrels for 2014 was the consensus.

In his State of the Union speech in 2002 President Bush, citing Iran, Iraq and North Korea, for building chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and building terrorist training camps:

“States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world”. I guess Carter was not fully convinced….rsk
K-School Professor Confronts Iran Pres. Carter says Ahmadinejad only interested in “the sound of his own voice”
By YELENA S. MIRONOVA, CONTRIBUTING WRITER September 27, 2006

President Bush avoided a face-to-face confrontation with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations last week, but elsewhere on Manhattan, Kennedy School of Government professor Ashton B. Carter confronted the controversial Tehran chief head-on.

The encounter left some observers hopeful that the U.S. could strike up a dialogue with leader of a regime that admits it is pursuing a nuclear program. But for others, Ahmadinejad’s obstinance reinforced their impression that Iran isn’t willing to budge an inch on issues such as weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and human rights.

Ahmadinejad addressed two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations at a Manhattan hotel, according to the New York Times. Only four journalists—all of whom were members of the council—were let in.

Carter, a former assistant defense secretary under the Clinton administration and a member of the council, told The Crimson that the meeting addressed several issues, including “Ahmadinejad’s skepticism of the reality of the Holocaust, Iran’s nuclear programs, Lebanon and Iran’s support for Hezbollah, Iraq, and human rights.”

“It was my impression that Ahmadinejad was not very interested in hearing anything but the sound of his own voice,” Carter said. “He gave responses that to me seemed practiced and non-convincing, and in the case of the Holocaust, particularly disturbing.”

While Ahmadinejad spoke to the council for the bulk of the meeting, at one point Carter broke in.

Marcus Weldon, the current president of one of the most celebrated technology centers in the world, has high hopes for his local team
BY DAVID SHAMAH

Over the years, Bell Labs has won eight Nobel Prizes – more than any other tech lab – and Marcus Weldon, the current president of Bell Labs, fully expects the organization to win a ninth, based on the work that will be done by its new Israel location.

Bell Labs on Monday night inaugurated its Israeli branch – the group’s first out-of-the-US location – at the Kfar Saba offices of Alcatel-Lucent, the multinational communications firm that now owns the organization. The Israel lab actually began work several months ago, but got its official kick-off when Weldon, along with other top Bell Labs officials and alumni, gave the Israel site their official stamp of approval.

Often called “America’s Idea Factory,” Bell Labs has a long and storied history of innovation and invention. Originally the engineering department of “the phone company” — American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) — Bell Labs researchers developed many of the building blocks of modern electronics and computers. In 1927, a Bell team transmitted the first television images; in 1937, it transmitted the first stereo signals via radio; a Bell scientist invented the photovoltaic cell in the early 1940; and in 1947, Bell scientists created the transistor, an invention that made modern computing possible. Later inventions included TDMA and CDMA digital cellular telephone technology, the compiled C programming language, the UNIX operating system, the first single-chip 32-bit microprocessor, and much more.

Bell Labs remained a part of AT&T until 1996, when the company spun it off into a new company named Lucent Technologies, which in 2006 merged with communications company Alcatel, and created Alcatel-Lucent. Worldwide, the company has over 70,000 employees, about 50,000 of them in research and development, and the company operates Bell Labs facilities in about a dozen countries.

Between its invention of the transistor, the microprocessor, and UNIX, it’s fair to say that Bell Labs was responsible for the computer revolution, said Weldon – and the company was gearing up for the next revolution, the one in communications, he added. “We won those past Nobels by working to meet ‘grand challenges,’ developing technology to solve problems in important projects, and using that technology to change the world.”

38The House on Tuesday passed legislation to terminate Social Security benefits for suspected Nazi war criminals.

Passed 420-0, the bill was approved after an October Associated Press report found that dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals forced to leave the U.S. collected millions of dollars in federal benefits.

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), the measure’s sponsor, said it would close a loophole that allowed Nazis who skipped the lengthy deportation process to still receive Social Security benefits.
“Social Security is an earned benefit hardworking Americans pay as a portion of their wages for promises of future benefits,” Johnson said. “It’s a benefit that was never intended for those who participated in horrific acts of the Holocaust.”

The Justice Department pressured Nazi war crime suspects to leave the U.S. voluntarily to speed up their departures, according to the AP. However, avoiding the deportation process resulted in the individuals still being eligible for federal payments.

It may not seem as if Ferguson, Missouri has much to do with Israel, but some of the activists protesting the events in that Missouri city seem to also have Israel on their mind. What happened in Ferguson and why does Israel factor into the picture?

Ferguson was a case of a white policeman shooting and killing a black civilian. There are between 300 and 400 cases of police killings in the United States each year (there are a smaller number of police killed in the line of duty). A majority of the victims of police shootings are not African-American. Some of the African-American victims (10-20 percent each year) are killed by African-American police. There are maybe 100 or so cases a year of white policemen killing blacks, and the great majority of these cases are non-controversial. The half dozen or so that are controversial are now becoming the biggest news stories of the day and the year.

In an average year, about 16,000 Americans are murdered, so police killings are maybe two percent of that number. Over half of all murder victims are African-Americans, and almost all of them are killed by other African-Americans. Overall, African-Americans commit murder in the United States at a rate seven times their share of the population. While 16,000 is a big number, the U.S. murder rate has sharply declined the last 20 years, by about 40 percent. In New York City, the scene of the latest race-related controversy over a police killing (in this case from a chokehold,) the murder rate has dropped 85 percent.

