English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For December 09/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/aaaanewsfor2021/english.december09.21.htm

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

Bible Quotations For today
It is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and then have fallen away
Letter to the Hebrews 06/01-09: “Let us go on towards perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith towards God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement. And we will do this, if God permits. For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt. Ground that drinks up the rain falling on it repeatedly, and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it produces thorns and thistles, it is worthless and on the verge of being cursed; its end is to be burned over. Even though we speak in this way, beloved, we are confident of better things in your case, things that belong to salvation.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 08-09/2021
Aoun: Any Attempt to Obstruct Elections Will be 'Strongly Confronted'
KSA Won't Normalize Ties with Lebanon before GCC Summit
Bitar Resumes Work at His Office after Monthlong Suspension
US journalist detained in Lebanon, released
Corona - Ministry of Health: 1994 new cases, 9 deaths
Mikati welcomes Lazzarini, Shea, and IMF delegation
Berri welcomes International Monetary Fund delegation
Lebanese Central Bank: Specifications of US dollar notes are determined by US Treasury
US Embassy in Beirut confirms all Federal Reserve banknotes since 1914 legally valid for payments
Fayyad to Visit France for Gas, Electricity Talks
Tlais Says Transport Sector to Stage Strike, Protests throughout Thursday
France Urges Lebanon to Commit to Reforms
Riad Kobeissi Wins U.S. Anticorruption Award
Le cas Farés Soueid: Foutu pays, foutue justice/Jean-Marie Kassab

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 08-09/2021
Messages’ Behind Israel’s Bombing of Latakia Port
Renewed Iran nuclear talks seen Thursday, but France believes Tehran playing for time
Iran's chief negotiator says burden is on West, not Iran, for next move in nuclear talks
Britain warns Iran it’s the “last chance” to sign up to nuclear deal
Israeli Stabbed In Jerusalem, Palestinian Minor Arrested
Shtayyeh Calls for Probe Into Israel’s Burial of Nuclear Waste in West Bank
Israel Completes ‘Iron Wall’ Barrier on Gaza Border
Sadr's road to pledges is strewn with obstacles
UAE, Saudi Arabia discuss cooperation, joint Gulf-Arab action
In Turkey, UAE delegation discusses defence cooperation
Williams’ appointment signals US pressure to hold Libya elections on time
Libyan political body calls for election delay as disputes grow
French FM attempts 'relaunch' of relationship with Algeria with visit
Ukraine President Says Biden-Putin Talks 'Positive'
Putin Says Russia Has 'Right to Defend Its Security' amid NATO Tensions
Scholz Replaces Merkel as German Chancellor, Opening New Era
Canada announces renewed commitments to peacekeeping at 2021 United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 08-09/2021
Sadr's road to pledges is strewn with obstacles/Ibrahim al-Zobeidi/The Arab Weekly
Political tumult in Europe could be harbinger of change/Andrew Hammond /Arab News
Thanks to Brexit, Anglo-Irish relations are at a crossroads/Frank Kane/Arab News
New approach to data can make multilateralism work again/Harold JamesArab News
Germany's Multicultural Suicide/Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute
Christianity: The #1 Recipient of Hate CrimesRaymond Ibrahim

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 08-09/2021
Aoun: Any Attempt to Obstruct Elections Will be 'Strongly Confronted'
Naharnet/December 08/2021
President Michel Aoun said Wednesday that “the arrangements for the Spring parliamentary elections are ongoing,” stressing that “any attempt to interfere in the elections will be strongly confronted.”He added that “there is no need to be worried” nor “to believe the rumors.”As for the governmental crisis related to the port blast investigations, Aoun said "contacts are underway to resolve the obstacles preventing Cabinet from convening." Aoun had met Wednesday with U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka, who briefed him on the U.N. Security Council’s recent deliberations on Resolution 1701.
Wronecka also informed Aoun about the ongoing preparations for the upcoming visit of the U.N. Secretary-General to Lebanon this month.

