LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
December 12/18
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives
Matthew 24/45-51: "‘Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that wicked slave says to himself, "My master is delayed", and he begins to beat his fellow-slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on December 11-12/18
Israel Says It Discovered Third Cross-border Hezbollah Tunnel
Aoun: The U.S. has informed Lebanon that Israel has "no aggressive intentions/Lebanon takes issue of Hezbollah tunnels seriously.
Aoun Assures No Counter-Aggression Intentions between Israel, Lebanon
Aoun: Lebanon to Wait for Investigation Results of Alleged Hizbullah Tunnels
Failure of govt formation initiative would be disastrous: Aoun
Hezbollah, Aoun have ‘brainstorm’ meeting on govt formation
Aoun intervenes to help form Lebanon government, avoid 'catastrophe'
UNIFIL Commander Confirms Presence of Second Tunnel on Lebanese-Israeli Border
Ambassadors of U.S., UK Meet Army Chief, Highlight Lebanese-Syrian Security Project
Israel Army Says Delegation Heading to Russia over Lebanon Ops
UNIFIL commander following his meetings with Aoun, Berri: UNIFIL is continuing to follow up on tunnel issue in close coordination with Lebanese Armed Forces
Hariri reaches London to partake in Lebanon UK Forum on Business and Investment
Report: New Hope Promises a Govt. Formation ‘Before Year-End’
Bassil bound for London to partake in economic forum
Ibrahim launches 2021 vision on General Security transition to digital
Lebanese Army chief meets UNTSO head, Faucher, Merhebi
Future bloc praises Aoun's initiative: Powers of PM-designate not negotiable
Strong Republic bloc convenes in Maarab under Geagea's chairmanship
Othman meets UNTSO head
Syrian MP: Those Behind Syria Exclusion from Economic Summit Will Not Be Part of Reconstruction
Kataeb Media Council Blasts Leaks and News Reports Targeting the Party
Carlos Ghosn Is Challenging His Month-long Detention in Japan
IDF Unearths Third Tunnel, Hezbollah Releases Photos Of Operation
Lebanon’s Aoun intervening in stalled effort to form government
Analysis/Israeli Operation Against Hezbollah Tunnels Enters Its Explosive Stage

Titles For The Latest  English LCCC  Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 11-12/18
Iran Admits 'Significant' Medium-range Ballistic Missile Test
US Energy Secretary discussed Iran sanctions with Iraqi officials
Canadian former diplomat detained in China amid tensions
250,000 Syrian refugees could return home next year: UNHCR
UN Seeks $5.5 bn to Help Countries Hosting Syria Refugees
Yemen Govt, Rebels Swap Names of 15,000 Prisoners at UN Talks
French PM to Detail Macron's Measures to Appease 'Yellow Vests'
Jordan Arrests Journalists over 'Offensive' Jesus Image
Palestinian Shot Dead by Israeli Forces in West Bank
Turkey in Talks over Possible UN Probe into Khashoggi Murder
Arab League tells Brazil’s Bolsonaro Israel embassy move could harm ties
Nobel laureate Nadia Murad urges world to ‘protect’ Yazidis
Questions raised over US senator Lindsey Graham’s obsession with Saudi Arabia

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 11-12/18
Israel Says It Discovered Third Cross-border Hezbollah Tunnel/Haaretz/December 11/18
Aoun: The U.S. has informed Lebanon that Israel has "no aggressive intentions/Lebanon takes issue of Hezbollah tunnels seriously/Haaretz/AP/December 11/18
Carlos Ghosn Is Challenging His Month-long Detention in Japan/CNN International/December 11/2018
IDF Unearths Third Tunnel, Hezbollah Releases Photos Of Operation/Jerusalem Post/December 11/18
Lebanon’s Aoun intervening in stalled effort to form government/AP/December 11/2018
Analysis/Israeli Operation Against Hezbollah Tunnels Enters Its Explosive Stage/Amos Harel/ Haaretz/December 11/18
Questions raised over US senator Lindsey Graham’s obsession with Saudi Arabia/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
Syria’s Assad Has Gassed His Own People, Again/Eli Lake/Bloomberg/December 11/18
What’s at Stake in Yemen Affects Us All/Mohammed Khalid Alyahya/The Hill/December 11/18
The Pentagon Loves Saudi Arabia, in Sickness and in Health/Micah Zenko/Foreign Policy/December 11/18
Canada standing on the wrong side of history/Ramzy Baroud/Ramzy Baroud/December 11/18
France and the crisis of democracy/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
Iran’s Chabahar Port: A new flashpoint in unstable region/Ahmed Quraishi/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
The idea and its antithesis is the way to advance/Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
Mega-trends 2018: Reduced influence of international organizations/Maria Dubovikova/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
The United States, Saudi Arabia, And The Middle East In The Post Khashoggi Era/Michael Singh/The War On Rocks/December 11/18
European Court of Human Rights Blasphemy Laws: Where a Word out of Place Can Cost Your Life/Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/December 11, 2018

Latest LCCC English Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on December 11-12/18
Israel Says It Discovered Third Cross-border Hezbollah Tunnel
Haaretz/December 11/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/69880/%D8%B9%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%AA%D9%86%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B7%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7/
Army says it holds the Lebanese government responsible for digging of tunnels, which it deems a violation of UN Security Council resolution.
The Israeli military located a third Hezbollah terror tunnel crossing into Israeli territory, the Israeli army's spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. Israel announced the launch of Operation Northern Shield a week ago, aimed at destroying cross-border tunnels constructed by Hezbollah. The army said that the tunnel does not pose a threat and that it was investigating its terrain. Earlier Tuesday, Lebanon's president said that Israel's operation to destroy Hezbollah attack tunnels across the border won't endanger the calm along the frontier. Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, said that Lebanon takes the tunnel issue "seriously" and is prepared to "take measures to remove causes of disagreement" after receiving full report on the situation. Aoun added that the U.S. has informed Lebanon that Israel has "no aggressive intentions," and also noted that his country too has "no aggressive intentions." The Israeli army noted upon announcing the discovery of the third tunnel that it places the responsibility on the digging of the tunnels on the Lebanese government, and that it considers the existence of such tunnels a grave violation of UN resolution 1701. The Israel Defense Forces said that the tunnel was booby-trapped and that anyone who entered it from the Lebanese side "would face a serious danger to their lives."Also on Tuesday, an Israeli delegation of senior military officers is scheduled to leave for Moscow to meet their Russian counterparts and discuss operations to destroy Hezbollah-built cross-border tunnels. The trip is set to be the first meeting between Israeli and Russian officials since September 20, when an Israeli delegation traveled to Moscow in an attempt to ease tensions caused by an incident in which Syrian anti-aircraft missiles downed a Russian plane while trying to thwart an Israeli airstrike.

Aoun: The U.S. has informed Lebanon that Israel has "no aggressive intentions/Lebanon takes issue of Hezbollah tunnels seriously.
Haaretz/AP/December 11/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/69880/%D8%B9%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%BA%D8%AA%D9%86%D8%A7-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B7%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7/
Lebanon's president says Israel's operation to destroy Hezbollah attack tunnels across the border won't endanger the calm along the frontier. Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, said Tuesday that Lebanon takes the tunnels issue "seriously" and is prepared to "take measures to remove causes of disagreement" after a full report on the situation. Aoun said the U.S. has informed Lebanon that Israel has "no aggressive intentions," adding that his country too has "no aggressive intentions."Aoun spoke alongside Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who plans to visit Austrian peacekeepers in the south. Israel announced the launch of Operation Northern Shield a week ago, aimed at destroying cross-border tunnels constructed by Hezbollah. Also on Tuesday, an Israeli delegation of senior military officers is scheduled to leave for Moscow to meet their Russian counterparts and discuss operations to destroy Hezbollah-built cross-border tunnels. The trip is set to be the first meeting between Israeli and Russian officials since September 20, when an Israeli delegation traveled to Moscow in an attempt to ease tensions caused by an incident in which Syrian anti-aircraft missiles downed a Russian plane while trying to thwart an Israeli airstrike. Haaretz's Amos Harel wrote on Monday that the Israeli operation has entered its explosive stage. According to Harel, there is no wall or fence separating the Israeli and Lebanese forces where the demolition is going on, and all it would take is one antsy Lebanese soldier to spark a fire that would be hard to extinguish.

Aoun Assures No Counter-Aggression Intentions between Israel, Lebanon
Naharnet/December 11/18/President Michel Aoun announced on Tuesday after meeting the Austrian President in Baabda that Israel has relayed to Lebanon no intentions of waging any aggression against the country. "Israel has relayed to us, through Washington, that it has no hostile intentions, we as well, have no hostile plans. So, there is no danger to peace," said Aoun at a joint press conference with the President of Austria, Alexander Van Der Bellen. On his meeting with Der Bellen, Aoun said the meeting was an occasion in which he expressed Lebanon's gratitude for Austria's unyielding support to Lebanon’s “just” causes at European and international forums, the National News Agency reported. "I have tackled with the President of Austria the persistent Israeli threats against Lebanon, which have recently increased, and which are part of the continuous pressure exerted by Israel on Lebanon as it continues to violate its sovereignty by land, sea and air," Aoun said at a joint press conference with Bellen. "We stressed the importance of uniting international efforts to combat terrorism. We also underscored the need to speed up the solution of the crisis of displaced Syrians; a solution that would contribute to their return to the safe areas without having to wait for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, especially that Lebanon can no longer shoulder this weighty burden," the President said. "We agreed on the necessity of activating bilateral relations at all levels and developing mechanisms of cooperation in all fields so as to serve our common interests," he said. "I welcome the delegation of businessmen accompanying the president, hoping for the Lebanese-Austrian economic forum success in facilitating investment opportunities." "The government was impeded which prompted (...) an initiative to secure the government formation, especially that the dangers are high. This initiative should succeed for if it does not, we will be facing a disaster," Aoun said. For his part, the President of Austria expressed his "appreciation for Lebanon's hospitality towards displaced Syrians in spite of the difficult circumstances." "Austria and the EU support the UN initiative in Syria," he noted. The visiting President also stressed that "the economic relations between our two countries are good and can be improved and strengthened," uttering understanding of the political and economic situation and its impact on Lebanon.
"Despite the challenges surrounding you, Lebanon has succeeded in diversity, pluralism and democracy," Bellen corroborated.

Aoun: Lebanon to Wait for Investigation Results of Alleged Hizbullah Tunnels
Naharnet/December 11/18/President Michel Aoun received on Tuesday the UNIFIL commander, Maj. Gen. Stefano Del Col in Baabda where discussions focused on the developments in south Lebanon following Israel’s intention to launch Operation Northern Shield to demolish alleged Hizbullah tunnels, the National News Agency reported on Tuesday. The President announced that “Lebanon will wait for the results of field investigations following Israeli claims that Hizbullah has dug tunnels into Israel,” NNA said. He reiterated Lebanon’s commitment to UN Resolution 1701 “out of keenness to preserve security and stability in South Lebanon,” said NNA. Israel's military chief has met with the head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon on Monday to discuss the discovery of alleged tunnels. Israel launched an operation -- dubbed Northern Shield -- aimed at destroying alleged Hizbullah "attack tunnels" infiltrating its territory from Lebanon. Israeli military said an army delegation will head to Moscow on Tuesday to brief their Russian counterparts on operations to destroy said tunnels from Lebanon.

Failure of govt formation initiative would be disastrous: Aoun
The Daily Star/December 11, 2018/BEIRUT: President Michel Aoun said Tuesday that his initiative to break the government deadlock has to work, and that “if it doesn’t, then there will be a disaster.” Aoun held a news conference at Baabda Palace a day after he began the initiative to rejuvenate the formation process, now in its seventh month of stalemate. The project “must succeed because the dangers that Lebanon is facing are huge,” Aoun said, adding that the initiative necessarily aims to bring the competing political sides together. The talks have focused on proposals to resolve the problem of representing six Hezbollah-backed Sunni MPs who have insisted on receiving a ministerial portfolio in the new government, a demand that Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has refused. The president began his consultations Monday, holding separate meetings with Hariri and Speaker Nabih Berri.

Hezbollah, Aoun have ‘brainstorm’ meeting on govt formation
The Daily Star/December 11, 2018/BEIRUT: Hezbollah Bloc leader MP Mohammad Raad said he had brainstormed possible solutions to the six-month Cabinet formation crisis with President Michel Aoun in a meeting Tuesday at Baabda Palace. Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Raad said he and Aoun explored some ideas that required further discussion, though he did not specify their nature. Raad was accompanied in the meeting by Hussein Khalil, a political aide to Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. Raad’s trip to Baabda follows separate meetings Aoun held Monday with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri aimed at kick-starting the formation process. For about two months, talks have been deadlocked at the demand of six Hezbollah-backed Sunni MPs for representation. Hariri and Aoun have both refused to represent them from their shares of ministers.

Aoun intervenes to help form Lebanon government, avoid 'catastrophe'
/December 11, 2018/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Tuesday he was intervening in stalled efforts to form a new national unity government, warning the country faced “catastrophe” if this failed. More than six months since an election, efforts to form the new cabinet led by Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri are still logjammed with rival groups vying for cabinet posts. Aoun said the challenges in the government formation could not be resolved “the traditional way” between the prime minister-designate and the other parties, and it was his duty to get involved.

UNIFIL Commander Confirms Presence of Second Tunnel on Lebanese-Israeli Border
Kataeb.org/Tuesday 11th December 2018/UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Stefano Del Col on Tuesday met with President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri to brief them on developments in connection with tunnels along the Blue Line. "This is a serious matter and UNIFIL is working in close coordination with the parties both at the technical level as well as at the leadership level to ensure that all related facts are objectively determined and diligently addressed in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701," Del Col said in a statement issued by the UNIFIL. "At the same time rumours and speculations should be avoided, and I have assured the President and the Speaker that UNIFIL will continue to share its findings with the appropriate authorities in Lebanon based on facts that are independently verified by UNIFIL," he added. The UNIFIL commander said that he had briefed the President and the Speaker on his recent visit to a location near Metulla where technical experts from UNIFIL carried out a site inspection to confirm the existence of a tunnel. "Yesterday a UNIFIL technical team led by the Deputy Force Commander verified the existence of a second tunnel north of the previous one in the same general area. UNIFIL is continuing to follow up on this issue in close coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces," he noted. "So, this is work in progress, and UNIFIL will make every effort to maintain clear and credible channels of communication with both sides so that there is no room for misunderstanding on this sensitive matter," Del Col assured. "Most importantly, the calm and stability along the Blue Line must be preserved. I am encouraged to hear from both parties that they have no intention to escalate the situation along the Blue Line and they are keen to continue working with UNIFIL to this end," he concluded.

