Detailed Lebanese & Lebanese Related LCCC English New Bulletin For September 20/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/newselias18/english.september20.18.htm

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Algeria Sacks Ground Forces Chief in Army Overhaul
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/September 19/18/Algeria's commander of ground forces has been retired, the defense ministry said Wednesday, a day after confirmation of the air force chief's ouster as part of a sweeping overhaul of the military. The armed forces chief of staff, Ahmed Gaid Salah, is to preside over a ceremony on Thursday at which Major General Said Chanegriha will take over as ground forces commander. He will replace "Ahcene Tafer, who has been retired," the defense ministry said in a statement. Tafer had served as ground forces chief since 2004, after having first held the post between 1994 and 2000. The 74-year-old survived an Islamist attack on his convoy in 2008. The defence ministry's announcement was the first official confirmation of Tafer's dismissal, which like other high-level army sackings had been reported in Algerian media. It came a day after the ministry confirmed that Algeria's air force chief, Abdelkader Lounes, had also been pushed into retirement. A broad shake-up of the military hierarchy was initiated earlier this year by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who came to power in 1999 and under the constitution is supreme commander of the armed forces. In early July, the commander of the national gendarmerie was sacked, along with the heads of three out of six military districts. The powerful director general of Algeria's police force, Abdelghani Hamel, was dismissed by the president in late June. A string of other high-profile dismissals, including the air force chief of staff and the head of the air defense force, were reported by Ennahar TV but have not been confirmed by the government. At the start of September, army monthly El-Djeich said the military overhaul was part of a normal process of changes at the top. The firing of top army figures, who are considered king-makers in Algeria, comes just eight months ahead of the country's presidential election. There is widespread uncertainty over whether the ailing 81-year-old Bouteflika will seek a fifth term in office.

The Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 19-20/18
Turkish Education: Same Old Religious Obsession, Only Worse
Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/September 19/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13002/turkey-education-religion
In 2017, Turkey stopped teaching evolution at secondary school: for extremists, Darwinism remains a taboo subject. Instead, school textbooks started teaching Turkish pupils "jihad."
A good school, according to extremists, is not where science is taught at universal standards; it is where pious students grow.
Turkey's Higher Education Board in 2016 asked 1,577 university deans (reportedly every dean in the country) to resign "for the sake of democracy."
Secular Turks were shocked when Binali Yıldırım, then Minister of Transport, explained that in his youth, he changed his choice of university to avoid a school where male and female students sat together. (Photo by Erhan Ortac/Getty Images)
Secular Turks were shocked when Binali Yıldırım, then Minister of Transport, explained to an interviewer why, in his youth, he changed his choice of university:
"I visited Bogazici University and saw that girl and boy students were sitting together... I feared I could go astray. And I decided to attend the technical university."
Yıldırım who later became President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's choice for prime minister now serves as parliament speaker.
It is not surprising that for Turkey's extremists, governance broadly means the Islamization of everything, including education at every level. In a 2017 speech, Erdoğan boasted that, after his Justice and Development Party came to power, the number of students at the religious imam hatip schools rose from 60,000 to 1.3 million.
Unsurprisingly, Erdoğan has often declared his political ambition not as raising honest, well-educated, free minds, but as "raising pious generations."
A good school, according to extremists, is not where science is taught at universal standards; it is where pious students grow.
In a 2017 study, Deniz Kandiyoti and Zühre Emanet, two scholars at the University of London, wrote: "The drastic transformation of Turkey's educational landscape under Justice and Development Party (AKP) presents an exemplary case study of the embeddedness of the freedom to think, write and teach in the vagaries of systems of governance."
In 2017, Turkey stopped teaching evolution at secondary school: for extremist Muslims, Darwinism remains a taboo subject. Instead, school textbooks started teaching Turkish pupils "jihad."
Erdoğan's efforts to Islamize education even further have not ceased. Most recently, on September 10, the Education Ministry removed the co-education clause from its regulations, causing fears that the move could lay the groundwork for gender-segregated education on a wider scale.