KSA Won't Normalize Ties with Lebanon before GCC Summit
Naharnet/December 08/2021
All steps made to restore ties between Lebanon and KSA “won’t be implemented in practice before the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit,” al-Joumhouria newspaper said Wednesday. The newspaper learned that the arrangements to normalize the relations between the two countries, based on French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Riyadh, won’t be applied until Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman finishes his Gulf tour. Macron and Bin Salman had held Saturday a joint phone call with Prime Minister Najib Miqati during the French president's visit to the kingdom.
Macron later announced that there will be a Saudi-French initiative to resolve the Lebanon-Gulf diplomatic crisis.

Bitar Resumes Work at His Office after Monthlong Suspension
Naharnet/December 08/2021
The lead judicial investigator into the Beirut port blast, Judge Tarek Bitar, resumed his work Wednesday at his office at the Justice Palace, the National News Agency said, following a monthlong suspension that was prompted by recusal requests. The Court of Appeals had on Tuesday cleared for Bitar to resume his investigations, after dismissing a recusal request by ex-minister Youssef Fenianos. Lebanon's investigation into the August 2020 explosion led by Bitar was suspended for the third time in early November because of a deluge of legal challenges filed by defendants. Several officials have refused to be questioned amid calls by some groups, including Hizbullah, to have the judge removed, accusing him of bias. Disagreements over the judge's work between rival political groups have paralyzed the government, which has not met since Oct. 12. Hizbullah and two allied groups have demanded that Bitar be replaced.
At least 216 people died in the port explosion, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse for years, apparently with the knowledge of senior politicians and security officials who did nothing about it. The explosion also injured 6,000 people and destroyed parts of the city. More than a year after the government launched a judicial investigation, nearly everything else remains unknown -- from who ordered the shipment to why officials ignored repeated warnings of danger.

US journalist detained in Lebanon, released
Now Lebanon/December 08/2021
Journalists and activists in Lebanon are increasingly under attack by state and non-state actors, human rights organizations say. An American journalist who was detained in Lebanon since mid-November has been let go after rights groups called for her release on Wednesday, condemning what they said were increasingly frequent attacks on press freedom. Nada Homsi, a freelance journalist currently working with National Public Radio (NPR), was arrested by General Security on November 16 following a raid on her apartment that took place without a judicial order, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement. General Security, the country’s top security body, denied her access to a lawyer and issued a deportation order against her despite the public prosecutor demanding her release on November 25, they said. “General Security’s refusal to release Homsi despite the public prosecution’s order is a blatant abuse of power and a very worrying indication of the security agency’s lack of respect for the rule of law,” said Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher at HRW. The reasons behind the raid on Homsi’s apartment and her continued detention remain largely unclear. Homsi’s lawyer Diala Chehade said that a small amount of cannabis was found at Homsi’s apartment during the raid, according to the statement. Chehade said General Security officers insist that Homsi is being detained “for security reasons” but do not elaborate on what these might be, the statement said. Homsi has been charged for drug consumption, a violation that does not necessarily entail prison time if the accused agrees to receive treatment, Amnesty and HRW said. Journalists working in Lebanon have increasingly come under attack by authorities that have resorted to the country’s courts and security agencies to silence and punish critics, according to rights groups. On November 26, the military court sentenced journalist Radwan Murtada, a reporter at Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar daily, to 13 months in prison for allegedly insulting the military. Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on authorities to drop Murtada’s prosecution, saying the army “has no business trying and sentencing a journalist”.

Corona - Ministry of Health: 1994 new cases, 9 deaths
NNA/December 08/2021
The Ministry of Public Health announced 1994 new coronavirus infection cases, which raises the cumulative number of confirmed cases to 683,326.
Nine deaths have been recorded.