Ambassadors of U.S., UK Meet Army Chief, Highlight Lebanese-Syrian Security Project
Naharnet/December 11/18/Lebanese Army Commander General Joseph Aoun discussed on Tuesday with British Ambassador to Lebanon Chris Rampling and U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth Richard the progress in the security project on the Lebanese-Syrian border, the British embassy in Beirut said in a statement. The High Level Steering Committee (HLSC) was an opportunity to congratulate the Lebanese Army on the 75th Independence Day, and their efforts to secure 100% of the Lebanese-Syrian border by 2019, added the statement.
After the meeting, Rampling said: ‘It is a privilege to meet the Commander of the Lebanese army General Joseph Aoun and discuss progress on the Land Border Project. The UK has committed over £69 million to this project in recent years, alongside significant contributions from the US and other international donors. We're also proud that by March 2019, more than 11,000 soldiers will be trained, and that is over one third of the army’s fighting force. The Lebanese Army has developed and modernised over the past ten years, to become a respected, professional army capable of countering threats internally and its border. The Lebanese army remains the sole legitimate defenders of Lebanon in a volatile region. The United Kingdom will continue to be a strong partner of Lebanon as it addresses the crucial challenges ahead on stability, security and prosperity.’

Israel Army Says Delegation Heading to Russia over Lebanon Ops
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/An Israeli army delegation will head to Moscow on Tuesday to brief their Russian counterparts on operations to destroy Hizbullah tunnels from Lebanon, the military said. "An Israeli army delegation composed of senior officers and led by the head of army operations, General Aharon Haliva, will fly to Moscow on Tuesday," the military said in a statement. "During the day-long visit, the delegation will brief their Russian counterparts on Operation Northern Shield and other operational issues," said the statement issued on Monday. The announcement came after a telephone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Israel on Wednesday launched an operation -- dubbed Northern Shield -- aimed at destroying alleged Hizbullah "attack tunnels" infiltrating its territory from Lebanon. Ties between Israel and Russia have been strained since the accidental downing of one of Moscow's transport planes on September 17 by Syrian ground batteries killed 15 service personnel. Moscow pinned responsibility for the incident on Israel, saying its fighter jet used the larger Russian plane for cover, an allegation Israel disputed. Russia subsequently upgraded Syrian air defences with the delivery of the advanced S-300 system. The Kremlin said on Saturday that Netanyahu had called Putin to discuss the operation against alleged Hizbullah tunnels.During the conversation, Putin stressed "the need to ensure stability along the dividing line between Israel and Lebanon", according to Russia's embassy in Israel. Netanyahu for his part reaffirmed Israel's policy of preventing the establishment of an Iranian presence in Syria and to "act against the aggression of Iran and Hizbullah". Israel occupied parts of Lebanon for 22 years until 2000, and the Iran-backed Hizbullah movement claimed credit for its withdrawal following persistent guerrilla attacks. The two countries are still technically at war but the border has remained relatively calm in recent years. Russia is fighting on the same side as Iran and Hizbullah in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

UNIFIL commander following his meetings with Aoun, Berri: UNIFIL is continuing to follow up on tunnel issue in close coordination with Lebanese Armed Forces
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - Following his meetings with Lebanese President, Michel Aoun, and House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Tuesday, UUNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander, Stefano Del Col, said: "I had very productive meetings with Their Excellencies President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut today. I briefed the President and the Speaker on developments in connection with tunnels along the Blue Line. This is a serious matter and UNIFIL is working in close coordination with the parties both at the technical level as well as at the leadership level to ensure that all related facts are objectively determined and diligently addressed in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. At the same time rumours and speculations should be avoided, and I have assured the President and the Speaker that UNIFIL will continue to share its findings with the appropriate authorities in Lebanon based on facts that are independently verified by UNIFIL. I briefed the President and the Speaker on my recent visit to a location near Metulla where technical experts from UNIFIL carried out a site inspection to confirm the existence of a tunnel. Yesterday a UNIFIL technical team led by the Deputy Force Commander verified the existence of a second tunnel north of the previous one in the same general area. UNIFIL is continuing to follow up on this issue in close coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces. So, this is work in progress, and UNIFIL will make every effort to maintain clear and credible channels of communication with both sides so that there is no room for misunderstanding on this sensitive matter. Most importantly, the calm and stability along the Blue Line must be preserved. I am encouraged to hear from both parties that they have no intention to escalate the situation along the Blue Line and they are keen to continue working with UNIFIL to this end."--UNIFIL

Hariri reaches London to partake in Lebanon UK Forum on Business and Investment
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - Prime Minister-designate, Saad Hariri, has arrived in the British capital, London, on a few day visit, where he will participate in the Lebanese-British Business and Investment Forum to be held tomorrow. Premier Hariri is scheduled to deliver a speech on the occasion and will sponsor the signing of an agreement between the British Rolls Royce Company and the Middle East Airlines. Hariri's itinerary also includes bilateral meetings with several UK officials.

Report: New Hope Promises a Govt. Formation ‘Before Year-End’
Naharnet/December 11/18/New hope has emerged on Tuesday after an “urgent” invitation from President Michel Aoun aimed at exploring means to break the monthslong government formation deadlock, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Tuesday. A “group” of ideas, “that could be the magic wand” to pull the government out of the crisis before the year’s end, were put forward, added the newspaper. An initiative to resolve the Sunni obstacle after the failure of Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil’s proposals was discussed. On Monday, President Michel Aoun invited for an “urgent” meeting and held separate talks in Baabda with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri. Talks have focused on the means to resolve the delayed government formation. After his discussions with Aoun, Hariri did not give specific details but told reporters “there are possible solutions” for the crisis, without elaborating. Aoun reportedly intends to hold further political consultations with other figures over the coming days.

Bassil bound for London to partake in economic forum
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - Caretaker Foreign Minister, Gebran Bassil, left the Moroccan city of Marrakech heading to London, where he will partake in the "London Economic Forum" set to take place Wednesday. The Forum is jointly organized by the Lebanese Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Beirut, with the participation of the private sector of both countries. In Marrakech, Minister Bassil participated in the International Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration."

Ibrahim launches 2021 vision on General Security transition to digital
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - The Directorate of General Security and the company "Everteam Global Services" launched this Tuesday the "vision 2021: paper-free General Security", as part of the plan for total transition of the General Security to digital formalities, at a ceremony sponsored by General Abbas Ibrahim at the Four Seasons Hotel. In his words, General Ibrahim emphasized the importance of this project which facilitates communication between the Lebanese - residents and expatriates - and the General Security as a State service. "This opportunity is the first step in the process of transforming the General Security into a smart electronic institution, and achieving the goal of the transition to electronic formalities (...)", he explained. While thanking outgoing Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk for his support, General Ibrahim indicated that this project falls within the context of the implementation of the GS' strategic plans and the exploitation of advanced technologies at the service of men and the environment. "Our goal for the future is to reduce paper consumption in our offices by using electronic formalities, saving thousands of trees and saving citizens' time," he added.

Lebanese Army chief meets UNTSO head, Faucher, Merhebi
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - Army Commander General Jospeh Aoun on Tuesday received at his Yarzeh office MP Tarek El Merhebi, accompanied by former MP Talal Merhebi. Maj. Gen. Aoun also welcomed in his office the Head of Mission and Commander of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), Kristin Lund, with talks reportedly touching on the general situation in Lebanon and the borad region. The army commander also met with French Ambassador to Lebanon, Bruno Faucher, accompanied by the Embassy's Military Attaché. Talks reportedly dwelt on cooperation relations between the armies of both countries.

Future bloc praises Aoun's initiative: Powers of PM-designate not negotiable
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - The Future Parliamentary Bloc held its regular meeting this afternoon at the "Center House" under the chairmanship of MP Bahia Hariri, during which MPs reviewed the latest developments and the general situation in the country. The bloc uttered satisfaction with the positions expressed by PM-designate Saad Hariri on the government's issue “in light of what has been taking place recently of debates that almost brought the country into a political crisis with a dead end.”“The bloc believes that the initiative of His Excellency President Michel Aoun to reopen the doors of a quiet discussion started with Speaker Nabih Berri and PM Saad Hariri is an important step in the right direction. This will turn the page on what preceded of constitutional calls, and bring back dialogue so as to reach possible exits," a statement read in the wake of the meeting said. The bloc stresses in this regard that "the powers of the Premier-designate are not subject to bargaining and prejudice under any circumstances, and that all attempts made in this regard, either through the creation of new customs or by imposing political conditions on the process of forming the government, will rule to failure by virtue of the Constitution, which provides binding parliamentary consultation irrevocable for any reason."

Strong Republic bloc convenes in Maarab under Geagea's chairmanship
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - The Strong Republic parliamentary bloc is holding its regular meeting in Maarab, headed by Lebanese Forces Party leader Samir Geagea.

Othman meets UNTSO head
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - Internal Security Forces (ISF) chief Imad Othman on Tuesday received the Head of Mission and Commander of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), Kristin Lund, with whom he discussed means of strengthening cooperation between the two sides.

Syrian MP: Those Behind Syria Exclusion from Economic Summit Will Not Be Part of Reconstruction
Kataeb.org/Tuesday 11th December 2018/Syrian MP Fares Al-Shahabi on Tuesday warned that those who have rejected Syria’s invitation to the 2019 Arab Economic Summit, set to be hosted in Beirut next month for its fourth edition, will be excluded from Syria’s reconstruction. "Those will only dream of entering the Syrian market when the reconstruction phase, which has already begun, gains momentum," Al-Shahabi, who also serves as the head of the union of Syrian commerce chambers, wrote on Facebook. “We will do whatever we can to prevent those and uncover their internal networks," he pledged. "As a reminder, Syria has never announced its eagerness to attend the summit in the first place." "They are calling it a summit!" he wrote sarcastically. "There’s no summit without Syria; it is only a base."

Kataeb Media Council Blasts Leaks and News Reports Targeting the Party
Kataeb.org/Tuesday 11th December 2018/The Kataeb's Media Council on Tuesday blasted the volley of leaks and media reports that have been targeting the party over the past few days, saying that most of them are either false or contorted to tarnish the Kataeb’s image. The council asked media outlets to not publish or disseminate news related to the Kataeb unless it is sourced directly from the party itself, stressing that the party is the only side that is entitled to provide accurate and authentic information.

Carlos Ghosn Is Challenging His Month-long Detention in Japan
CNN International/December 11/2018
Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has filed a complaint after his three-week detention by Japanese authorities was extended by another 10 days. Tokyo prosecutors on Monday indicted Ghosn, 64, on accusations he under-reported his income in Nissan corporate filings by about 5 billion yen ($44 million) between 2010 and 2015. They also rearrested him on additional allegations that he also under-reported his income by more than 4.2 billion yen ($38 million) between 2015 and 2017. By rearresting Ghosn, one of the global auto industry's most prominent figures, the prosecutors will be able to continue holding him for questioning. The Tokyo District Court said Tuesday that it had approved extending the detention of Ghosn and Greg Kelly, a former Nissan director accused of helping Ghosn under-report his income, through December 20. Both men were first arrested on November 19. Ghosn has filed a complaint against the extension, the court said.
The legal move by Ghosn is notable because he and Kelly are yet to issue any public statements about their arrest and the allegations against them. Ghosn has remained silent as the boards of Nissan (NSANY) and its partner Mitsubishi Motors (MMTOF) have fired him as chairman, and as France's Renault (RNSDF) has temporarily replaced him as chairman and CEO. Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported Monday, citing unidentified sources, that Ghosn is denying the allegations against him. His Tokyo-based lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
If the court upholds his complaint against the extension of his detention, Ghosn would still face another obstacle to getting out of jail. His indictment Monday means he has to apply for bail, and it's unusual for indicted suspects who deny the charges against them to be granted bail in Japan.
The indictments of Ghosn and Kelly also raise the prospect of a challenging court battle for both men. More than 99% of people charged with a crime in Japan are eventually convicted, according to experts. The maximum punishment in Japan for filing a false financial statement is 10 years in prison and a fine of 10 million yen ($89,000).
Prosecutors also indicted Nissan on Monday over the company's reporting of Ghosn's compensation.
Nissan said last month that an internal investigation discovered "significant" financial misconduct by Ghosn and Kelly following a whistleblower report. The company began cooperating with prosecutors before the arrest of the two men. Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa told reporters Monday following the indictments that the company is "ready to be held accountable" for what happened in order to put the "serious fraud" behind it. "I believe creating a better path for the company is more important than anything else," he said.

IDF Unearths Third Tunnel, Hezbollah Releases Photos Of Operation
جيروزاليم بوست/الجيش الإسرائيلي يكتشف نفقاً ثالثاً ، وحزب الله يطلق صور لجندي إسرائيلي عن قرب
Jerusalem Post/December 11/18
IDF announced the discovery of a third Hezbollah tunnel just hours after dozens of close-up pictures and videos of IDF troops were released by Hezbollah. Israel’s military announced that a third Hezbollah tunnel was unearthed on Tuesday, just hours after dozens of close-up pictures and videos of IDF troops taking part in Operation Northern Shield were released by Hezbollah including a map indicating where Israel’s military is currently operating. “Hezbollah’s war media department launched an intensified campaign to show the weakness and fragility of the Israeli army, shooting the enemy soldiers from rear positions, which shows that the Resistance soldiers can infiltrate into their positions and capture them,” read a report by the Lebanese al-Manar website. “The Israeli soldiers deployed on the border with Lebanon have become a joke as the Lebanese public enjoyed making fun of them,” it continued adding that the “Hezbollah phantom is always haunting the Israelis, imposing on them certain formulas which they would never have followed. Several of the pictures showed IDF troops operating alongside UNIFIL Peacekeepers, while other close-up pictures showed troops smoking or resting. The map released by Hezbollah shows five locations where they claim that Israel’s military is currently excavating to locate tunnels across from the southern Lebanese villages of Kfar Kila, Mis Al-Jabel, Blida, Ramya, and Alma Ash-Sha’b.
The IDF launched Operation Northern Shield last week in order to detect and neutralize cross-border attack tunnels dug by the Iranian-backed Shiite organization. The military on Tuesday announced the discovery of a third tunnel which crossed into Israel, one outside the community of Metulla and the two others whose location cannot be disclosed. The route, like the rest of the tunnels, is under IDF control and anyone who enters it on the Lebanese side endangers their life,” read a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, adding that “the Lebanese government is responsible for the digging of the tunnels from Lebanese territory. This is a serious violation of Resolution 1701 and the sovereignty of the State of Israel.”The IDF stressed that the tunnel does not pose an imminent threat to nearby residents. Meanwhile, UNIFIL released a statement confirming the existence of two tunnels in the “general area” of Metulla and calling Hezbollah’s project “a serious matter.”This is a work in progress, and UNIFIL will make every effort to maintain clear and credible channels of communication with both sides so that there is no room for misunderstanding on this sensitive matter,” read the statement, adding that “the calm and stability along the Blue Line must be preserved.”Dozens of Hezbollah tunnels are believed to have been dug along the 130 kilometer border between the two countries. The military added that Operation Northern Shield would take several months to complete. On Tuesday, a delegation of senior IDF officers and led by the head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva, departed to Moscow to brief their Russian counterparts on Operation Northern Shield as well as on other operational issues.On Monday night, the IDF released audio recordings of what it claims are sounds of Hezbollah militants tunneling. These sounds allowed the IDF to locate three of the tunnels, two of which had crossed into northern Israel.
The recordings of seismic activity, the IDF said, are what led the joint task force of the Intelligence Directorate and the Northern Command known as “The Laboratory” to find the tunnels. The technology used by the unit included both existing sensors and new equipment, which is able to manipulate the data received by the sensors to locate the tunnels. Once a tunnel is located, the military works with both the elite Yahalom special engineering unit and civilian contractors to fully expose and neutralize it. “The development of the capabilities and operating techniques of the Laboratory in the Northern Command were carried out in light of our attempts to use the Laboratory in the Gaza Division,” said Col. Yaniv Avitan, of the IDF’s Technology and Logistics Directorate, adding that “we have at our disposal in the technology department of the IDF Ground Forces the best technological minds and tools that are needed to fulfill this mission,” he added. Led by Cpt. G – whose full name cannot be released for security purposes – and made up of soldiers from technology and intelligence units, The Laboratory is based on a similar unit stationed along Israel’s border with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. “We brought with us the knowledge that we accumulated there and brought it north,” said Cpt. G who previously served as the deputy head of the Southern Command’s tunnel unit. “We learned that when we bring together the field engineers, researchers, and technology people from a variety of disciplines, the results aren’t slow to come.”