One might think that the far larger murder toll that does not involve police would be a much bigger story than the few controversial cases of white cops killing black civilians. That this is not the case reflects the role of today’s media, which feeds off of the white cops killing black civilian stories almost as much as they love hurricanes and tornadoes and airplane disasters. Stories that enable the 24- hour cable news networks to fill their time reporting updates for days and weeks is the news that is fit to broadcast. America is an extremely polarized nation at this point on issues involving race, but also on broader political questions, like immigration, and Obamacare chief among them, and conflict is good for news departments. And this, unfortunately is where Israel has begun to filter into the frame.

In a major defeat for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the leading association for British architects has rescinded its call for their Israeli counterparts to be suspended from an international association representing the profession.

“We got it wrong,” said Stephen Hodder, the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA,) after he confirmed that a RIBA motion passed in March urging that Israelis be barred from the International Union of Architects (UIA,) in protest at the building of “illegal settlements” in the West Bank, was no longer RIBA policy.

According to the London-based Jewish Chronicle, RIBA’s change of heart was triggered by warnings from its lawyers that the endorsement of a boycott of Israel could compromise the institute’s charitable status.

Financial concerns were another factor, as the boycott is said to have cost the institute around $150,000 in lost revenue; many Jewish supporters of RIBA have cancelled bookings to use the institute’s impressive central London building for Bar Mitzvahs and similar events.

Hodder emphasized that the policy change signaled a new, positive approach to international affairs on RIBA’s part. “For the Institute to have engaged in this issue in a confrontational way – by seeking suspension of the Israeli Association of United Architects from the UIA (the International Architects Union) – was wrong,” he said.

Indyk’s insidious analysis

The disbanding of the Israeli government this week is breathing new life into dead arguments from the American Left about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

One example worth noting is Christiane Amanpour’s “interview” with Brookings Institution foreign policy director Martin Indyk on Wednesday. The reason for the quotation marks is that the exchange between the two celebrities, who owe their careers to the promotion of a twisted view of the Middle East, was more like a victory volley than a question-and-answer session on a serious topic about which each is touted as an expert.

It is hard enough for Israeli voters to stomach the internal scramble for Knesset seats that will dominate the public sphere for the next three months without the added cacophony from abroad.

That the noise from overseas is going to play into the hands of the Israeli Left, which is as adept at twisting the truth about the Jewish state as its international counterparts — makes it even more unbearable.

But it, like Indyk’s take on the situation, has its advantages.

Indeed, if anyone can serve as a negative gauge by which to measure a political climate, it is he. Oh, yes, and the think tank that has served as his cash-cow fallback whenever his peace-brokering between Israel and the Palestinians ends in abject failure. (You know, the research institute which receives most of its funding from Qatar, where it has its “Overseas Center.”)

One neat trick Indyk employs is referring to the peace camp in Israel as the “center.” This is not only false; it is also a complete misreading of the electorate. Just as the Democratic party in the United States was dealt a heavy blow in the mid-term elections due to utter disillusionment on the part of the public with the Obama administration, so too in Israel has the bloc to the left of Netanyahu disappointed the voters who believed they were opting for some better alternative that turned out not to exist.

In both countries, the fantasy that socialist policies (cloaked as a viable marriage of the free market and a welfare state) would cure economic ills, and that peace overtures would make the West safer from radical Islam than military might, was killed by reality. This is not to say that average voters in the U.S. or Israel have all shifted their support to the Right. On the contrary, many of them blame their plight on their leaders’ not going far enough.

It is this mind-frame that Indyk and his ilk possess.

Senator Mary Landrieu comes from a political dynasty in Louisiana — her father was mayor of New Orleans, and her brother is the current mayor. But as she heads into Saturday’s runoff election as a clear underdog, she is tarnishing her political inheritance by fighting ugly. She is resorting to lies and distortion to accuse her GOP opponent of backing the impeachment of President Obama and endorsing a documentary that, as she describes it, says slavery was better for blacks than welfare.

“Landrieu has flailed, veering from one issue to another,” concluded a Washington Post article this Thursday. When it hasn’t been haphazard, her campaign has been, at best, factually challenged.

Take the following radio ad airing on African-American stations, approved by Landrieu and paid for by the Democratic State Committee of Louisiana:

I’m Mary Landrieu, candidate for Senate, and I approve this message.

Man: News flash — Bobby Jindal endorses Bill Cassidy 100 percent. That troubles me. Jindal, our absentee governor, and Doc Cassidy, a medical doctor, oppose affordable health care for working families. These millionaire Republicans are against equal pay for women and have opposed the Violence against Women Act. And can you believe, Doc Cassidy has endorsed a documentary that claims slavery was better for black folks than welfare.

Woman: Oh, no, he didn’t!

Man: Yeah, well he sure did, my friends. But worse than that, Cassidy and Jindal are trying to impeach our president. Back in the day, there was a TV cowboy named Hopalong Cassidy. I don’t know if they’re related, but why don’t you just hop along, Doctor Cassidy, to wherever your No, 1 supporter, Bobby Jindal, is headed this week, and let Senator Landrieu continue doing a great job for the people of Louisiana?

Cassidy/Jindal — bad for Louisiana, disastrous for black families.

Paid for by the Democratic State Central Committee of Louisiana.