Mikati welcomes Lazzarini, Shea, and IMF delegation
NNA/December 08/2021
Prime Minister Najib Mikati held a meeting with the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini. The meeting was attended by the delegation accompanying Lazzarini and touched on the situation of refugees in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, and the repercussions of the economic, health, and living crises on them. Separately, following up on yesterday's meeting, Mikati met with the International Monetary Fund delegation headed by Ernesto Ramirez. Discussions dealt with the agreement on the cooperation program and the basic details that it will include.Mikati later met US Ambassador Dorothy Shea, with whom he discussed the general situation in Lebanon.

Berri welcomes International Monetary Fund delegation
NNA/December 08/2021
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Wednesday welcomed at the Second Presidency in Ain El-Tineh a delegation from the International Monetary Fund, which included the Fund’s Assistant Director, Thanos Arvanitis, the new head of the Fund’s mission in Lebanon, Ernesto Ramirez-Rigo, the outgoing Head of Mission, Martin Cerisola, Najla Nakhla of Lebanon’s office, and Maya Choueiri from the Executive Director’s office. Discussions reportedly touched on the already accomplished stages of the negotiations between Lebanon and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and what the Fund expects from the Lebanese side in terms of a plan for recovery and reform. In turn, Speaker Berri affirmed "the close cooperation between Parliament and the government in terms of approving draft laws and reforms that contribute to achieving the required rescue," stressing that “implementing laws is the gateway to reform.”

Lebanese Central Bank: Specifications of US dollar notes are determined by US Treasury
NNA/December 08/2021
The Media and Relations Unit at the Lebanese Central Bank on Wednesday issued a statement making clear that the specifications of US dollar banknotes were determined by the US Treasury.
“In view of the fact that some banks and money changers have been charging extra commissions for exchanging US dollar banknotes, which they deemed old-issued or unfit for circulation. The Central Bank would like to make it clear that the specifications of US dollar banknotes are only determined by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a body that’s affiliated to the US Treasury,” a statement by the Central Bank said.
“The Central Bank only determines the specifications of the Lebanese currency that’s in circulation,” the statement added.

US Embassy in Beirut confirms all Federal Reserve banknotes since 1914 legally valid for payments
NNA/December 08/2021
The US Embassy in Beirut on Wednesday confirmed via twitter that all Federal Reserve banknotes were legally valid for payments, regardless of when they were issued. “This policy covers all the Federal Reserve’s banknotes that have been in use since 1914 till today,” the US Embassy’s tweet added. “Federal Reserve notes are redesigned primarily to make them easier to use but more difficult to counterfeit. This does not mean that older-design notes are not secure. In fact, security features in older-design Federal Reserve notes, such as watermarks and color-shifting ink, have proven to be so effective they have been retained and updated for use in newer-design notes,” according to a link shared at the end of the US embassy’s tweet.

Fayyad to Visit France for Gas, Electricity Talks
Naharnet/December 08/2021
Energy Minister Walid Fayyad affirmed, after meeting President Michel Aoun Wednesday, that he will visit France to discuss issues related to electricity and gas exploration. “I am invited to an official visit to France to discuss gas exploration with (French multinational oil and gas company) Total (Energies) and other firms,” Fayyad said in a press conference. The minister added that “we should urge Total to work on the existing contracts."Concerning the import of gas and electricity from Jordan through Syria, Fayyad said that "the contract is ready and will be signed in the coming days."

Tlais Says Transport Sector to Stage Strike, Protests throughout Thursday
Naharnet/December 08/2021
The head of the Unions and Syndicates of the Land Transport Sector, Bassam Tlais, on Wednesday announced the program of the strike and protests that the sector will stage Thursday across Lebanon. “The previous suspension of the strike was based on promises from the prime minister and ministers to support the land transport sector,” Tlais said. “The suffering has increased, there is no alternative to the strike and tomorrow’s step is only the beginning,” Tlais added. He also revealed that the strike and protests will be held throughout the day, as of 6:00 am, and that protesters will head at 9:00 pm from several points in Beirut to the Grand Serail.