Lebanon’s Aoun intervening in stalled effort to form government
AP/December 11, 2018
Lebanese President Aoun said on Tuesday he was intervening in stalled efforts to form a new national unity government, warning the country faced “catastrophe” if this failed. More than six months since an election, efforts to form the new cabinet led by Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri are still logjammed with rival groups vying for cabinet posts Lebanon is in dire need of a government able to implement the economic reforms the IMF says are needed to put its public debt on a sustainable path. BEIRUT: Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Tuesday he was intervening in stalled efforts to form a new national unity government, warning the country faced "catastrophe" if this failed. More than six months since an election, efforts to form the new cabinet led by Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri are still logjammed with rival groups vying for cabinet posts. Aoun said the challenges in the government formation could not be resolved "the traditional way" between the prime minister-designate and the other parties, and it was his duty to get involved. "The risks are greater than we can bear," he said, in an apparent reference to difficulties facing the heavily indebted Lebanese economy. "We are launching an initiative ... and it has to succeed, because if it doesn't ... there is a catastrophe, we want to say it with all frankness, and this is the reason for my intervention," Aoun said in a televised news conference.
Aoun held separate meetings with Hariri and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday.
Agreement over the make-up of the new cabinet has met a series of obstacles as Hariri has sought to forge a deal parcelling out 30 cabinet posts among rival groups according to a sectarian political system. The final hurdle has been over Sunni representation, with the powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah demanding a cabinet seat for one of its Sunni allies who gained ground in the election. Hariri, a Western-backed leader whose family have long dominated Lebanese Sunni politics, has ruled out giving them one of his seats. Lebanon is in dire need of a government able to implement the economic reforms the IMF says are needed to put its public debt on a sustainable path. Lebanon has the world's third largest public debt as a proportion of the economy, and growth is stagnant. Analysts believe one compromise could be for Aoun to nominate one of the Hezbollah-aligned Sunnis, or a figure acceptable to them, among a group of ministers named by the president.
Hezbollah tunnels
Lebanon's president also said that Israel's operation to destroy what it called Hezbollah attack tunnels across the border won't endanger the calm along the frontier. He said that Lebanon takes the tunnels issue "seriously" and is prepared to "take measures to remove causes of disagreement" after a full report on the situation. Aoun says the United States has informed Lebanon that Israel has "no aggressive intentions," adding that his country too has "no aggressive intentions."Israel launched an operation to destroy a series of tunnels last week, showing one to UN peacekeepers and calling it a violation of the cease-fire that ended the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Aoun spoke alongside Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, who plans to visit Austrian peacekeepers in the south.

Analysis/Israeli Operation Against Hezbollah Tunnels Enters Its Explosive Stage
عاموس هاريل من الهآررتس: العملية الإسرائيلية ضد انفاق حزب الله تدخل مرحلتها المفجرة
Amos Harel/ Haaretz/December 11/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/69877/amos-harel-haaretz-israeli-operation-against-hezbollah-tunnels-enters-its-explosive-stage-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B3-%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%84-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%A2%D8%B1/
There is no wall or fence separating the Israeli and Lebanese forces where the demolition is going on. All it would take is one antsy Lebanese soldier to spark a fire that would be hard to extinguish
The army’s activity on the Lebanese border, which was initially described with some disparagement as a defensive engineering operation of negligible importance, is now reaching a more sensitive stage. After several days of confusion, it is clear that the Lebanese government has begun to formulate a response to the Israeli move.
Lebanese army patrols are now facing Israeli forces in those areas where Israel Defense Forces soldiers are digging near the border. In particular, the tension is rising – and with it the potential for a mistake that could develop into a confrontation – in those “enclaves” where the IDF is operating. These are areas north of the border fence over which Israel claims sovereignty according to a UN decision.
In these areas there is no wall or fence separating the Israeli and Lebanese forces. In some places, the IDF has stretched barbed wire to mark the exact location of the border. But the images being published on the Lebanese side, for example, from the village of Meiss al-Jabel, tell the main story of the last few days; you can see Israeli soldiers in them, equipped with rifles and anti-tank missiles, while an Israeli bulldozer is working on the other side of the rock.
In these areas there is no wall or fence separating the Israeli and Lebanese forces. In some places, the IDF has stretched barbed wire to mark the exact location of the border. But the images being published on the Lebanese side, for example, from the village of Meiss al-Jabel, tell the main story of the last few days; you can see Israeli soldiers in them, equipped with rifles and anti-tank missiles, while an Israeli bulldozer is working on the other side of the rock.
When both sides are viewing each other from relatively close range, each equipped with weapons aimed at the other side of the border, as UNIFIL soldiers try to serve as a buffer between the Israelis and the Lebanese (with Hezbollah members presumably watching closely), it’s a recipe for a possible eruption. The IDF will have to manage the work with extreme precision and caution so as not to spark an unwanted incident. Everyone’s nerves are tense enough; all it would take is one antsy Lebanese soldier to spark a fire that will be hard to extinguish.
A brief reminder: Israel withdrew in May 2000 from southern Lebanon and regrouped on the Blue Line, the international border recognized by the United Nations and drawn by its experts. But in some places along the border, the fence, for engineering reasons, was built south of the Blue Line, leaving enclaves under Israeli sovereignty north of it.'
After the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Israel insisted on maintaining a military presence in these enclaves by making periodic patrols. The Lebanese government recognizes the UN map in principle but holds reservations about 13 points along the border. The dispute between the two sides has intensified over the past year because Israel has begun to build a wall to prevent land infiltrations in two of these disputed areas, between Kibbutz Manara and Misgav Av, and east of Rosh Hanikra.
There have been several incidents connected to Israeli activity in the enclaves. In 2007 there was an exchange of fire between an IDF force and a Lebanese army armored personnel carrier, when Israel insisted on establishing facts on the ground in one of the enclaves. In 2010 a reserve battalion commander, Lt. Col. Dov Harari, was killed by Lebanese soldiers when the IDF trimmed trees in an enclave near Kibbutz Manara.
The Israeli operation to locate the tunnels is making everyone involved tense. All the players on the Lebanese side have something to hide. Hezbollah dug the tunnels, violating the cease-fire agreements; the Lebanese army, which receives extensive assistance from the United States and France, did not lift a finger to prevent Hezbollah’s activities (and its intelligence personnel sometimes actually help Hezbollah); and UNIFIL was mainly busy staying out of trouble.
The tunnels being exposed have their origins in homes in Lebanese villages; Israel for years asked the UN to survey these sites but was rebuffed on the grounds that these are private courtyards and UNIFIL would need solid evidence in order to check them. To Israeli eyes, this all looks like a cover-up in which the Lebanese government and the United Nations are taking an active role, even if they did not have detailed intelligence about Hezbollah’s secret excavations. Along with Israel’s goal of denying Hezbollah these assets and to leverage the discovery in the diplomatic arena, seeds have been planted that are leading to a long-expected serious crisis of confidence between Israel and the United Nations.
All this is taking place on the backdrop of the thunderous, prolonged silence of Hezbollah, which has not yet responded to Israel’s declarations. One could assume that the organization is preoccupied with finding out how its secrets fell into IDF hands and what exactly Israeli intelligence knows about the rest of its plans. If there is a direct confrontation along the border, it is more likely to take place between the IDF and the Lebanese army, as it has in the past. But in the longer term, locating and destroying the tunnels will require Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons to reexamine the deployment along the Israeli border.

Latest LCCC English Miscellaneous Reports & News published on December 11-12/18
Iran Admits 'Significant' Medium-range Ballistic Missile Test
The National/December 11/2018/Iran has confirmed it has launched a recent ballistic missile test, in what appears to be a breach of a UN resolution and Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.
Iran was accused of launching a medium-range missile earlier this month by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but it was denied by Tehran. "We are continuing our missile tests and this recent one was a significant test," the Fars news agency reported, citing Revolutionary Guard aerospace commander Brig Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, but they did not specify the type of missile tested. "The reaction of the Americans shows that this test was very important for them and that's why they were shouting," Mr Hajizadeh said. He added that the country carries out up to 50 missile tests a year. The British ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce said the test on December 1 was inconsistent with Resolution 2231, and went “way beyond legitimate defensive needs”. Resolution 2231 requires Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology” until 2024 at the earliest. US President Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA – a deal which lifts sanctions on the regime in exchange for curtailing their nuclear-weapons programme – saying they were in breach of the conditions of the deal. The US has since reimposed sanctions on Iran, hitting the country's financial services and energy sector. Iran claims their missiles are for defensive purposes only and are not capable of being tipped with warheads. In November, Iran's Revolutionary Guard warned their missiles can strike US military targets in the UAE, Qatar and Afghanistan. Iranian-made weaponry has been found across the Middle East, being used by proxies in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Last month, the US administration warned of regional conflict fuelled by the spread of Iranian weaponry.

US Energy Secretary discussed Iran sanctions with Iraqi officials
Reuters, BaghdadTuesday, 11 December 2018/US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Tuesday he had discussed his country’s sanctions against Iran with Iraqi energy officials and signaled an intention to step up US private sector investment in Iraq. Perry spoke at a Baghdad hotel where he was attending a US chamber of commerce event alongside Iraqi Oil Minister Thamer Ghadhban. The United States has restored sanctions targeting Iran’s oil industry as well as its banking and transport industry. Baghdad, an ally of both Washington and Tehran, is seeking US approval to allow it to import Iranian gas for its power stations. Iraqi officials say they need more time to find an alternative source than a 45-day waiver granted to it by the United States. “Sanctions were mentioned in meetings this morning,” Perry said without providing details. He added that his attendance was sending a strong message of US commitment to Iraq’s economy and energy sector and that he recognized the challenges faced by Iraq’s government when it comes to rebuilding oil infrastructure destroyed during the war against Islamic State militants. “This is a different administration that will move with speed to develop an energy sector that best serves the citizens of Iraq,” Perry said of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s new government.

Canadian former diplomat detained in China amid tensions
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - A Canadian former diplomat has been detained in China, the think tank where he now works said Tuesday, amid Beijing's outrage over the arrest of a senior technology executive. The International Crisis Group said it was aware of reports of the detention of Michael Kovrig, a Chinese-speaking expert who served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, Hong Kong and at the United Nations. "We are doing everything possible to secure additional information on Michael's whereabouts as well as his prompt and safe release," the think tank said in a statement. Kovrig went to work last year for the International Crisis Group, which is known for its research on peaceful solutions to global conflicts. There was no official word from China but the detention comes as Beijing voices anger over Canada's arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of leading technology company Huawei. Meng was stopped while changing planes in Vancouver on an extradition request from the United States, where prosecutors allege she violated US sanctions on Iran. China earlier Tuesday warned that it would not tolerate any "bullying" of its citizens abroad and has demanded Meng's release.--AFP

250,000 Syrian refugees could return home next year: UNHCR
Tue 11 Dec 2018/NNA - Up to 250,000 Syrian refugees could return to their homeland in 2019, while many others face problems with documentation and property that the Damascus government must help resolve, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday. Some 5.6 million Syrian refugees remain in neighboring countries - Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq- Amin Awad, UNHCR director for the Middle East and North Africa, told a news briefing in Geneva. Some 37,000 have returned this year, UNHCR figures show. "We are forecasting in this phase up to 250,000 Syrians going back in 2019. That figure can go up and down according to the pace with which we are working and removing these obstacles to return," Awad said. The Russian military meanwhile said that nearly 114,000 Syrian refugees have returned from abroad this year. Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, speaking at a session of the headquarters of Russia and Syria on the repatriation of refugees in Moscow, said that the main flow of refugees returning to Syria goes through the borders with Lebanon and Jordan, according to TASS news agency. Over 31,000 Syrians returned via the Nasib border crossing since it was opened in October. He also said that over 177,000 internally displaced people have also returned home this year. "The war is over and the country's restoration is proceeding at full pace," he said.--Reuters

UN Seeks $5.5 bn to Help Countries Hosting Syria Refugees
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/The United Nations and aid partners on Tuesday said they need $5.5 billion to support countries hosting millions of Syrian refugees, including a million babies born in displacement. The "Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan" aims to help Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey deal with the impact of hosting some 5.6 million Syrian refugees. "These neighbouring countries have remained incredibly generous in hosting large refugee populations since the start of the crisis" in Syria in March 2011, a statement said. It noted that providing refuge to millions of Syrians who have fled the devastating conflict is "challenging" and has taken a toll on public services and the "development trajectories" of the host countries. "Some 5.6 million Syrian refugees are currently registered across the region with around one million newly born in displacement," the statement said.
"These one million children have largely been born into a situation where poverty and unemployment are common, early marriage and child labour occur, and an education is not always secure," said Amin Awad, the UN refugee agency's director for the Middle East and North Africa. The $5.5 billion plan for 2019-2020 by the UN and more than 200 partner aid groups is designed to target more than nine million people across five countries, the statement said. It will fund several projects for refugees, including education for children as well as "enhancing basic services and economic opportunities", it added. "Vulnerable host communities... face deepening socio-economic challenges," it said, adding that the plan aims also to support the work of local institutions and municipalities who work with refugees. Syria's civil war has killed more than 360,000 people since it started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011, and has displaced 6.6 million internally in addition to those who fled abroad. Host countries have repeatedly complained that hosting the Syrian refugees is a drain on their resources, urging the international community to step in and help them cope.