Turkey's Higher Education Board, widely viewed as a council used by governments to shape education policies that reflect partisan political agendas, in 2016 asked 1,577 university deans (reportedly every dean in the country) to resign "for the sake of democracy." According to a report by World Education News + Reviews:
"Turkey's current crackdown on academic freedoms poses steep barriers to growth, as does its rocky relationship with the EU. At stake are not only student flows, but international research cooperation, financial aid, and other issues central to the quality and reputation of the Turkish education system at large."
Erdoğan's obsession about ever more religious education has transformed Turkish universities into blocks of buildings with a library, a mosque and hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslim students, run by pious academics and academic boards. Erdoğan has the power to appoint the presidents of 200 or so Turkish universities. Piousness, however, does not bring academic success.
According to The Times Higher Education's World University Rankings, Turkey, with a population of 80 million people, has only 22 universities in the top 1,000 list, with the best one ranking only in the 301-350 bracket.
Turkish academia, however, has its own success stories to please Erdoğan and his choice of hundreds of university presidents. According to a study by Rice University involving 22,525 scholars worldwide and measuring piety in academia, Turkish lecturers appeared to be the most religious. A total of 609 Turkish scientists in the fields of physics and biology participated in the study: 85% of them confirmed that they believe in God while 63% said they prayed often.
It is no wonder why Turkey does not have a single Ivy League-level university. Turks, however, do not seem unhappy that their schools are not world-class, so long as their students, scholars and university presidents are pious.
*Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was recently fired from the country's most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Iran’s Callous, Deadly Message
Eli Lake/Bloomberg/September 19/18
When a regional power wants to assert itself and intimidate its rivals, it has several options: Stage a military exercise, test a missile, maybe even have a high-ranking general deliver a threatening speech. Rarely does signaling deterrence mean killing innocents.
Yet this is exactly what Iran did earlier this month when it launched a barrage of missiles at the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, or KDPI, during a meeting of its 21-member central committee. Six of its members were killed, according to one of the survivors, Khalid Azizi, a member of the committee. The strike was significant for a few reasons. First, its location: outside of Iranian territory, in northern Iraq. Iran has supported militias that have killed Iraqis and coalition forces in Iraq since the US- led invasion in 2003. But it has not launched a direct military strike into Iraqi territory since the mid-1990s, during the Kurdish civil war.
More important, Iran faces no real danger from the Kurds, especially the KDPI. Some Kurdish separatists in Iran have conducted attacks on Iranian targets over the years. But the KDPI has pursued a nonviolent strategy for equal political rights in Iran. There is “no evidence” that the KDPI was launching terrorist attacks, said Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran and Iraq at the American Enterprise Institute. He called the group “basically a coffee klatch for Iranian Kurdish exiles.” Even after the missile strike, the KDPI has refrained from calling for a violent response. Instead, it announced a general strike for the Iranian Kurdish region. “We don't want weapons or training from other countries,” Azizi said. Instead, he said, the organization seeks a political solution. “The best revenge is to organize Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan against the regime,” he said, and “to find a common agenda among all of the Iranian opposition.”
Iranian state media initially described the strike as a successful act of counterterrorism. Later, however, the mask slipped. In a television interview, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said the missile strike was intended as a warning to America. “The attack against the terrorists in Iraq’s Kurdistan conveys a message to the enemies, particularly those superpowers who think they can impose their evil plots on Iran and bully us,” said Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari.
That’s a not-so-veiled threat to military bases in the Iraqi Kurdish region that host US special operations forces and intelligence officers. In fact, Iranian-backed militias have recently fired at the airport compound in Basra, where there is also a US consulate. The White House subsequently warned Iran that it would be held responsible for any attack on US personnel.
Finally, the missile strike is notable for its precision. Eleven years ago I visited this very compound, which is sprawling. That Iran was able to hit the room where the KDPI central committee was meeting suggests they had both valuable intelligence and the technology to exploit it.
For his part, Azizi seemed resigned to the uncomfortable position in which his organization finds itself. “Iran is trying to provoke a war so they can kill more of us,” he said. “They want to divert the attention of the people in Iran to say we are the enemy.”