France Urges Lebanon to Commit to Reforms
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 8 December, 2021
Political tension over Hezbollah’s weapons re-emerged after the joint Saudi-French statement that called for arms to be under the sole authority of the legitimate state institutions. While Hezbollah rejected the provision related to its weapons, Paris called on Lebanon to “prove its credibility in its commitment to reforms, especially structural reforms that require serious work tools to confront the deep crisis.”On Tuesday, French Ambassador to Lebanon Anne Griot briefed Lebanese President Michel Aoun, at the request of the Elysée, on the outcome of President Emmanuel Macron’s Gulf tour, especially his visit to Saudi Arabia.“The Kingdom has expressed its commitment to helping Lebanon and the need to implement the pledges that have been made,” according to a statement by the Lebanese presidency. Griot, in turn, noted that her country “has achieved the first step in this regard,” adding that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were also ready to make the required moves and emphasizing Lebanon’s need to prove its commitment and credibility. During the meeting, the French ambassador spoke about the priorities of reforms, and underlined the importance that the international community and France attach to the holding of parliamentary, municipal and presidential elections next year. In a joint statement issued on Saturday, Saudi Arabia and France called on the Lebanese government to carry out comprehensive reforms and to put the arms under the sole authority of state institutions. However, the provision on arms was rejected by Hezbollah. “We will not accept, no matter how intense the pressures, that there be a trade-off between obtaining the minimum level of decent living and giving up what is a symbol of our dignity and freedom,” former Minister Mohammed Fneish said on Tuesday, referring to the movement’s weapons.
He continued: “We want to work to achieve two goals, namely, adherence to the resistance, because it is a guarantee of existence, and tackling problems to provide the minimum necessities of life.” For his part, the Kataeb Party vice-president, Salim Sayegh, said in comments on Twitter: “No to the weapons, yes to the Army! No to evasion, yes to reform! No to sectarianism, yes to patriotism! This is the trilogy of change that we believe in with [Kataeb President] Sami Gemayel.”

Riad Kobeissi Wins U.S. Anticorruption Award
Naharnet/Wednesday, 8 December, 2021
The U.S. State Department on Wednesday announced that al-Jadeed TV investigative journalist Riad Kobeissi is one of the winners of its 2021 International Anticorruption Champions Award. “At least seven years prior to the horrific August 4, 2020, Beirut port explosion, Mr. Kobeissi began exposing rampant bribery and smuggling at the port through a bold blend of investigative and ‘accountability journalism,’” the U.S. embassy in Lebanon said in a tweet.“His pioneering work has inspired young people in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East,” it added.