Yemen Govt, Rebels Swap Names of 15,000 Prisoners at UN Talks
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/Yemen's government and rival rebels announced Tuesday plans for a mass prisoner swap, exchanging some 15,000 names, as UN-brokered talks on ending the country's war entered their seventh day. The government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and Yemen's northern Huthi rebels are in Sweden for talks on a devastating conflict that has pushed 14 million people to the brink of famine. The Huthi rebels announced that the names of a total of 15,000 detainees and prisoners had been exchanged. A source in the government delegation said their side had released the names of 8,200 detainees but declined to comment on the combined total. Both parties have two weeks to revise the list of names. The Sweden talks are the first meeting between the two parties in the Yemen conflict, which pits the Iran-backed Huthis against the Hadi government, allied with a regional military coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

French PM to Detail Macron's Measures to Appease 'Yellow Vests'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/The French government will Tuesday try to convince lawmakers and the public that President Emmanuel Macron's speech met the demands of the "yellow vest" movement, even as many demonstrators said they were disappointed and vowed to press on with their protest. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will detail for MPs the measures unveiled Monday in Macron's televised address to the nation seeking to defuse the revolt that has triggered violent protests across the country. Just after the president's speech, many protestors announced their determination to continue their blockades and called for a "fifth act" throughout France on Saturday. It would be the fifth consecutive Saturday of national protests since the movement started on November 17. The protests, which have seen rioting in Paris and other cities and taken a heavy financial toll, are the biggest challenge for Macron since the former investment banker came to power in May 2017 promising to revitalise the economy. Since then his popularity has fallen with critics saying he favours the rich and alienates people struggling, especially in provincial France. Speaking before the National Assembly, the prime minister is expected to outline Tuesday the main measures announced by Macron: a 100 euro ($113) increase in the minimum wage and rolling back most of an unpopular increase in taxes on pensioners which were introduced by his government. It is not yet clear how the measures will be financed. Macron will meet Tuesday with representatives of the banking sector and the following day with big companies to ask them to "participate in the collective effort", probably through tax measures. The social measures announced Monday will cost "between eight and 10 billion (euros), we are in the process of clarifying it, to see also how we will finance it," said Olivier Dussopt, secretary of state to the ministry of public accounts.
'I share responsibility'
Macron's speech from the Elysee Palace was presented as a decisive moment for the president. A sombre-looking president told the nation, "I accept my share of responsibility" for the crisis. The former investment banker struck a more humble tone than usual as he sought to address criticism of his style of leadership. "I know that I have hurt some of you with my statements," he said. Macron stressed, however, that the protests by mostly low-income people in small town or rural France were the result of long-term problems. "Their distress doesn't date from yesterday. We have ended up getting used to it," he said. "These are forty years of malaise that have come to the surface." Among the measures Macron announced was a 100 euro monthly increase in the minimum wage as of next year, for which businesses would not have to foot the bill. Macron's government had previously suggested that any increase in the minimum wage would destroy jobs rather than help create them. The 40-year-old centrist also called on all businesses "that can afford it" to give employees a one-off "end of year bonus" which would be tax free. In another move to appease protesters' anger, Macron said he would do away with all wage taxes on overtime work. Macron on Monday held four hours of crisis talks with government ministers, parliamentary leaders, business and labour representatives and regional officials. He had previously vowed that unlike his predecessors he would not be swayed by street protests. But in an initial attempt to quell the revolt now in its fourth week, the government agreed last week to cancel a planned increase in anti-pollution fuel taxes -- the spark behind the "yellow vest" protests in car-dependent rural and suburban France. But the move was seen as too little, too late by the protesters, who held a fourth round of demonstrations on Saturday to press for further concessions on reducing inequality.
'Yellow vest' reaction
Reactions to Macron's speech from the "yellow vests" were hard to judge as the movement is leaderless and has refused to come under the sway of political parties or trade unions. Some protesters, interviewed on French television, acknowledged that Macron had made some "concessions", but added that these were "insufficient" to call the protests off. "This time, there really is some progress. My smile got bigger and bigger as he spoke," said Erwan, one of the movement's "spokesmen" in the northwestern town of Rennes. But, for Pierre-Gael Laveder, in the eastern town of Montceau-les-Mines, "Macron hasn't taken the full measure of what is going on". "Every one of his announcements was booed and the first overall reaction was 'he thinks we are fools'," Laveder added.

Jordan Arrests Journalists over 'Offensive' Jesus Image
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/Jordan on Monday arrested a publisher and an editor at a news website over an image of Jesus deemed "offensive" to Christians, a judicial source said. Mohammed al-Wakeel, who runs the Al Wakeel News website, was accused along with an editor of inciting sectarian strife, a charge that could land them in jail for between six months and three years. The website had earlier published a retouched version of Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century mural painting of "The Last Supper" that sparked widespread controversy on social media. The original painting, which depicts Jesus' final meal with his disciples ahead of his crucifixion, is highly symbolic to Christians. The altered version shows celebrity Turkish chef Nusret Gokce, who goes by the name Salt Bae, standing behind Jesus and doing his famous salt-sprinkling gesture. One of the disciples has Jesus' face tattooed on his leg. Following the outcry online, Wakeel apologized and removed the image, saying it was an unintended "mistake" by a trainee editor. The publisher, who also hosts several radio talk shows in Jordan, was later summoned for questioning at a cyber-crimes unit. Christians make up around six percent of the country's 6.6 million population.

Palestinian Shot Dead by Israeli Forces in West Bank
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/A Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces on Tuesday near the flashpoint city of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said. Palestinian official news agency Wafa identified the dead man as Omar Awwad, 27, and said he was shot by Israeli forces near Hebron. The health ministry confirmed he had died after being taken to hospital. Israeli police said a man was shot after his car "drove towards border police" at a checkpoint. "Shots were fired at the suspect vehicle. No injuries to officers," spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in a statement, adding that the incident was being investigated. Israeli forces in the West Bank have been on high alert since Sunday evening, when seven Israelis were wounded in a shooting at the entrance to a West Bank settlement. There have been sporadic Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the West Bank. On November 26, a Palestinian rammed a car into Israeli soldiers, injuring three of them. The driver was later killed by Israeli forces.

Turkey in Talks over Possible UN Probe into Khashoggi Murder
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 11/18/Turkey is in talks over a possible United Nations investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Turkish foreign minister said on Tuesday. "We have discussed with the UN secretary general and our counterparts, and will continue to discuss" a possible probe, Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a press conference in Ankara. The minister said there had been requests from inside the international body for an investigation while his counterparts during the recent G20 summit in Argentina expressed "the will to make a joint application" to the UN. But Cavusoglu added that there has to be a formal request which then has to be approved by the UN Security Council before any UN investigation could begin. Khashoggi, a contributor to the Washington Post residing in the United States, was murdered after a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain paperwork ahead of his wedding to his Turkish fiancee. The 59-year-old former Saudi insider was strangled before he was cut up into pieces by a team of 15 Saudis sent to Istanbul for the killing, according to Turkish officials. There has been speculation that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the hit but Riyadh has absolved the de facto leader of any blame. Khashoggi's remains have still not been found despite searches of the consulate, the Saudi consul-general's residence in Istanbul and two villas in northwestern Turkey. A Turkish court last week issued arrest warrants for two Saudi men close to Prince Mohammed but Riyadh rejected demands to extradite the suspects. Ahmad al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani were described in Turkish court documents as being "among the planners" of the murder. "Why don't you want these people to be tried in Turkey? I wonder, are you scared that it would be revealed who gave the order for the murder?", the Turkish minister said. Cavusoglu also repeated his criticism of the "lack of cooperation" by Saudi officials during the Istanbul public prosecutor's official investigation. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the grisly killing was ordered at the highest levels of the Saudi government but insisted it was not by King Salman.

Arab League tells Brazil’s Bolsonaro Israel embassy move could harm ties
Reuters, Brasilia/Tuesday, 11 December 2018/The Arab League has told Brazil’s right-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro that moving Brazil’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would be a setback for relations with Arab countries, in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday. Such a move by Bolsonaro, who takes office on Jan. 1, would be a sharp shift in Brazilian foreign policy, which has traditionally backed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ambassadors from Arab nations are expected to meet in Brasilia on Tuesday to discuss Bolsonaro’s plan to follow US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to recognize Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, according to the Arab diplomat who asked not to be named. The letter to Bolsonaro from the league’s Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit and delivered to Brazil’s foreign ministry said the decision on where to locate an embassy was the sovereign decision of any country. “However, the situation of Israel is not normal, seeing that it is a country that has been occupying Palestinian territories by force - among them East Jerusalem,” the letter said. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be considered a violation of international law and the United National Security Council resolutions, Aboul Gheit said. The embassy move has been praised as “historic” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who plans to attend Bolsonaro’s presidential inauguration, according to the Brazilian’s transition team. “The Arab world has much respect for Brazil and we want not just to maintain relations but improve and diversify them. But the intention of moving the embassy to Jerusalem could harm them,” the diplomat said. Brazil is one of the world’s top halal meat exporters and that trade could run into trouble if Bolsonaro angers Arab nations by moving the embassy. That could hurt exports to key Middle Eastern markets for Brazilian beef and poultry producers BRF SA and JBS SA. Halal meat is butchered and prepared as prescribed by Muslim law. The meat exporters lobby has pressed the incoming president not to move the embassy, and he appeared to change his mind. But the president-elect’s son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, speaking after recently visiting Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner at the White House, said the embassy move was “not a question of if, but of when.”

Nobel laureate Nadia Murad urges world to ‘protect’ Yazidis
AFP, Oslo/Tuesday, 11 December 2018/Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, a survivor of ISIS sex slavery, implored the global community to help free hundreds of women and girls still held by the extremists in her Nobel acceptance speech Monday, saying the world must protect her people.
“The protection of the Yazidis and all vulnerable communities around the world is the responsibility of the international community,” Murad told the ceremony in Oslo. The 25-year-old shares the Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, who has spent more than two decades treating appalling injuries inflicted on women in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s war-torn east. Nobel committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said the pair were “two of the strongest voices in the world today”. “The fight for justice unites them, despite their very different backgrounds,” she said on Monday. Murad wept during Reiss-Andersen’s description of the suffering of her people. She survived the horrors of captivity under ISIS where they targeted Murad’s Kurdish-speaking community. Older women and men faced summary execution during the ISIS assault, which the United Nations has described as a possible genocide. Captured in 2014, she suffered forced marriage, beatings and gang-rape before she was able to escape. In her Nobel acceptance address Monday, Murad said that thousands of women and girls from her community had been kidnapped, raped and traded “in the 21st century, in the age of globalization and human rights”.The fate of some 3,000 women and girls is still unknown. “Young girls at the prime of life are sold, bought, held captive and raped every day. It is inconceivable that the conscience of the leaders of 195 countries around the world is not mobilized to liberate these girls,” she said.

Questions raised over US senator Lindsey Graham’s obsession with Saudi Arabia
Al Arabiya/December 11/18
A coalition of Republican and Democratic senators have introduced a resolution seeking to directly interfere in the internal affairs of a close American ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. This is raising questions about at least some of these senators’ obsession with Saudi Arabia and how that can prove to be counterproductive, according to US expaerts. Sen. Lindsey Graham, is leading a campaign to discredit Saudi Arabia and its high ranked officials with regards to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He joined calls by the Iran- and Qatar-friendly Republican Senator Bob Corker — in pressuring Riyadh’s internal hierarchy. However, those watching the proceedings closely say Graham and his cohorts appear once again to have failed to learn the lessons from past mistakes, according to many US commentators. Jordan Schachtel, the national security correspondent of Conservative Review, editor of The Dossier for CRTV, and Correspondent for Breitbart News, has been raising these issues, which have echoed in corridors of power in the United States.
Ill-advised moves
According to Schachtel, we have already witnessed the consequences the US lawmakers’ ill-advised moves in Libya wherein Graham, Rubio, and others joined the Obama administration in rallying support for the toppling of the Qaddafi government. He believes this resulted in the empowerment of al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked groups and the environment that produced the attack in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. In Egypt, a similar regime change coalition celebrated when the Muslim Brotherhood took over Cairo and proceeded to inflict chaos and violence upon non-Islamists, women, and the Coptic Christian community inside the country, says Schachtel. Analysts believe that the Graham resolution continues to prop up Saudi Arabia’s terrorist and terrorist-supporting foes, while making demands upon Riyadh. For instance, the Senate measure calls on Saudi Arabia “to negotiate directly with representatives of the Houthi movement” on the war in Yemen not realizing that Houthis are an Iran-backed terrorist group.
Qatar dispute
The resolution also calls on Saudi Arabia to “negotiate a political solution to its dispute with Qatar expeditiously and in a way that restores diplomatic relations with Qatar.” Given Qatar’s major support for terrorist groups around the world, it’s quite odd that the bipartisan group of senators is pressuring Saudi Arabia, and not Qatar, to restore proper diplomatic ties, analysts maintain. However, it is obvious, Qatar-backed business enterprises are seeking to invest billions of dollars in Sen. Graham’s South Carolina. In February, Sen. Graham held face-to-face meetings with top-ranking Qatari officials at Boeing’s offices in South Carolina.
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Seeking clarity on these issues, Al Arabiya English reached out to Jordan Schachtel for his comments on some of these pressing issues. Here’s what he had to say: Lindsey Graham’s obsession with Saudi Arabia. Lindsey Graham’s crusade against Saudi Arabia follows his long record of making bad decisions when it comes to Middle East policy. I cannot speculate about what is motivating him to go on the offensive against the Saudis, but his obsession with the Crown Prince in particular is very alarming. MBS has made unprecedented strides in reforming Saudi Arabia both internally and through its foreign policy, and he is a reliable partner who I believe truly admires the United States and values our alliance greatly. Graham’s campaign against MBS is horribly misguided and it hurts America’s standing in the region.
Lindsey Graham’s relations with Qatar
It is strange that he keeps bringing up Qatar in his critiques of Saudi Arabia. It is also worth discussing the public evidence. Earlier this year, Qatari officials made several visits to South Carolina, in which they pledged billions of dollars in investment in the state. And according to reports, Sen. Graham met multiple times with top Qatari officials. I would like to know if any deals were made that were not publicly disclosed.
Khashoggi affair
The public reporting released concerning the intelligence assessment seemed to imply that there was no direct evidence obtained to confirm that Saudi Crown Prince was involved. For me, it comes back to a question of American priorities. Because this incident happened in a sovereign Saudi diplomatic compound in Turkey, this is a feud exclusively between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As we now know, Jamal Khashoggi was not a permanent resident of the United States and only held a temporary visa. The United States is not responsible for taking up Khashoggi’s case. We can even set aside the fact that Jamal Khashoggi was a man who had well-documented ties to radicals, and who actively encouraged violent Islamist revolts against our allies. US policy should not change because of his unfortunate death.
Qatari investment in his state
We certainly have to factor in the possibility that billions of dollars in Qatari riyals could sway Sen. Graham to make decisions that could benefit Doha in exchange for all of the potential benefits and political power that could come his way.