That’s undoubtedly correct, and Iran's Kurds are also wise to refrain from responding in kind to Iranian aggression. The West, however, need not show such restraint. The US and European leaders should schedule a summit with a delegation of Iranian Kurds to discuss how the free world can help their struggle. Iran’s leaders would certainly get that message.

China Is Overtaking the US in Scientific Research
Peter R. Orszag/Bloomberg/September 19/18
Thirty years ago in December, the modern exchange of scholars between the US and China began. Since then, Chinese academics have become the most prolific global contributors to publications in physical sciences, engineering and math. Recent attempts by the US to curtail academic collaboration are unlikely to change this trend. For decades, China's growth was driven by shifting workers from agriculture to manufacturing. As the country started to approach the so-called Lewis turning point, when such shifts no longer raise overall productivity, the government made an increasingly concerted effort to build the scientific base to provide another vector for growth. The results of those efforts are showing up in both the rankings of Chinese universities (11 of the top 100 globally) and in scholarly output.
Qingnan Xie of Nanjing University of Science & Technology and Richard Freeman of Harvard University have studied China’s contribution to global scientific output. They document a rapid expansion between 2000 and 2016, as the Chinese share of global publications in physical sciences, engineering and math quadrupled. By 2016, the Chinese share exceeded that of the US. Furthermore, the authors argue that these metrics -- which are based on the addresses of the authors -- understate China's impact. The data don't count papers written by Chinese researchers located in other countries with addresses outside China and exclude most papers written in Chinese publications. The researchers adjusted for both factors and conclude that Chinese academics now account for more than one-third of global publications in these scientific fields.
The quality of Chinese research is also improving, though it currently remains below that of US academics. A recent analysis suggests that, measured not just by numbers of papers but also by citations from other academics, Chinese scholars could become the global leaders in the near future. Similarly, Xie and Freeman examine authorship of publications in Nature and Science, arguably the two most prestigious scientific journals. They find that in 2016, 20 percent of the authors were Chinese -- more than twice the share in 2000.
At the same time, this dramatic expansion in scientific scholarship has raised serious concerns, including whether the Chinese government exerts excessive influence over both Chinese students and professors in the US A related concern is whether the deep ties between Chinese and US academics facilitates too much technology transfer and even academic espionage. Perhaps partly in response to these concerns, the US government has recently begun tightening the rules for obtaining study or work visas. The scientific community has reacted with alarm, arguing that the scientific process requires open collaboration and that individual episodes of espionage or other inappropriate behavior should be dealt with through criminal prosecution or academic expulsion rather than blanket restrictions.
Although many Chinese students seem undeterred by the visa restrictions, over time the impact is likely to deter foreign study at US universities. Students from China represent almost a third of the foreign students at US institutions, and some American colleges are already feeling the financial impact of diminished overall foreign interest. Whatever the other costs or benefits of the restrictions, and I believe there are more of the former than of the latter, they seem unlikely to alter in any significant way the global rise of China as an academic power. We may not want to admit it yet, but the rise of China to the top ranks of global scientific achievement is now a historical fact.

Russia and Israel carry on their Syrian tango — for now
Dr. Theodore Karasik/Arab News/September 19/18
On the same day that Russia and Turkey agreed to the next steps regarding Idlib and a demilitarized zone that avoids a battle for the city for now, a Russian Ilyushin Il-20 reconnaissance plane was shot down by a Syrian S-200 battery in the wake of an airstrike by four Israeli F-16 jets on Syrian facilities in Latakia province. Immediately, tensions rose over what may happen next, given the confluence of actors in this hot conflict environment. Naturally, conflicting stories of what exactly happened resulted from the news of Moscow’s plane falling off radar screens over the Mediterranean Sea.
Remarkably, despite the super-charged geopolitical environment, this event was resolved with a certain decorum unseen before. This diplomatic achievement is based on the fact that Israel and Russia have a remarkably close relationship, in which Moscow has not, until now, interfered with Israeli air operations in Syria. That agreement seems to be holding.