Le cas Farés Soueid: Foutu pays, foutue justice
Jean-Marie Kassab/Decembre 08/2021
Curieux de savoir ce que Farés Soueid aurait pu dire dans son tweet pour provoquer ce tollé , je demandais à un ami de me l’envoyer. Comme l’accusation prétendait que Soueid aurait pu faire éclater une guerre civile, je m’attendais à un appel aux armes. Je pensais y trouver un Mouarneh Mouarneh Mouarneh, comme contrepoids au célèbre Shia Shia Shia. Sacré Farés !
Le tweet est sous mes yeux. Je le parcours. Mort de rire, un rire hystérique j’avoue, je ne croyais pas mes yeux. Je lis et relis et relis encore…
Soueid n’a fait que dire des vérités. Mais That is not the question.
Des vérités comme celles-ci remplissent nos pages de lecture. J’y abonde moi aussi.
The question is : Est-ce un message au docteur Soueid ? Est-ce une tentative (avortée) de paraitre civilisé de la part de l’occupant Iranien ? Est-ce une façon de dire que toute mésaventure qui arriverait à Soueid ne peut être attribuée aux Iraniens puisqu’ils jouent aux gentlemen ? Que sais-je ? Leur façon de dire qu’ils comptent achever leur occupation du Liban en imputant la faute à ce tweet ? Que sais-je ?..
Un cumul incroyable d’inepties, d’effronterie, de dégout total.
Des Iraniens qui actionnent en justice un vrai Libanais qui a dit des vérités et rien que ça.
Un connard de procureur qui a accepté l’accusation et convoque Soueid ?
Si guerre il y aurait, elle ne sera pas civile. Ce sera la Résistance contre l’occupation Iranienne. Chaque chose en son temps…
Vive la Résistance.
Vive le Liban.
Task Force Lebanon.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 08-09/2021
Messages’ Behind Israel’s Bombing of Latakia Port
London - Ibrahim Hamidi/ Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 8 December, 2021
The bombing of the port of Latakia at dawn on Tuesday carried most messages since the start of the Israeli raids in Syria at the end of 2013, months after the “chemical deal” between Washington and Moscow. Why?
1 - Latakia port: The attack targeted the most important Syrian port, kilometers away from the Russian Hmeimim military base, which hosts the advanced S-300 and S-400 missile systems. This is an indication of the Russian consent with the Israeli raids, or at least, its non-objection to them.
2 - Russian anger: Moscow had previously expressed to Damascus its “anger” at the Syrian government’s decision in February 2019 to give the Latakia port management to Iran after terminating a contract with an international company. Damascus tried to please Moscow by granting it concessions in the nearby port of Tartus as part of a “balance game between the two allies”, but the Russian implicit anger persisted.
3 - The “September knot”: In September 2018, the Syrian air defenses mistakenly shot down a Russian military plane while it was responding to Israeli raids. The incident led to the killing of 15 Russian soldiers, causing tension between Moscow and Israel, and requiring visits from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Russian President Vladimir Putin to resolve the crisis and return to operating the military “coordination mechanism” between the two sides in Syria. However, Israel remained cautious when targeting the vicinity of the two Russian bases in Latakia and Tartus to avoid any Russian casualties.
4- Putin - Bennett: Since Naftali Bennett assumed the premiership in June, Russia has sought to “remind” Israel of its presence in Syria, by providing detailed data on the Syrian response to the raids and Damascus’ use of Russian anti-missile shields, with warnings to Tel Aviv not to target Russian or Syrian government interests. However, according to Israeli leaks, Bennett obtained from Putin, during their meeting in Sochi on October 22, “more than what Netanyahu had.” Military coordination and the “red line” between Tel Aviv and the Hmeimim base were restored. In fact, the first raid after the meeting saw the use of surface-to-surface missiles targeting the outskirts of Damascus.
5- “Broadness and focus”: Since the meeting between Putin and Bennett, the circle of raids has expanded. “Mysterious bombing” was repeated on “Iranian sites” in eastern Syria, while Israel targeted several times the outskirts of Damascus and central Syria, on October 30 and November 3, 8 and 24, hitting “Iranian weapons and ammunition depots,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
6- “Inhuman”: The special envoy of the Russian President to Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, said during his participation in a forum in Damascus in mid-November: “As for the issue raised regarding the illegal bombings of Syrian territory by Israel: we strongly oppose these inhuman actions and call for contacts at all levels with the Israeli side on the need to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity of Syria and stop these bombings.”
He continued: “In this context, a military response would be counterproductive, because no one needs a war on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.”
7- “Resistance to Israel”: Lavrentyev’s position is completely different from that of Tehran. The Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said during his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad in Tehran on Tuesday: “The resistance is the only way to eradicate this cancerous tumor from the region,” as reported by IRNA.
8 - Two approaches and a theater: Faced with the different approaches of Moscow and Tehran on government control and the relationship with Tel Aviv, Russia sought to persuade Iran to remove its organizations from the T-4 base in the center of the country, which was exposed to several Israeli raids.
On the other hand, US officials accused Iran of bombing the US base of al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, in “retaliation” for the Israeli attacks. This angered Moscow, which establishes major understandings with Washington, including in Syria.
9 - Putin-Biden: Before the Putin-Bennett meeting at the end of October, organizations affiliated with Tehran targeted Al-Tanf base, as part of their “messages” to Sochi, the meeting place. It is not a coincidence for the recent Israeli bombing of an “Iranian shipment” in Latakia, near Hmeimim, to come hours before the summit of the Russian and American presidents, who have good relations with Israel and “guarantee its security.”
10 - The nuclear file and normalization: The raids cannot be taken out of the context of regional and international developments, especially with regard to the deadlock facing the nuclear talks in Vienna and Israeli and American warnings of “other options.” In addition, some are betting that “normalization” with Damascus will “curb the Iranian military presence” in Syria... even if it was the result of an understanding between Moscow, Damascus and Tehran, which Meqdad visited on Tuesday.