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 11-12/18
Syria’s Assad Has Gassed His Own People, Again
Eli Lake/Bloomberg/December 11/18
Since Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad began gassing his people half a decade ago, his regime and its Russian enablers have tried to persuade credulous observers that the rebels were doing it to themselves. Now there is new evidence that, last month, the Syrian regime did exactly what it accuses the rebels of doing. A newly declassified U.S. assessment of the incident, scheduled to be released today, will say a so-called chlorine attack on Nov. 24 was essentially a false-flag operation. The assessment, which reflects the view of U.S. intelligence agencies and was shared with me before its release, says it was not a chlorine gas attack at all, but rather tear gas. What’s more, the U.S. now has “credible information that pro-regime forces” probably used it against Syrian civilians in northwestern Aleppo. It says they are “blaming the attack on opposition and extremist groups to undermine confidence in the ceasefire in Idlib.”
One piece of evidence the assessment cites, ironically, is the consistent narrative about the attack from Russian and Syrian media outlets: Reports agreed that chlorine-filled rockets or mortars against Syrian military personnel were fired by rebels from Idlib. In the past, after admittedly more serious chemical weapons attacks, it took more time for a consistent media narrative to emerge. The statement also says a “technical analysis of videos and images of munition remnants of Russian-media portrayed mortars indicate they are not suitable for delivering chlorine.” Nor did witnesses describe the characteristic odor of chlorine bombs.
Finally, the Syrian regime has maintained control of the site of the alleged attack. The White House is worried that the regime could contaminate the site or fabricate samples to hand over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The statement and its evidence are important not only because of what they say about Assad and his allies, but also because of what they mean for the fragile Syrian ceasefire. The Syrian regime used last month’s false-flag attack as a pretext to resume bombing of rebel positions in Idlib. A senior White House official tells me there is a concern that the fabricated attack in Aleppo might end up unraveling the ceasefire even more and force Turkey to respond. Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, says he is grateful the Trump administration is making its conclusion public. The Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies “concocted” this incident last month as a pretense for a military action in Idlib, he says. Moustafa warns that the new offensive “could double the refugees to Europe and kill countless civilians.”In Syria’s civil war, there is only one side gassing civilians: the government. The new assessment makes that abundantly clear. The regime and the rebels are not equally guilty, and anyone who says so is only emboldening the side actually using chemical weapons.

What’s at Stake in Yemen Affects Us All
Mohammed Khalid Alyahya/The Hill/December 11/18
The U.S. Senate is poised to debate a resolution that would force the end to United States support for the Yemen war, and numerous senators have asserted that such a measure could help bring an end to the conflict. With the White House strongly opposed to this effort, it is far from clear that Congress will end up enacting any Yemen-related legislation. However, no matter what transpires in the final legislative end game, it is worth examining both the premise of congressional actions and the likely strategic consequences.
Unfortunately, calls to “stop the Yemen war,” though morally satisfying, are fundamentally misguided. They ignore what is at stake in the Yemen conflict and the true identity of the warring parties. A precipitous disengagement by the Saudi-led coalition from militarily backing the UN-backed government of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the Yemeni civil war would have calamitous consequences for Yemen, the Middle East and the world at large.
The urgency to end the war reduces that conflict, and its drivers, to a morality play, with the coalition of Arab states cast as the bloodthirsty villain killing and starving Yemeni civilians. The assumption seems to be that if the coalition’s military operations are brought to a halt, all will be well in Yemen.
Everybody seems to have forgotten that the conflict was triggered in late 2014 when the Houthis, backed by Iran, toppled the Yemeni government and took over large areas of the country, including strategic positions on the Red Sea. In seizing power, the Houthis inflicted massive civilian casualties and crippling damage to Yemen’s rudimentary infrastructure. Presented with a strategic threat at its doorstep, posed by an Iranian proxy and a humanitarian crisis, Saudi Arabia, responding to a request by Yemen’s legitimate government and backed by U.N. Resolution 2216, militarily intervened in the Yemen conflict seeking to restore Yemen’s legitimate government. As has been the case with the Afghan and Iraq wars, prosecuted by U.S.-led coalitions, the counterinsurgency campaign in Yemen has been a difficult enterprise. Because the Houthis have been fighting in a way that deliberately places civilians at risk, Yemen has experienced dire security and humanitarian circumstances.
To curtail the influx of Iranian arms, the Saudi-led coalition periodically has restricted access to the port of Hodeidah, one of six main ports in Yemen, and a vital transit area for both humanitarian supplies and Iranian weapons transfers. The Houthis have exploited both of these for their war efforts and to consolidate their tactical gains on the ground, and so, abandoning the coalition efforts would leave Yemen in the rebels’ hands. We have seen this in Syria. Over the past several years, U.S. policymakers have called for “de-escalating” the Syrian war. On paper, the policy sounded prudent and moral. In practice, however, as the United States froze its assistance to the Syrian opposition, Russia, Iran and the regime of Bashar al-Assad took advantage of the de-escalation process. Towns and villages were besieged and forced to surrender to Assad. In many of those towns, the government exacted revenge by arresting or killing people. It also forcibly conscripted civilians into the army or loyalist militias. Even as the U.S. administration lauded “de-escalation” in its rhetoric, Syria and its Russian and Iranian patrons simply consolidated their position and continued their military campaign.
A similar scenario will unfold in Yemen if the Saudi-led coalition were to cease operations. Iran’s long arm, the Houthis, would march on coalition-liberated areas and exact a bloody toll on the populations of cities such as Aden and Marib with the same ruthlessness to which they subjected Sanaa and Taiz during the past three years. The rebels have ruled Sanaa, kidnapping, executing, disappearing, systematically torturing, and assassinating detractors. In Taiz, they fire mortars indiscriminately at the civilian population and snipers shoot at children to force residents into submission.
Having an Iranian satellite armed with Iranian ballistic missiles on the Saudi doorstep would pose an intolerable threat to the kingdom, comparable to having the Soviet Union seize control of Mexico during the Cold War. But the stakes in Yemen involve more than just Saudi Arabia’s national security or the peace and prosperity of the Yemeni people. An abrupt termination of the war would leave Iran in control of Yemen would deal a serious blow to the global economy. Iran would have the ability to obstruct trade and oil flows from both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, the latter of which has been tormented by Somali piracy for the decades.
Iran would wield far greater influence than Somali pirates if it were allowed to threaten Bab-el-Mandeb. About 24 percent of the world’s petroleum and petroleum products supply passes through these two waterways, and Iran already has the capability to disrupt oil flows from Hormuz and has threatened to do so this year. Should Iran acquire that capability in Bab-el-Mandeb, by establishing a foothold in the Gulf of Aden, even if it chose not to utilize this capability, oil prices and insurance costs would surge. Allowing the IRGC to control two of the most strategic choke points for the global energy market is simply not an option for the international community. There is every reason to believe that Iran would launch attacks on maritime traffic. The Houthis have mounted multiple attacks on commercial and military vessels over the past several years, and Iran has supplied its Yemen proxy with drone boats, conventional aerial drones and ballistic missiles. Iran’s threats to disrupt international waterways should not be taken lightly. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) targeted Gulf oil tankers in the mid-1980s, prompting the U.S. Navy to launch Operation Earnest Will to protect the flow of oil. IRGC speedboats were deployed from Iran’s Farsi Island to launch rockets at oil tankers in the dead of night. An underwater mine placed by the IRGC struck U.S.-flagged oil tanker MV Bridgeton.
There is plenty of reasonable criticism of the war effort in Yemen. The conflict has exacerbated a terrible humanitarian crisis and claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. But any resolution to this war that leaves the Houthis with control over the Yemeni people, or allows Iran to exert its influence over one of the world’s most strategic waterways, would be a humanitarian and security disaster.

The Pentagon Loves Saudi Arabia, in Sickness and in Health
Micah Zenko/Foreign Policy/December 11/18
The shocking allegations of Jamal Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul have led to a rare open debate among politicians, pundits, and business leaders about the strategic wisdom of U.S.-Saudi relations. When the debate subsides, however, it’s unlikely to have transformed America’s long-standing relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf kingdom’s regional allies, in any substantial way.
The reason is simple: geography—more specifically, the U.S. military’s peculiar relationship to it. For decades, the United States has professed several vital (and lesser) national interests in the Middle East. These interests include assuring the free flow of oil and natural gas, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, preventing the emergence of ungoverned areas that terrorist organizations can utilize, containing Iran, and enhancing the capacity of regional militaries to defend their own territory.
American political and military officials have consistently contended that the military should have the predominant role in achieving these interests. And, to ensure that military forces and assets can operate with sufficient latitude in the region to achieve said interests, those forces need reliable and predictable access to the airfields, ports, facilities, and airspace located on the sovereign territory of Persian Gulf countries. Cyber-capabilities or smaller, less-lethal units operating from naval assets in international waters are not an adequate or reliable substitute. Across Democratic and Republican administrations, direct and stable military access to the Middle East has been a far higher foreign-policy priority than any competing moral or ethical consideration in the region.
This is the conclusion I reached over the past year researching U.S. military policy in the Middle East, the results of which were recently published by Chatham House. This included speaking with dozens of current and former military officials, diplomats, and executives from contractors that provide security services to regional militaries. I also reviewed the best publicly available information from government and nongovernmental sources, compiled data on U.S. military deployments and security cooperation programs, and applied the latest academic findings on the measurable impact of deployments and operations.
My central finding was that the United States’ regional alliances consisted of a relatively simple exchange: Washington provides security cooperation, weapons, and logistical support, and in return, regional governments offer assured access to their territory for the U.S. military. This might seem unsurprising—but the biggest revelation of my conversations was the depth, breadth, and scope of this reciprocal relationship. It isn’t simply transactional and temporary, but built upon decades of close personal contacts between U.S. military leaders and their regional interlocutors. These relationships extend beyond the Americans’ active-duty service and have allowed Middle Eastern governing regimes to receive a pass from human and political rights concerns. To some extent, the relationships now exist to serve themselves, rather than U.S. interests.
Security cooperation programs are the routine touchpoints between U.S. military forces (and contractors) and their Middle East counterparts. For example, in 2017, 9,007 officers from Middle East countries received instruction—on subjects including tactical combat skills and civil-military relations—at Defense Department educational institutions, primarily within the United States. Weapons and munitions sales are also an enormous and visible element of Washington’s collaboration with regional militaries. For two decades, the United States has been the largest weapons exporter to the Middle East, and from 2013 to 2017, 49 percent of all U.S. weapons by value went to countries in the region. Security cooperation also includes numerous examples of U.S. logistical and analytical aid for operations conducted by local militaries: America’s expedited munitions and fuel shipments to Israel five days into its war against Hezbollah in 2006, a joint surveillance and intelligence cell to support Turkish airstrikes against forces associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, and, most notoriously, the combat search and rescue, in-air refueling, and intelligence analysis that the U.S. military has provided to the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen.
There are also less-recognized, informal cooperation activities that retired military officers provide to Middle East governments. After stepping down as the commander of U.S. Central Command, now-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, while also on the board of directors for defense contractor General Dynamics, served as an unpaid military advisor to the United Arab Emirates, from June 2015 until August 2016. Retired Gen. James Jones worked at Ironhand Security LLC with the Saudi Ministry of Defense, while retired Maj. Gen. Thomas Moore Jr. consulted for Stark Aerospace Business Development, based in Israel. More shocking is Stephen Toumajan, who retired from the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2007 and is now a two-star general within the UAE military’s Joint Aviation Command. These activities enhance the capacity of local security services, which, in turn, enables and sustains the close relations that reliably permit U.S. military access.
As a result, U.S. military policy is not based on any objective evaluation but is immensely influenced by regional governments. These distortions are intensified by U.S. public relations firms. These firms arrange meetings to represent the interests of regional governments with members of Congress, administration officials, research fellows at think tanks, editorial boards, journalists, corporate executives, and any other influencer. (Trust me, if you publish columns that run counter to the perceptions they seek to promote, these firms will reach out directly and repeatedly in an effort to change your mind.) As of June, according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act website, Saudi Arabia was being represented within the United States by 28 PR firms; Qatar, 24; the UAE, 16; Iraq, 15 firms and individuals; Israel, seven; and Egypt, three.
President Donald Trump repeatedly decries the cost and futility of America’s role in the region, declaring in June: “I say it so much and it’s so sad, but we have $7 trillion in the Middle East. You might as well throw it out the window.” Despite Trump’s strident belief that Middle East governments are “ripping off” taxpayers, and that the United States should be reimbursed for its troop presence, he has ordered no noticeable shift in military policy toward the region. In fact, the military’s footprint has only increased since he entered of office, from 40,517 troops in the Middle East in June 2017 to 54,180 four months later. Moreover, despite rhetorically pushing for them, the Trump administration has received no reimbursements from Middle East governments in exchange for U.S. forces being stationed in the region.
While nobody can predict how the domestic political fallout of the Khashoggi slaying will unfold, it is improbable that Trump will take any steps that risk U.S. military access and, by extension, the vast number of missions that U.S. forces have been tasked to fulfill in the region. Indeed, late last week, just as the gruesome allegations of Khashoggi’s death were being revealed, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford met with his Saudi counterpart, Chief of the General Staff Gen. Fayyad Al-Ruwayli, in Washington. The Pentagon announced alongside the meeting notice, “The U.S. and Saudi Arabia share a long-standing partnership and are committed to peace and security in the Middle East region.” Due to America’s many vital national interests that presidents have declared in the region, that partnership, and those with neighboring allies and neutrals, are a military necessity—no matter how implicated the United States has become in the actions of those partners.

Canada standing on the wrong side of history
Ramzy Baroud/Ramzy Baroud/December 11/18
How does one explain Canada’s contradictory foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel? On Dec. 4, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat, praised Canada’s commitment not to follow in the footsteps of the US by transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
But there is little worth praising here. Respecting the internationally recognized status of Jerusalem is a legally binding commitment to international law. The fact that the US chose to violate the law hardly makes the opposite act heroic.
Only five days earlier, Canada joined a tiny minority of states — alongside the likes of Israel, the US, Australia and the Marshall Islands — to vote “no” on a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution titled “Peaceful Settlement on the Question of Palestine.”The Canadian government, which is keen to present itself as a model, neoliberal, progressive country, even the antithesis to the US’ hawkish policies, voted against a resolution that calls “for intensified efforts by the parties… to conclude a final peace settlement.”If you find such behavior confusing, then you are not paying attention. Canada has not changed at all. It is our understanding of Canadian foreign policy that has almost always been marred by a true lack of understanding. And there is a good reason for that. The Canadian government has mastered the art of political branding. The only period in modern American history that is comparable to Canada’s successful political propaganda was the presidency of Barack Obama.
But Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau — seen as the “human face of neoliberalism” — is an even more successful brand than Obama. While positioned as the political opposite of conservative former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, they are both committed to the ideology of neoliberalism.
Trudeau’s “human face of neoliberalism” is nothing than a carefully constructed mask meant to hide the hypocritical and militant policies that Canada continues to pursue. And nothing better exemplifies this than its record on Palestine. In the first 18 months of Trudeau’s mandate, Canada voted against 15 UNGA resolutions that were critical of Israel.
It has been argued that Canada’s foreign policy and its UN voting records are often inconsistent. This, however, seems to apply only to Israeli crimes against Palestinians. When Trudeau defeated Harper, many breathed a sigh of relief, particularly because of the latter’s blind support for Israel. So is Trudeau really different? Let’s consult the facts. The page on the Trudeau government’s website entitled, “Canadian policy on key issues in the Israeli-Palestine conflict” is almost an exact replica of Harper’s, with one notable exception. On Trudeau’s page, his government recognizes the “experience of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa, who were displaced after 1948.” This is a misconstrued version of history that has been injected by Zionists whenever the rights of Palestinian refugees — who were displaced by Jewish militants during the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine — is brought up. The very first “key issue” for Trudeau’s government is “Support for Israel and its security.”
Trudeau makes the claim that his government’s assessment of UN resolutions is guided by “its merits and consistency with (Canadian) principles.” Harper seemingly defied these “principles” on numerous occasions, notably when his government voted against UN resolutions critical of Israel, including 66/17 in 2012, 67/23 and 68/15 in 2013, and 69/23 in 2014. But Harper’s exit did not usher in a new moral age for Canada. On the contrary, Ottawa’s love affair with Israel intensified. Aside from carrying on with the same anti-Palestinian attitude at the UN, on Nov. 24, 2015, the Trudeau government even voted against UNGA resolution 70/15, which reaffirmed the “illegality of the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.” Such a vote even goes against Canada’s own declared position on the illegal Jewish settlements.
This should not come as a surprise, though. Take Ottawa’s stance on terrorism, for example. In its “key issues” on Israel and Palestine, the Canadian government “condemns all acts of terrorism,” but it later qualifies this. “Canada has listed Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and other groups as terrorist organizations,” it elaborated. Not only did it fail to list any Jewish group as terrorist, or at least emphasize the need to prosecute war criminals (in this case, Israeli leaders), it only linked Palestinians and Arabs to acts of terrorism. But what if Palestinians decided to use popular, non-violent and democratic means to display resistance? They did, and were still condemned for it. In 2016, with much personal enthusiasm from Trudeau himself, the Canadian Parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of a motion that condemned the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Since then, the anti-BDS policy has become a fixture in the government’s attitude toward the Palestinians.
Last month, in a speech he made to apologize for Canada’s immoral act of rejecting Jewish refugees escaping Nazi atrocities in 1939, he directly linked BDS with antisemitism. “Antisemitism is still far too present,” he said, as “Jewish students still feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable on some of our colleges and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation.”Linking BDS with his country’s disgraceful antisemitism against refugees decades ago might have been a masterful stroke by his pro-Israeli speech writers. However, swapping historic hate for Jews with modern hate for Palestinians shows that Canada has learned nothing from its sordid past. Trudeau and his government will certainly be judged by future generations, just as his predecessors were judged for their past sins, for choosing, despite the passage of time, to stand on the wrong side of history.
*Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is “The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story” (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. Twitter: @RamzyBaroud