There is no doubt that the strategic relationship between Russia and Israel is different than between Moscow and Ankara. The agreements reached between Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu in the wake of the Israeli prime minister’s visit to Moscow to meet with the Russian president for Victory Day in May have allowed Israeli jets greater latitude in their pinpoint targeting of higher value Iranian ground targets in Syria without Russian interference.
Both Putin and Netanyahu were sharp but cordial in the wake of the downing of the plane. Putin said of the incident off the coast of Syria: “It looks most likely in this case that it was a chain of tragic chance events, because an Israeli aircraft did not shoot down our aircraft. But, without any doubt, we need to seriously get to the bottom of what happened.” In response, Netanyahu expressed regret at the loss of 15 Russian personnel, stressing Syria was to blame. These comments were given knowing that Russia said it was given less than a minute’s warning by Israel ahead of the strikes, which was not enough time to get the military surveillance plane out of the way. However, the Israeli jets were already back in Israeli airspace when the Il-20 was shot down by Syrian anti-aircraft fire.
Putin recognizes that Netanyahu wanted to send a message to the Syrian regime in the direct aftermath of the Idlib agreement between Moscow and Ankara. But Israel also wanted to send a message to Iran and Hezbollah that, despite Idlib, there would be more targeted strikes.
Naturally, Russia will take the necessary actions to protect itself. Moscow’s next move will be to beef up its forces and protection for aerial assets. Putin said the “retaliatory measures” would be “aimed first and foremost at further ensuring the safety of our military personnel.” The loss of a Russian aircraft with such identification, friend or foe (IFF) failure is likely to affect future capability and performance during any other Israeli air operation. These types of failures tell Israel and other actors with sophisticated air force capabilities of how clumsy Russian-Syrian de-confliction is in such an environment.
The inability to adequately identify the Russian aircraft by Syrian air systems is a major operational failure
Syria is likely to face Moscow’s ire as a result of this event. Since Syria’s 44th Air Defense Battalion is the one that shot down the Russian aircraft, the Russian Military Police has reportedly arrested all of the battalion elements — “from the Battalion Commander to even the youngest soldier” — and taken them to the prison at Hmeimim Air Base. To be sure, the loss of a Russian aircraft with 15 on board is a failure of the Russian-Syrian military relationship in terms of training. The inability to adequately identify the Russian aircraft by Syrian air systems is a major operational failure.
The Syrian S-200 operators undoubtedly experienced a catastrophic failure, which raises questions about Russian air operations in the immediate aftermath of this event. Losing one of these aircraft, which is likely equipped with Moscow’s latest technology, in this active war zone means Russia will need to focus on the immediate future of Syrian air defense, and also replace its lost intelligence asset. That means, for Israel, perhaps more opportunities to either send messages or hit other Iranian targets. In other words, the status quo in terms of a Russian-allowed alleyway for Israeli aircraft remains open.
Overall, the Syrian shoot-down of a Russian aircraft reflects very poorly on interoperability between the two country’s militaries. This is not a new phenomenon for Russian and Syrian military operations and, because of the nature of the battlefield, it may occur again. In this particular case involving the Il-20, and because of unique circumstances, agreements between Putin and Netanyahu helped to temper down a potential blow-up. This event is going to allow Israel and Russia to continue their mutually beneficial strategic tango in the Syrian theater despite the testy accusatory rhetoric from politicians.
• Dr. Theodore Karasik is a senior adviser to Gulf State Analytics in Washington, D.C. He is a former RAND Corporation Senior Political Scientist who lived in the UAE for 10 years, focusing on security issues. Twitter: @tkarasik

Russia to beef up air defenses, aircraft to curtail Israeli air operations in Syria
روسيا تعزز دفاعاتها الجوية وطائراتها للحد من العمليات الجوية الإسرائيلية في سوريا
DEBKAFile/September 19/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/67563/debkafile-russia-to-beef-up-air-defenses-aircraft-to-curtail-israeli-air-operations-in-syria-%d8%b1%d9%88%d8%b3%d9%8a%d8%a7-%d8%aa%d8%b9%d8%b2%d8%b2-%d8%af%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%a7%d8%aa%d9%87%d8%a7/
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to the downing of the Il-20 by Syria was mild in tone, but his reference to a probe in depth and extra security for Russian troops was coldly menacing.