Renewed Iran nuclear talks seen Thursday, but France believes Tehran playing for time
Reuters/December 08, 2021
DOHA: Talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are expected to resume on Thursday, France’s foreign minister said, although he added that he feared Iran was playing for time.“The elements... are not very encouraging,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a French parliament committee, referring to the seventh round of nuclear talks between Iran and major powers that began on Nov. 29 and paused on Friday. “We have the feeling the Iranians want to make it last and the longer the talks last, the more they go back on their commitments ... and get closer to capacity to get a nuclear weapon,” Le Drian said. Under the 2015 deal struck by Tehran and six major powers, Iran limited its nuclear program in return for relief from US, European Union and UN sanctions. Then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed harsh US sanctions, and Iran began violating the nuclear restrictions a year later. While Le Drian and Iranian media reports said talks were expected to resume Thursday, a senior US State Department official said Washington did not yet have a confirmed date. The indirect US-Iranian talks in Vienna, in which other diplomats shuttle between them because Tehran refuses direct talks with Washington, aim to get both sides to resume compliance with the deal. However, last week’s discussions broke off with European and US officials voicing dismay at sweeping demands by Iran’s new, hard-line government under anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi, whose June election caused a five-month pause in the talks. A senior US official on Saturday said Iran abandoned any compromises it had made in the previous six rounds of talks, pocketed those made by others, and demanded more last week. Each side appears to be trying to blame the other for the lack of progress. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the presidents of the United States and Russia — two of the six major powers in the deal along with Britain, China, France, and Germany — had a “productive” discussion about Iran on Tuesday. “The more Iran demonstrates a lack of seriousness at the negotiating table, the more unity there is among the P5+1 and the more they will be exposed as the isolated party in this negotiation,” he told reporters, referring to the six powers. Speaking on Monday, Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns said the agency does not believe Iran’s supreme leader has decided to take steps to “weaponize” a nuclear device but noted that it has made advances in its ability to enrich uranium, one pathway to the fissile material for a bomb. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, saying it only wants to master nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. “We don’t see any evidence as an agency right now that Iran’s supreme leader has made a decision to move to weaponize,” Burns told the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit. Burns described Iran’s challenge as “a three-legged race” to obtain fissile material, to “weaponize” by placing such material into a device designed to cause a nuclear explosion, and to mate it to a delivery system such as a ballistic missile. On weaponization, Burns said “the Iranians still have a lot of work to do there as far as we judge it.”