France and the crisis of democracy
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
The fires, theft, vandalism and confrontation between the police and protestors for around two weeks in France are not surprising even though peaceful and legitimate means in the democratic system, including changing the government, are available. However, this did not convince thousands of protestors! In France, they are blaming the Russians for standing behind the wave of inciting fake accounts that pushed the angry public to the streets and they called on American President Donald Trump to stop influencing the French public opinion because he was quick to criticize Macron and his government, and blame it.
Have the Russians really infiltrated the French youths’ minds? Have they done so as they were previously accused of interfering in European elections as well as American elections? Is it believable that Trump has all this influence? Even without the electronic conspiracy theories, chaos contradicts with the values linked to democratic practice. It contradicts the concept that the ballot box is the judge between the people and that it’s on the basis of elections that a president and his government come to power upon the desire of the majority. It violates the principle that the people’s representatives in the parliament are the ones who express this desire. Chaos of course contradicts with the restrictions of freedom of expression that only guarantees the right to peaceful protest and rejects dictating stances by force. France is the country of revolutions, and the street is once again reviving the controversy about the concept of the choice of governance by the majority, which is the pillar of the western governance system
Majority rules
France is the country of revolutions, and the street is once again reviving the controversy about the concept of the choice of governance by the majority, which is the pillar of the western governance system. The Paris unrest happened at the same time as another battle: the vote on Brexit inside the oldest parliament in the world, Westminster. The majority of the British people voted for exiting the EU but most politicians there fear that committing to the result of the popular referendum will harm higher interests and Britain’s future. Despite that, the word is the people’s word as the majority wants to leave the union.
According to the concept that the majority of voters decide who rules, Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency with 66 percent of the votes. However, around 100,000 of the Yellow Vest protestors forced him to repeal his decisions and they succeeded. He backed down on raising the prices of fuel and the tax and despite that the chaos went on. The same thing pretty much happened with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she imposed the poll tax and protestors took to the streets of London to oppose the move. Back then she said: “Elections are once and not every day. They elected me to make decisions.” Despite that they got her to resign from the premiership before finishing her term. The system in the US is presidential, hence, the president is the least subject to earthquakes and he is only impeached if he commits constitutional violations or felonies punishable by law.
Democracy has walked a long course and improvements have been made to this old theory as legislators included many amendments to it in order to end the accusation that it’s the majority’s dictatorship. What are the rights of the weaker categories in society? Many legislations which were introduced contradict the democracy of the ballot box and the concept of the majority’s governance, such as imposing women’s rights and ethnic and religious rights, in order to protect them from the dominance of the ruling majority.
Today, there is a new problem as public opinion is no longer the opinion of the people but it can be directed by parties that want to change the rules of the game, such as foreign powers. An angry minority that thinks the solution is in the street can also overturn the formula and thwart the decisions of the majority’s “ruler.” Major democratic countries often lectured small or developing states with limited capabilities and experiences and asked why they don’t leave the windows open to all movements and currents. Today, these major ancient societies themselves can no longer bear leaving social media networks open to all foreign ideas. Ever since the end of the American elections two years ago and up until today, there have been suspicions about foreign influence and in the results too. The open democratic game has become politically expensive.

Iran’s Chabahar Port: A new flashpoint in unstable region
Ahmed Quraishi/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
Iran’s Chabahar port is the latest flashpoint in a region already plagued by local conflicts and strategic competition. The suicide attack in the city on Dec. 6 is unusual on multiple levels.
It was the third major attack inside Iran since the June 2017 attempt to storm the parliament building and Khomeini’s mausoleum in Tehran. Oil-rich Ahvaz was the scene of a daring attack on a military parade in September this year. But the attack in Chabahar has raised the red flag in Tehran. The suicide bomber who tried to enter the police headquarter in Chabahar walked past two of the strongest security rings in the Islamic Republic, in a city that lies at the heart of Iran’s future strategy for Afghanistan. On the day of the attack, Brigadier-General Mohmmad Pakpour, the IRGC Ground Force Commander, arrived in Chabahar for a security meeting. The attacker was able to walk past the strong security measures in place for the top general. The IRGC is the top military force in Iran, answers directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei, and gets preferential treatment in arms and money, surpassing Iran’s armed forces, which were sidelined after clerics seized power in 1979. And yet this massive force was unable to secure a town of 100,000 people for a top general’s visit. The port is an attempt to shift Afghanistan’s trade from Pakistan to Iran and will allow India to trade directly with Central Asia and Russia, bypassing Pakistan and rendering useless its geographic advantage as a bridge .The second security ring in the city protects the Iran-India joint port project, the crown jewel of Tehran and New Delhi’s Afghan strategy, which started in early 1990s and continues today. The port allows India to counter China’s Gwadar deep-sea port project across the border in Pakistan. The port is an attempt to shift Afghanistan’s trade from Pakistan to Iran and will allow India to trade directly with Central Asia and Russia, bypassing Pakistan and rendering useless its geographic advantage as a bridge. The two countries have been working closely to counter Pakistani influence in Afghanistan since early nineties, going as far as joining the war by supporting the now-defunct Northern Alliance and prolonging the Afghan civil war. These actions frustrated Islamabad and Washington’s hopes to install an allied government in Kabul. Now Chabahar takes this strategy to a new level.
China-Pakistan Corridor
But the Dec. 6 attack shows this won’t be easy. Iranian and Indian diplomats often tried to convince officials in Beijing that the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, which ends at Gwadar port in Pakistan, is not feasible because Islamabad is unable to provide security for the project. Iranian officials have been so confident about this that they even pitched their Pakistani counterparts to abandon Gwadar and instead use Chabahar. For example, on August 3, 2017, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s key advisor, Hossein Sheikholeslam, told the Indian media in New Delhi that the Gwadar project was unworkable, and the Pakistani port could not compete with Chabahar on the long run. “[T]he Gwadar to China road is still not secure, unfortunately,” Sheikholeslam told the Indian wire service ANI in a TV interview. “This [Chabahar] is secure. Iran is an established government. I mean, you don’t hear someday bombs in Tehran or Balochestan. No, no. All around us is fire, but we are sitting there, clam in Tehran.”Sheikholeslam could barely conceal his smile as he said this. He knew what he was talking about. After all, he belongs to the inner circle of power in post-1979 Tehran. He was one of the militants who took hostages at the US embassy on the eve of the revolution.
Punctured narrative
But within a year, this narrative of Iranian officials, that Chabahar is safe, lies punctured. And this has panicked officials in both Tehran and New Delhi. The confusion was visible immediately after the attack. An IRGC general accused Saudi Arabia of orchestrating the attack. Zarif in his tweet seemed to be pointing the finger at UAE. Interestingly, Iranian officials refrained from hinting at Pakistan. Gen. Pakpour visited Pakistan in October to seek help in the release of 12 IRGC soldiers kidnapped by an Iranian group and transferred to Pakistani territory. Pakistani law enforcement recovered five of them, while efforts to get the rest continue. Facing crippling sanctions, the Iranian government does not want to alienate a major neighbor like Pakistan. And while the Iranians remained silent on Pakistan, the Indians did not. Several Indian news outlets published reports linking Ansar Al-Forqan, the Iranian group that claimed Chabahar attack, to Pakistani extremist groups.
But the situation on the ground does not support this narrative and no evidence links the attack to Pakistan. The target in Chabahar was not Indian interests but Iranian police. The Pakistanis are no longer interested in Chabahar after 2016, when they busted an Indian intelligence ring based in the Iranian port city and involved in terrorism inside Pakistan, including in sectarian attacks. Islamabad pressured Tehran to end Indian intelligence presence in Chabahar, and President Rouhani had to face questions on this during a visit to Islamabad. It would be impossible for militants to travel roughly 150 km from the Pakistani border to Chabahar, enter the city, circumvent IRGC security for the visiting general, and then another layer of security for Indian port project, execute the attack, and then exit the city again toward Pakistani border. Even in the case of the 12 IRGC kidnapped border guards in October, experts say indigenous Iranian rebel groups that have local support can operate inside Iranian territory and use the no man’s land between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan at will. This region is infested with criminal groups involved in human and drug smuggling, often well-armed, and always ready to work with rebel groups, like Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and others. In fact, a courier for Al-Qaeda used this region to carry a message from Iran-based leadership to bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. American accounts cited this courier as ultimately resulting in blowing the fugitive leader’s cover.
Tehran blames Gulf states and neighbors for its troubles, but the reason militants can move freely in a tightly-controlled city like Chabahar is local support. The region where the port is located is beset with ethnic and sectarian conflict. Another twist to the story is IRGC’s past link to Ansar Al-Forqan. Iranian journalist Raman Ghavami says the group was created by Tehran to fight locals, but it rebelled later.In an analytical thread on the Chabahar attack on Twitter, Ghavami wrote, “Four years after its establishment by the IRGC, Ansar Al-Furqan’s significant part led by Jalil Qanbarzehi rejected working for Iran. However, this wasn’t accepted by the IRGC and an operation was conducted in June 2017 to destroy the group.”

The idea and its antithesis is the way to advance
Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
“You’re mixing up between fact and opinion,” is the most common statement heard among colleagues, editors-in-chief and those who are always in the newsroom. It’s naturally accompanied with a reprimanding tone that logical people cannot forget or ignore. You return home and your wife asks you – if you’re a media figure – about your opinion on a news piece that she saw an hour earlier on television. She asks you something after being influenced by a friend’s phone call or a comment she read here or there, you brace your strength to repeat the same answer you said twice today and three times yesterday and which will you try to say in a new way tomorrow. I always go back to learn from my children – they will always be children in their parents’ eyes even if they are over 20 years old. I do so especially when I sit alone to contemplate about an idea that’s difficult to solve. I go back to an old conversation or a question I heard once or an old story they narrated to me in their own way, which I am never bored of. “You’re mixing up between fact and opinion,” is the most common statement heard among colleagues, editors-in-chief and those who are always in the newsroom. It’s naturally accompanied with a reprimanding tone that logical people cannot forget or ignore
Rules of debate
My daughter was in the school’s debate team. The teacher was smart enough to ask the two teams to clearly discuss a legislating crisis in the city where they study. The topic was that the city that has been stricken with economic recession and has not yet legislated granting permits to open gambling shops. The teacher was intelligent and she was aware that the little princess is Muslim and is not interested in such topics. However, it was a nice exercise to silence the rivals with facts and arguments before moving to the personal touch, which we will later call the opinion.
I interestingly approached the little one and asked her: My child, what’s the distance between facts and opinions? Does the teacher expect numbers and facts from you or does she really want to test the capabilities of your team against those of the other team? Back then, she said: The teacher expects an answer that is supported by evidence and among the folds of the evidence, I can justify my point of view. I smiled and told her she was on the right path. Facts are something that can be proven as valid or not valid to any rational man and we need evidence and sometimes we even need axioms to clarify the picture, which we assume the other has missed seeing. Before counting the points of your debate, put yourself in your opponent’s place and expect the five points he will use against you. Write each one down and use your little hand to count them. On your other hand, select points to address the former five opposing points. In the art of debate, you must be ready to refute the argument of the other even if your little heart and mind are inclined to it.
Avoid the personal opinion in dialogues even if it’s a heated debate. The viewer and the recipient can directly know your inclination to a point over another when you use similar vocabulary in all languages. Let me narrow them so you write them and forget them. The first one is the best and the second one is the worst. It’s always possible to soften this by voicing your preference in the end and preceding it by high discipline towards the opposing team like saying: “In my personal opinion,” or “based on our experience in the Arab Gulf,” or you can even provide an example that happened with you or with a friend of yours.
In the final part when you appeal to others’ sentiment, you’d be following the method of the French Pascal who said: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”
Perceptions and opinions
Do not forget that the population of the city where the debate will be held do not belong to the same religion and do not come from the same background. The common ground between the world’s population is facts and nothing else. People are surprised by numbers and love statistics because the new world is trying to escape from the feelings of someone who may be influenced by a religious idea or a political reference. They tend to be distrustful so they dislike those who talk for long and those who manipulate their tone to affect the viewer’s mind without amazing him or touching his heart. A debater, no matter how good he is, cannot touch one’s feelings without making the heart laugh and the heart cannot laugh before the truth is attained. What is the truth? It’s what you are looking for and what I am still running after in my mid-forties. It is what people wake up for and why debates go on in faraway cafes.
I am not alone, and you are not alone either. Plato (427 B.C. – 347 B.C.) has doubted the world of sense and intuition since before Christ and called on everyone to search for the truth via a new way. He said we cannot trust what we see and what we think as searching for the truth requires a radical revolution against habits and traditions and one must break free from the illusion and falsehood of the world of senses and head towards the fixed rational truth.
Science frequently contradicts the mind so scientists go to laboratories on a daily basis and millions of dollars are spent on research. They start with a hypothesis and test its failure so the suspicion is complete. The journey then begins – the journey of proof, which will teach me and teach you that narrowing the strength points and the weakness and defect points of any idea before attacking someone is the right way to exit any dialogue with your head high. Descartes had the organized thinking methodology that is based on four rules: doubt, analysis, synthesis and finally review. You can apply this on a daily basis in any dialogue. The teacher did not come up with the problem except after she doubted the intentions of the legislators in the city. When you went ahead to discuss pros and cons and began to search, you walked through the second and third steps. When your heart is comfortable with what it reached, synthesis begins.
Avoid your previous perceptions and opinions. Put yourself in the place of your classmate who does not resemble you in anything and whom you have nothing in common with except the competition. Extend your right hand with the arguments he will present. Watch your language well. When you refute his facts, provide alternatives via rationality but with your eyes on the heart of the recipient who knows well the distance between the truth that’s carried via logical evidence and the opinion that begins with the best and the worst and I saw my grandmother and my father taught me.
In the journey for the truth to defeat the opinion, you will be alone and you will only have your intellectual tools and the method of doubt, which gifts us all these daily inventions in all fields.