On Tuesday, Sept. 18, Putin took a call from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who expressed regret for the loss of 15 Russian military lives aboard the plane downed over the Mediterranean on Monday and held Syria responsible. Putin had just attributed the misfortune to a “chain of tragic circumstances,” without blaming Israel – in contrast to his Defense Minister. Gen. Shoigu, in a harsh telephone call to his Israeli opposite number, Avigdor Lieberman, said that 15 Russian military service people had died because of Israel’s “irresponsible actions.”
This was a bit like a good cop, bad cop routine, except that behind it Putin and Shoigu had almost certainly agreed on the need for hard-hitting measures to curtail the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of operations in and near Syrian skies.
Most alarmingly, even though the plane was shot down by a Syrian missile, Israel appears to be in line for a diplomatic clobbering as well, judging by the ominous official comments coming from Moscow on Wednesday:
The Russians are launching a criminal probe into the crash, according to an announcement by Russia’s Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko. Who is the criminal and what is the crime? That announcement was followed by a tart remark from Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peshkov that “Israeli data on the Il-20 crash in Syria has not yet arrived.” He added that the Russian president and Israeli Prime Minister had agreed that a delegation of experts led by the Israeli Air Force commander would visit Moscow and bring with him data referring to the circumstances of the crash. “Our experts will certainly study it,” he said.
The exact military measures to be taken by Moscow are still to be determined, but an approximate precedent may be indicative. Three years ago, Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian Su-24M over the Syrian-Turkish frontier, triggering a major crisis between Moscow and Ankara. One of the pilots was killed and the second rescued by Russian special forces. Moscow responded by rushing over the Moskva missile cruiser, armed with S-300F air defense missiles (NATO code: SA-N-6 Grumble), to the waters of northern Syria and southern Turkey.
Advanced S-400 anti-air batteries were shipped to the Russian Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia. These measures gave Ankara due notice that any Turkish planes venturing into Syrian air space henceforth did so at their peril.
And indeed, up until the present, the S-400s are still in place and the Turkish air force gives Syrian skies a wide berth – excepting only the Afrin enclave north of Aleppo which the Turkish army seized earlier this year.
None of this interfered with the efforts of the Russian president and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan to build a coalition with Iran for Syria, while pretending that Moscow-Ankara relations were in perfectly good working order.
Putin may therefore keep his relations with Netanyahu as cordial as ever before, while, at the same time, we may soon see, in the aftermath of the shooting down of the Ilyushin by Syrian missiles, the arrival in Syria for the first time of Russia’s most advanced air defense and radar systems. Of most concern to Israel is the possible installation of those systems on Tel al-Haara, a peak rising 1,100 meters over Quneitra, which commands Israeli air space over the Golan and its northern regions, as well as northern and central Jordan and the eastern Mediterranean. Advanced Russian fighter jets may also be posted to Khmeimim to waylay Israeli warplanes.
In some ways, the Il-20 incident and these new measures have come at a convenient moment for the Russian deployment in Syria. On Sept. 7, Alexander Kinshchak, Russian ambassador to Damascus, quietly remarked: “We are helping our Syrian partners to restore, modernize and boost the efficiency of the integrated air defense system.” He explained: “Much is yet to be done because everything was in utter devastation, but certain results can already be seen.”
Our military sources inferred that the Russian envoy was talking about arming Syrian air defenses for the first time with advanced Russian S-300 batteries. Their delivery may well coincide with Moscow’s response to the Il-20 incident.
The Israeli Air Force will soon therefore be called on to tackle new and daunting challenges in its operations against Iran in Syria.
In Washington, meanwhile, the first question President Donald Trump faced at his joint press conference with the visiting Polish president on Tuesday was this: Has the downing of the Russian plane exacerbated the threat of a military clash between Russia and America in Syria? Trump merely commented laconically that he had heard about a Russian plane being shot down by Syrian missiles; He then moved on to the next question without answering.