Iran's chief negotiator says burden is on West, not Iran, for next move in nuclear talks
Al-Monitor/December 8, 2021
It’s a deja vu moment in Vienna, where talks between Iran and world powers have resumed to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement. Aside from the lockdown, the freezing temperatures, the new faces, and a pinch of pessimism and caution, nothing seem to be different from the old days — at least in principle. In practice, however, these are different days, resembling a blend between the pragmatism of the 2013-2015 talks and the aggressiveness of the 2008-2013 negotiations. Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s new top negotiator, made his debut in Vienna. The man who used to be a fierce opponent of the 2015 nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is himself the one talking to world powers in what is seen as a mutual understanding to revive the same accord. When this correspondent met him in Vienna, he was very cautious not to show any sort of pessimism toward the path, though he was clear that though negotiations are performed within a framework of give and take between all parties, his country gave what it should give in 2015, and it’s now the other side’s turn to bring something new to the table.
But the table of 2021 isn't the same as that of 2015. While the tabletop could appear the same, the four legs carrying it have been going through serious changes over the past years. The developments that followed the withdrawal of former US President Donald Trump from the deal in May 2018 — including the sanctions that were imposed and reimposed on Iran by the United States and the developments in Iran’s nuclear program that saw it enriching uranium up to 20% and later 60% purity — make it very difficult to see the same deal in place. Add to that the regional changes that have been taking place. When I asked Bagheri Kani whether he’s in Vienna to revive a dead deal, he made it clear that “the cost and the price for reviving the deal and sustaining the deal were paid for by Iran because the United States pulled out of the agreement and completely violated the deal and the Europeans failed in practice in showing full compliance within the JCPOA, and it depends on the behavior of the other parties, the European’s full compliance and the US return to the deal, for the deal to be revived.”
The main question in Vienna is to what extent do the Iranians feel the urgency of reaching a deal when the fact is that they think the other side is the one that should. Given the latest announcements and developments in the Iranian nuclear program, Tehran seems to want to add to the world powers’ concerns over its program by ramping up enrichment to higher levels using advanced centrifuges. Reports that Iran’s breakout time is reducing from a year following the 2015 deal to a month or less in the current time adds to the concerns. Adding to that the maximum pressure campaign and all the sanctions imposed on Tehran, it makes it very difficult for the United States and other world powers to up the pressure as it’s already at its peak, thus giving Iranians more reason to not feel the urgency.
However, as delegations left Vienna for consultations in the capitals carrying with them two draft proposals from the Iranian side, it became clear that the road to a nuclear settlement is going to be long and bumpy and can’t be completely isolated from regional dialogue paths that are already open.
A senior Arab diplomat who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity stressed that the more the nuclear talks approach a good ending the more this is going to have its impact on how the countries in the region are going to engage with Iran. He added, “This would give the West’s regional allies a stronger position when it comes to talking to Iran, with the US distancing itself gradually from day to day Middle East politics.” Following the seventh round of talks in Vienna, the United Arab Emirate’s national security adviser, Tahnoon Bin Zayed, visited Tehran where he met top officials including President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and Iran’s secretary of the Higher National Security Council Ali Shamkhani. The visit came less than two weeks after top negotiator Bagheri Kani’s quick visit to Abu Dhabi on Nov. 24, where he met senior Emirati officials. Without giving further details, a source who’s familiar with the UAE-Iran lines of connection told Al-Monitor that these visits are linked to the nuclear talks. Information acquired by Al-Monitor indicates that the UAE and Iran discussed over the past months how Abu Dhabi could help in the process of transferring Iranian assets whenever there’s an agreement on that between Tehran and the world powers, and in coordination with the United States. There is also speculation that the Emiratis would like to play a certain role in the nuclear mediation between the United States and Iran.

Britain warns Iran it’s the “last chance” to sign up to nuclear deal
Reuters/December 08, 2021
LONDON: British foreign minister Liz Truss urged Iran on Wednesday to sign up to the 2015 nuclear deal, saying it was “the last chance” to do, just a day before talks were expected to resume. “This is really the last chance for Iran to sign up and I strongly urge them to do that because we are determined to work with our allies to prevent Iran securing nuclear weapons,” she told the Chatham House think tank. “So they do need to sign up to the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) agreement, it’s i