Mega-trends 2018: Reduced influence of international organizations
Maria Dubovikova/Al Arabiya/December 11/18
The year 2018 is coming to an end. It is time to recall all that has happened as that would foreshadow all that is in the offing in 2019. It is not an easy task to make predictions, irrespective of the methods of analysis used, as incidents and developments in general are becoming quite unpredictable.
The year 2018 is wrapping up in a couple of weeks. This year was marked by several what can be labelled as ‘mega-trends’, according to Russian schools of international relations. One such trend is the reduced role and influence of international organizations. The processes of crisis settlement and negotiations are bypassing international institutions, whether it may concern the crises in Syria or North Korea. Countries have started to assert their own status at the international arena, irrespective of the presence of the international organizations such as the United Nations. Thus, current political and economic developments have brought the world back to the framework of realpolitik. This trend is also visible in another mega-trend, which is trade wars, wherein states seek to secure their individual political and economic interests. Led by the current US administration, trade wars will become one of the major features of the world of tomorrow.In the world of realpolitik, international relations are becoming chaotic and unpredictable. From here comes another mega-trend: uncertainty
International trade
The World Trade Organization (WTO) which is designed to regulate international trade seems incapable of responding to the threats posed by policies of some countries in this aspect, leaving the world and transnational corporations to respond and to negotiate deals to protect their own interests, yielding to further American pressure. What is left to WTO is to mediate between the opponents in the trade war though the countries are able to directly talk without involvement of the third parties. Thus, the WTO has become one the first victims of trade wars, as its rules and regulations are getting violated with impunity, which is literally crashing its credibility as an institute designed to protect the world trading system.
Another mega-trend points toward disintegration so that alliances that once seemed unswerving, appear to be not so durable and unconditional. The numerous disputes between the US and Europe and within Europe itself this year, show that old alliances can be questioned.
The same applies to countries in other regions as they find out that it is not that useful to rely upon alliances where they get increasingly dependent on their counterparts, rather than being equal in partnership. Countries are looking to diversify their trade as well as the currencies in which trade deals are conducted to minimize dependence on US dollar that has become already an instrument of American geopolitical games when the US government blocks transactions that are considered improper or with countries listed under sanctions. The world is taking a sharper course to de-globalization and for cooperation on the basis of national interests and demands. Following this general trend of dissolution, there is a rising trend of social protests all over the world even in peace havens of the developed world. Governments appear to be incapable of meeting public demands. Government systems, even in democratically developed societies, are getting archaic and out of step with the transforming societies and newly emerging public consciousness. From here comes another mega-trend: the rise of populism. Governments are becoming incapable of meeting the demands of society and finding out suitable measures to address rising problems, which is leading to populism. Populist parties are coming into power and populist rhetoric is becoming the motor of political movements and figures, bringing them from rearguard to avant-garde on the political arena.
Use of media
Another mega-trend is use of media as an instrument of manipulation of public opinion no matter which country is concerned. This applies to both democracies and authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, media wars are becoming integral part of the global environment, making it more prone to conflicts and apt for instability. The rise of the role of alternate media is symptomatic of the failing strategies and positions of global players and leaders. China is an exception for that as it continues firmly on its chartered course and even when reacting to challenges does not change its long-term strategies.
In the world of realpolitik, international relations are becoming chaotic and unpredictable. From here comes another mega-trend: uncertainty. The planning and forecasting horizon is getting gloomier. You cannot properly predict the eruption of a crisis and the unraveling of a situation on the global stage in medium to the long term. Even the short-term prognosis is somehow biased, and it has to do with facts and intelligence data to be reliable and meet the expectations. The world will be living through a scenario of uncertainty as long as international powers are reluctant to define international strategies.
Dichotomies of “archaization” and post-modernity of societies and the governments and of those who want to dominate and those who want a fair play, have become clear in 2018. Such dichotomies will shape the conflicting climate of the upcoming year and would form the features of the new world order.

The United States, Saudi Arabia, And The Middle East In The Post Khashoggi Era
مايكل سنغ: الولايات المتحدة والسعودية والشرق الأوسط في ما بعد حقبة الخاشقجي
Michael Singh/The War On Rocks/December 11/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/69895/michael-singh-the-united-states-saudi-arabia-and-the-middle-east-in-the-post-khashoggi-era-%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%8a%d9%83%d9%84-%d8%b3%d9%86%d8%ba-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%88%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%aa-%d8%a7/
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has sparked a sudden soul-searching in Washington about the U.S.-Saudi partnership. Riding a wave of congressional anger, a bill that would end American support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen overwhelmingly surmounted the hurdle required to advance to debate, attracting strong bipartisan support. Another bill wending its way through Congress would place strict conditions on the sale of offensive weaponry to Saudi Arabia, the largest purchaser of American arms.
The Trump administration, for its part, has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudis reportedly involved in Khashoggi’s murder and barred 21 from entering the United States. Yet the administration has otherwise been stalwart in its defense of the U.S.-Saudi partnership, lauding the kingdom as a “pillar of stability” and vowing to oppose congressional efforts to curtail the relationship or punish Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
For some, the U.S.-Saudi partnership is simply past its sell-by date. A relationship based in large part on ensuring the steady supply of oil to the West and keeping strategic territory out of the hands of the now-defunct Soviet empire needs, according to this thinking, not just tweaking but wholesale reevaluation. After all, American oil production now outstrips that of Saudi Arabia, leading if not to energy independence, certainly to self-sufficiency. And rather than looking to keep others out of the region, the United States is increasingly looking to extricate itself, with many seeing Middle Eastern allies as encumbrances preventing America’s escape from the regional quagmire.
But jettisoning the U.S.-Saudi partnership would be a mistake. For all the talk in recent years of a “rebalance” to the Indo-Pacific, or of a shift from counter-terrorism to great power competition as the organizing strategic framework of American foreign policy, the Middle East still matters. The United States retains important interests there, such as countering terrorism and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And indeed some of those interests — ensuring freedom of navigation through the region’s sea lanes and ensuring the free flow of energy to allies who depend on it, like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan — are vital to any strategy of competition with near-peer rivals like China.
To maintain a strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, there are several steps the United States can take to make its diplomacy with Riyadh more effective and make clear that U.S. support is not unconditional. At the same time, the Khashoggi episode should serve as a wake-up call for American policymakers looking to work increasingly through allies in the Middle East as the United States shifts its attention elsewhere. U.S. policy toward other partners in the region must also be reset if these partnerships are to remain effective.
A Rocky History
In reality, the U.S.-Saudi relationship has long been an uncomfortable one. It has been prone to crises — most notably the 1973 oil boycott and the 9/11 terrorist attacks — as well as sharp disagreements, like those over the Iraq war and the Iran nuclear agreement. Washington has long been ill at ease with Riyadh’s role in sponsoring extremism. And until the 2000s, Saudi Arabia was reluctant to be too closely identified with the United States. But the relationship weathered these challenges because despite them, each country saw the other as indispensable to its security strategy.
Ironically, prior to Khashoggi’s killing, policymakers had hoped the ascent of Mohammad bin Salman would ease the contradictions in the relationship. The prince was seen as committed not only to a partnership with Washington, but to a program of economic and social reform that could modernize Saudi Arabia and end its role in promoting religious extremism. Analysts were also mindful of the looming generational succession in Saudi Arabia, where the throne had for decades passed from one half-brother to another. The United States, and the West more broadly, felt it had a stake in the crown prince’s success.
Yet these hopes were increasingly in tension with Riyadh’s actual policies. The arrest of a large swath of the Saudi elite, the brief detention and forced resignation of the Lebanese prime minister, the mounting persecution of domestic critics, and overreach in regional and international disputes were all greeted with unease in Western capitals. Khashoggi’s killing may have sparked the current conflagration, but there was already plenty of fuel. The result is the most serious crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations since 9/11, and one the United States cannot hope will simply subside with time. As in the past, concerted action will be needed to right the relationship lest its instability persist or deepen.
Between Cutting Ties and Doubling Down: Four Ways to Fix the U.S.-Saudi Alliance
The Trump administration has characterized the U.S.-Saudi partnership as an instrumental one, vital to furthering American aims such as countering Iran. There is a basis for the assertion: While Saudi Arabia is not as capable a partner as Israel or Jordan, the kingdom has proven helpful on matters like intelligence-sharing and Arab outreach to Iraq. Yet the U.S.-Saudi partnership is really more of a protective or defensive one, designed less to advance American aims than to prevent adverse scenarios. It is not that Washington cannot do without Riyadh’s help, but that it fears the consequences of losing influence on Riyadh’s regional and foreign policies or, worse, of the Kingdom’s destabilization. Right now, the United States doesn’t have to worry much about another power supplanting it in Saudi Arabia — neither Moscow or Beijing have the capability or will to replace the United States in the Middle East. But this possibility will grow likelier over time given China’s thirst for oil and desire to project power beyond its region.
Forsaking the U.S.-Saudi partnership would more likely trigger the adverse scenarios Washington seeks to avoid or postpone. The targeting of Khashoggi and Riyadh’s rash regional policies are symptoms of the same underlying problem: Saudi Arabia has entered a phase of profound internal change as a younger generation rises to power, precisely when the Middle East is undergoing its longest sustained period of turbulence in decades and the United States seeks to pull back from its once-confident regional leadership role. Neither walking away from nor uncritically embracing Riyadh is likely to ease this instability — rather, the past several years suggest that these more extreme approaches will only exacerbate it.
But these are not the only available options. Rather than sundering the partnership or sweeping its problems under the rug, Washington should opt for intensive but tough engagement with Riyadh aimed at averting further instability. Such an approach should have four elements.
First, the United States needs to clean up its diplomatic act with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have often, over multiple administrations, enjoyed privileged access to the Oval Office and cabinet principals. But going forward, these actors should clear the way for the U.S. ambassador and U.S. regional officials by limiting their direct contacts with Riyadh to prevent diplomatic “jurisdiction-shopping” and to ensure a coordinated American approach. In the spirit of making the relationship less top-heavy, Gen. (ret.) John Abizaid, Washington’s ambassador-designate to the kingdom, should be confirmed quickly and be empowered to provide veteran guidance to Saudi leadership.
Second, and relatedly, Washington should insist that Riyadh designate and empower officials below the king and crown prince with whom American officials can deal. The United States cannot choose who leads Saudi Arabia and should not try. But having so few points of contact is bound to weaken the bilateral relationship, as no single figure can be expected to pay adequate attention to the full range of issues the United States and Saudi Arabia need to confront together. Vitally, the United States should emphasize that this is in the best interests of both countries.
Third, the United States should make clear that arms sales and other forms of American support are contingent not merely on a shared conception of threats, but on a common strategy to address those threats. Differences between the two sides will persist. But U.S. support should be an outgrowth of shared goals and strategies, rather than something that is treated as a test of Washington’s loyalty to the partnership or toughness toward Iran and other adversaries. Likewise, Washington should take greater pains to consult Riyadh and other regional allies in advance of major initiatives that affect the region’s security landscape, like the nuclear agreement with Iran or changes to U.S. policy in Syria.
Finally, the United States should supplement its bilateral diplomacy with Riyadh with reinvigorated regional diplomacy. Other regional allies have an even greater stake in Saudi Arabia’s stability and regional policies than America does. Multilateral forums can amplify the voices of seasoned regional leaders whose influence and experience can be useful to Washington even if their military and economic assets are comparatively minor. One model for this is the George W. Bush-era Gulf Security Dialogue, which sought to coordinate the policies of the United States and its allies across areas ranging from Iraq to theater missile defense.
Beyond Saudi Arabia: Resetting Regional Partnerships
As the fourth recommendation suggests, the U.S. response to the Khashoggi affair should not be limited to repairing its relationship with Saudi Arabia and navigating the current crisis. Nearly every U.S. relationship in the Middle East is vulnerable to this sort of crisis, and American policy toward Saudi Arabia cannot be divorced from its overall approach toward the region.
The Saudi crisis should prompt two broad course corrections in U.S. Mideast policy. First, the United States should reevaluate its approach to security partnerships and burden-sharing in the region. If Washington is to successfully reduce its footprint in the Middle East without sacrificing its interests, it must ensure that its regional partnerships are effective — instrumental, not merely protective — as well as sustainable domestically. This is true of the U.S.-Saudi partnership, but just as much the case in other major American military assistance relationships in the region like those with Egypt and Lebanon.
When crises such as the Yemen conflict emerge, Washington must be forthright with partners, making clear that U.S. support depends on realistic military goals and a reasonable timetable, married to a political strategy — and seeking to practice that discipline in its own regional interventions. This will inevitably mean counseling greater restraint.
When it comes to longer-term, ongoing security assistance programs, the United States should focus less on the mere delivery of training and equipment and more on the partner state’s overall management of its military affairs, as former Pentagon official Mara Karlin has counseled. This means addressing sensitive matters such as the structure and doctrine of foreign military partners, as well as civil-military relations. But it also means resisting the temptation to treat security assistance as a short-term bargaining chip by tying it to the issues of the day. Because security sector reform is necessarily a long-term project, the United States should attach it to those strings that are most likely to transform the partner military into an effective force over time.
Second, the United States should elevate human and civil rights in its regional bilateral relationships. American advocacy for human and civil rights in the Middle East has sharply diminished in recent years. This backlash was evident during the Obama administration, which associated President George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” with the Iraq war and interventionism. The so-called Arab Spring of 2011 only reinforced this trend, despite a brief, initial revival of Western enthusiasm for political reform. Under the Trump administration, which has sought to practice a form of realpolitik in its foreign relations, this downplaying of human rights has only grown stronger.
The present crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations illustrates the downsides of these shifts. The Khashoggi affair is a reminder that neglecting human rights concerns can not only imperil domestic U.S. support for regional relationships, but also blind policymakers to the brittleness of partner states. Downgrading human rights is convenient when dealing with autocratic partners, but comes with a cost. It is at odds with American values and thus difficult to sustain domestically and broadly damaging to American credibility. Policymakers should regard the matter not merely as a moral one, but as a strategic imperative — repressive regimes are often prone to instability, and those that pursue cruel policies at home rarely exercise wisdom abroad.
U.S. officials should elevate the human rights issue in bilateral and regional agendas and ensure that American assistance programs focused on rights and civil society enjoy clear, high-level diplomatic support. Making clear to partners that these issues will always be a topic of conversation when high-ranking U.S. officials visit, and that visiting officials’ itineraries will include meetings with civil society representatives, can help rein in abuses and create space for civil society in the region, which is vital to its prosperity and stability. This, in turn, can contribute to sustaining domestic U.S. support for these relationships. Here again, the United States must be in it for the long haul and be prepared to take a patient, case-by-case approach, focusing less on headline gains such as elections and more on the incremental work of building the institutions that are vital to resilient states.
Conclusion
As successive American administrations have sought to extricate themselves from the Middle East and shift resources to the Indo-Pacific and Russia, the idea of working through partners has gained momentum. But there are no easy roads to success in this region. The United States has experienced the downsides of excessive direct involvement in the Middle East and of attempting to wash its hands of the region’s problems. Now, the Trump administration is learning the pitfalls of the supposed middle ground: Working through partners makes Washington vulnerable to their flaws and captive to their parochial interests.
The solution lies not in a return to overcommitment or retrenchment, but in patient engagement that seeks to turn protective partnerships into more truly instrumental ones. Recalibrating the U.S. approach in this manner will bring objections, both from partners and from within the U.S. bureaucracy, where short-term security interests weigh more heavily than long-term concerns. And it is not without legitimate geopolitical risks — while problems in America’s regional relationships make the headlines, the United States quietly gains a great deal by cooperating with these partners, and would be worse off without them. Mitigating these risks will require the United States to make clear that its strategy of reducing commitments is not tantamount to cutting and running; that it is prepared to invest in a long-term effort to improve partners’ capabilities; and — perhaps most importantly — that it is prepared to be even harder on its adversaries than it is on its friends.
*Michael Singh is managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2007–2008.
https://warontherocks.com/2018/12/the-united-states-saudi-arabia-and-the-middle-east-in-the-post-khashoggi-era/

European Court of Human Rights Blasphemy Laws: Where a Word out of Place Can Cost Your Life
Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/December 11, 2018
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13377/european-court-human-rights-blasphemy-laws
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that criticism of Muhammad constitutes incitement to hatred -- meaning that in Europe, criticizing Muhammad is no longer protected free speech.
What the court has actually done, however, is rule out the possibility of any debate in which a range of various experts and members of the public could take part. Now, it seems, the only views that will be respected in the public forum are those of devout Muslims.
Underage marriages are considered by some countries child abuse or statutory rape, but are acceptable under shari'a law; they also take place in Muslim communities in Western countries such as the UK. This alone is a major reason why platforms must be found to debate the issue instead of sweeping it, as something offensive, under the carpet. Ignoring it is offensive.
Moreover, as some Muslims are often offended by even small matters regarding their faith, such as a toy teddy bear named Mohammad or a prisoner on death row declared innocent -- so that mobs take to the streets to condemn, or even kill, those individuals -- what now will not be censored in the West?
Under Islamic shari'a law, statements that even a few people may consider blasphemous -- such as young schoolchildren naming a toy teddy bear Mohammad, a common enough name in the Sudan -- might be treated as criminal offences. (Image source: Maxpixel)
There are, of course, social settings where it pays to watch your words. Saying you fancy the looks of a mafioso's new girlfriend could well prove fatal. Spending time with a bunch of Hamas terrorists while expressing your love for Israel might not lead to your premature demise. In London today, young men who make remarks or play music to other youths on the street can wind up stabbed to death. A recent comment on The Independent website claims, "In this country [the UK], some views, regardless of how valid and logical, can result in anything from public rebuke to loss of a job to violence."
For the most part, we learn how to avoid words or actions that may offend someone or some group, especially if it is known to be prone to violence. Yet these misfortunes are rare and we live our lives on the assumption that in democratic countries, we can speak freely within the norms of civil society. We recognize that in many countries, racist, homophobic, antisemitic, or "Islamophobic" hate speech can be reported to the police and lead to the arrest and eventual trial of the speaker. The United States' First Amendment to its Constitution protects its citizens from prosecution for free speech, except where there is a credible threat of "Imminent lawless action."
If angry exchanges take place, they are just a consequence of living in countries where free speech and unfettered opinion are cherished. We have seen what happens in countries where there is no free speech –as the Soviet Union or present day Pakistan (here, here and here); it often is not pretty and in much of the West is regarded as well worth the trade-off.
Particular sensitivities surround religious ideas, and histories. Nowhere is this more apparent today than in the instance of Islam, where anything untoward, especially statements that even a few people may consider blasphemous -- such as young schoolchildren naming a toy teddy bear Mohammad, a common enough name in the Sudan -- might be treated as criminal offences. In the West, within secular democratic states, most churches mercifully appear no longer interested in controlling matters such as blasphemy. When I lived in the Irish Republic in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Catholic Church held a tight grip on society. Books were banned, including by James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence and all of Sigmund Freud. Films and plays were also banned or censored. The intolerant ban on Catholics studying at Trinity College Dublin perpetuated injustice. Since the 1960s, however, we now have same-sex marriage, women's right to abortion, and an openly gay Taoiseach (Prime Minister). This year, on October 6, a majority of the Irish voted in a referendum to abolish the blasphemy law that had been in its constitution since 1937. The country has liberalized remarkably.
Ironically, while Ireland's 2010 blasphemy law was still technically on the books (although never actually implemented ), the 57-state Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – consisting of 56 mostly Muslim states plus "Palestine" -- cited it in 2009 during an attempt to impose an international blasphemy law on the UN. Also in 2009, the government had passed a new Irish Defamation Act that contained a full definition of the blasphemy law (the one abolished this year). This vote took place during a committee meeting for the 13th session of the UN Human Rights Council. The proposal, made on behalf of the OIC by Pakistan, used the Irish definition:
38.1 States parties shall prohibit by law the uttering of matters that are grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents to that religion.
We do not know if the principal motivation for the OIC came less from a concern about religions that Muslims might consider entirely false, abrogated and inferior, such as Judaism or Christianity, or more from a concern that no one should be allowed to criticize Islam.
In any event, Ireland finally woke up to the injustice of its blasphemy law, and the damage it was doing to its growing reputation as a country purporting to observe human rights.
Figures for blasphemy laws worldwide were recently cited by the Pew Research Center in its 2016 report on "Trends in Global Restrictions on Religion":
We found that laws restricting apostasy and blasphemy are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where 18 of the region's 20 countries (90%) criminalize blasphemy and 14 (70%) criminalize apostasy. While apostasy laws exist in only two other regions of the world – Asia-Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa – blasphemy laws can be found in all regions, including Europe (in 16% of countries) and the Americas (29%).
Possibly a better way of expressing concerns about blasphemy laws is to list the 30 Islamic countries that have such regulations, 13 of them imposing the death penalty for the offence. Here they are, in alphabetical order. Some offer life imprisonment. The ones in bold print carry death sentences:
Afghanistan
Algeria
Bahrain
Brunei
Egypt
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Jordan
Kuwait
Lebanon
Libya
Mauritania
Malaysia
Maldives
Morocco
Nigeria
Oman
Pakistan
Palestinian territories
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Somalia
Sudan
Tunisia
Turkey
United Arab Emirates (UAE)
Western Sahara
Yemen
With this disturbing list in mind, let us consider at least one dangerous development in Europe. More than one Western country is bringing forth legislation that will allow Islamic blasphemy laws in through the back door. In 2017, Canada passed Motion M-103, regarded as a shari'a blasphemy law forbidding free speech about Islam. Although at this stage it is "non-binding, one of its supporters, Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote, "Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning."
The most recent and glaring of these initiatives involves not a country, but the supranational, unaccountable European Court of Human Rights, a body that issues rulings enforceable in all 57 countries of the OIC that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights. Forty-seven of the signatory states are members of the Council of Europe, which is different from the 28-state European Union (although all EU states also belong within the Council).
There are, as well, other bodies to be taken into consideration – ones that open up another Pandora's Box.
Even though the primary focus of the Council of Europe is the wide network of its member states, it also has close links to, and shares activities with, a large range of international institutions. Through a variety of conventions and treaties, it helps set legal standards for those states, both members and non-members. Those non-member states include many familiar Western countries such as the USA, Canada, Israel, and Australia among others. These are states in which the values in areas such as human rights are closely aligned to those of the European member states. Many of the Council's conventions concern human rights, the protection of democracy, and the prevention of racial and other forms of intolerance.
The Council of Europe also engages with a variety of Muslim states, many of which are included on the list above of countries that enact laws on blasphemy. At a minimum, these include Algeria, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia.
The Council also has several other conventions on human rights, including
The European Convention on Human Rights
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance
The Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings
The Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (The Lanzarote Convention)
The Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence
These and other positions of the COE clearly align with, and develop, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and are solidly founded within modern Western democratic values.
The Council has set out its human rights principles in its Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Article 9 of that Convention deals with "Freedom of Thought, conscience and religion":
"1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
"2. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
The following article (10) deals with Freedom of Expression. It begins:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."
However, its second part does permit restrictions:
"in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others."
Of relevance to some of the Islamic states referred to above, Protocol 6 of the Convention deals with the abolition of the death penalty. The Protocol in Article 1 states that: "The death penalty shall be abolished. No one shall be condemned to such penalty or executed."
With these background facts, it is important to look at what happened on October 25 this year when the European Court of Human Rights issued its verdict on a case involving an Austrian woman, called Mrs. S., presumably Elisabeth Sabadtisch-Wolff, and an appeal she had made to the court to protect her right to free speech over a sensitive but factually correct issue concerning the Prophet Muhammad.
There is no room here for a full account of the woman in question, but readers may consult the details by the Soeren Kern here and here. What it amounts to is that Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff had given seminars about Islam in which she had drawn attention to the well-attested fact that Muhammad had married one of his eleven official wives, A'isha, when she was six, and consummated the marriage when she was nine. He apparently continued to have sexual relations with her until his death in 632, when she would have been eighteen.
Sabaditsch-Wolff was reported to the authorities for claiming that Muhammad "liked to do it with children. A 56-year-old and a 6-year-old? . . . What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?". She was arrested and tried in 2009 through 2011, sentenced for "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion", fined €480 ($625) and threatened with three months in prison. She appealed to Vienna's Provincial Appellate Court, which turned her down. Finally, she took her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. That court, which reported on October 25, 2018, ruled that criticism of Muhammad constitutes incitement to hatred -- meaning that in Europe, criticizing Muhammad is no longer protected free speech. In their judgement, the judges wrote that defamation of Muhammad "goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate" and "could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace."
The judgement will have an ongoing negative impact not only on Sabaditsch-Wolff, who will carry a criminal record for the rest of her life, with the resulting serious effects on her career and other matters, but all of the West, as well. It has certainly banned her and others from exercising their right to free speech asserted in the Convention of the Council of Europe.
Now, it could well be argued, as the ECHR did, that Sabaditsch-Wolff expressed her concerns about Muhammad's sexuality without due attention to the historical and cultural context within which his marriage to A'isha took place. The ECHR did indeed argue this. The ECHR cited the Judgement of the Austrian courts:
"The national courts found that Mrs S. had subjectively labelled Muhammad with pedophilia as his general sexual preference, and that she failed to neutrally inform her audience of the historical background, which consequently did not allow for a serious debate on that issue."
What the court has actually done, however, is rule out the possibility of any debate in which a range of various experts and members of the public could take part, to exchange views on a clearly controversial and unresolved subject. Now, it seems, the only views that will be respected in the public forum are those of devout Muslims.
The ECHR ruling also, unfortunately, will have an even wider impact across Europe and the world. The present writer, unlike Sabaditsch-Wolff, has a doctorate in Islamic studies and languages. If I were to refer to the original Arabic texts of the sacred traditions (ahadith) in which the story of Muhammad's marriage and sexual relations with A'isha -- texts officially held to be factually correct by all Sunni Muslims -- might I too now be put on trial for the same offence? Or if I were to write an article giving details of the approximately 40 individuals who were assassinated for having insulted the prophet on Muhammad's direct orders or whose assassinations were approved by him? What if, in the article, I also added comments on what this might indicate, backed up by chapter and verse of the Muslim histories and sacred traditions that record them, should I then be brought before a court, sentenced, fined or sent to prison?
Will no academic or well-informed individual in future be able to say anything about Muhammad, or will that now be legally prohibited? Moreover, as some Muslims are often offended by even small matters regarding their faith, such as a toy teddy bear named Mohammad or a prisoner on death row declared innocent -- so that mobs take to the streets to condemn, or even kill, those individuals -- what now will not be censored in the West?
It may well be suggested that Muhammad's sexual preferences are matters of purely historical interest, but in many Muslim countries, the proper age for marriage is determined, not according to the standards of the ECHR or other international bodies, but on the strength of the firmly established sacred traditions that help form the basis, alongside the Qur'an and the ahadith, of Shari'a law. In many countries, child brides are still commonplace, often in marriages that are forced – as, for instance here, here, here and here.
In some Muslim countries, such as Yemen, marriages at early ages are not uncommon and may be justified by reference to Muhammad's sexual relations with A'isha at the ages of 9. Underage marriages, considered by some countries child abuse or statutory rape, but acceptable under shari'a law, also take place in Muslim communities in Western countries such as the UK. This alone is a major reason why platforms must be found to debate the issue instead of sweeping it, as something offensive, under the carpet. Ignoring it is offensive.
As noted earlier, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has been trying for years to persuade the UN Human Rights Council to adopt a general blasphemy law that will block anything deemed by someone as critical of one faith alone-- namely Islam.
A few weeks ago, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan informed the UN of an initiative for an international campaign to criminalize criticism of Islam.
This year, a significant and influential Western human rights court has shown the future potentially in store for us. It is not hard to imagine that the OIC is already making plans to employ the ECHR as its agency of choice for officially introducing the law it has coveted for so long: "Defamation of religion," meaning just one faith, Islam. There do not seem any plans afoot to stop criticizing Christians or Jews, or Christianity or Judaism. If the ECHR builds a foundation for universal censorship, how long will it be before the UN Human Rights Council, pressured by its Islamic state members, will fall in line?
I already wrote about this possible threat to all of us:
The chief threat to free speech today comes from a combination of radical Islamic censorship and Western political correctness... [W]e are free to call to account any religion from Christianity to Scientology, Judaism to any cult we choose....
It used to be possible to do this with Islam as well.... But many Muslim bodies -- notably the 57-member-state Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) -- have been working hard for years to render Islam the only religion, political system and ideology in the world that may not be questioned with impunity. They have tried -- and are in many respects succeeding -- to ring-fence Islam as a creed beyond criticism, while reserving for themselves the right to condemn Christians, Jews, Hindus, democrats, liberals, women, gays, or anyone else in often vile, even violent language. Should anyone say anything that seems to them disrespectful of their faith, he or she will at once be declared an "Islamophobe".
Barely two and a half years later, that may soon come to pass. We need to take swift collective action to fight this death to free speech that such initiatives pose to freedoms that we revere in the West and to which so many millions elsewhere aspire.
*Denis MacEoin PhD is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at New York's Gatestone Institute.
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