Israeli Stabbed In Jerusalem, Palestinian Minor Arrested
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 8 December, 2021
An Israeli woman was stabbed and lightly wounded in a tense neighborhood in east Jerusalem on Wednesday. The suspect, a Palestinian female minor, fled the scene and was later arrested inside a nearby school, police said. The Israeli woman was taken to the trauma unit of the nearby Hadassah Mt. Scopus Hospital, which said the 26-year-old was conscious and in stable condition. The stabbing took place in Sheikh Jarrah, where several Palestinian extended families are at risk of being evicted by Jewish settlers amid a decades-long legal battle. Protests and clashes with police there last spring helped ignite the 11-day Gaza war, The Associated Press said. Sirens could be heard echoing across the neighborhood as traffic was backed up by the morning commute. The attack came days after a Palestinian stabbed and wounded an Israeli man and tried to stab a member of the paramilitary Border Police just outside Jerusalem's Old City, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Sheikh Jarrah. The Border Police shot and killed the attacker. Last month, a Hamas militant opened fire in Jerusalem's Old City, killing one Israeli and wounding four others before being fatally shot by police.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, including the Old City and major holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. It considers the entire city its unified capital.
The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state. The city's fate was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that ground to a halt more than a decade ago.

Shtayyeh Calls for Probe Into Israel’s Burial of Nuclear Waste in West Bank
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 8 December, 2021
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called Tuesday on the international community to investigate Israel’s burial of nuclear, chemical and solid waste in the Palestinian territories. “The cases of cancer in areas south of Hebron are the highest in Palestine, due to the burying of waste in a nearby location and the presence of a nuclear reactor,” Shtayyeh said during a conference on Climate Change organized by the Environment Quality Authority in Ramallah. He said landfills where chemical, electronic or solid waste is collected are among the most important factors causing environmental pollution in Palestine and posing a threat to people’s health. “Despite the measures we are taking to protect and preserve the environment, Israel continues to take measures that destroy it,” he said. Palestine accuses Israel of using 98 landfills across the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Authority (PA) revealed that Israel has been transferring its dangerous and toxic wastes to the Palestinian territories, putting the life of Palestinians at stake, as well as damaging the soil and polluting the groundwater. Also, Palestinians accuse Israel of using the West Bank as a nuclear waste dump, in addition to establishing a nuclear reactor in Negev near Hebron in the West Bank, where increasing cases of cancer have been reported. Shtayyeh said, “We need to end the Israeli occupation, which has turned the occupied Palestinian West Bank into a massive landfill for dangerous and toxic wastes.” He said that since 1967, Israeli authorities uprooted 2.5 million trees, including 800,000 Palestinian olive trees. Shtayyeh also said that Palestine's annual water budget is approximately 800 million cubic meters and Israel has “stolen” 600 million cubic meters of it, adding this is part of "Israel's systematic colonialist policies to turn our lands into desert and seize them." He added that 10 years ago, the PA adopted the Greening Palestine Program, and spent $25 million to plant new trees in the West Bank, and parts of the Gaza Strip. “It is sad that every tree we planted in the Gaza Strip in the Beit Hanoun area was razed by the occupation forces during their repeated aggressions against the Strip,” the Palestinian PM said.

Israel Completes ‘Iron Wall’ Barrier on Gaza Border
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 8 December, 2021
Israel on Tuesday announced the completion of a barrier along the Gaza border, described as an "iron wall" equipped with underground sensors, radars and cameras to curb threats. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, the year Hamas took power in the Palestinian enclave, tightly restricting the flow of goods and people in and out of the territory home to some two million people. An Israeli defense ministry statement said the 65-kilometre (40-mile) "barrier", completed after three and half years of construction, includes an "underground barrier with sensors", a six meter-high smart fence, radars, cameras and a maritime monitoring system. The structure "places an iron wall... between the (Hamas) terror organization and the residents" of southern Israel, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said. During the most recent Hamas-Israel conflict in May, Palestinian fighters fired thousands of rockets towards Israel, which responded with hundreds of air strikes. Over 240 people were killed in Gaza, while the death toll in Israel reached 12 in the 11 days of fighting. But Israel has also warned its citizens face additional threats from Hamas forces who could seek to infiltrate Israeli territory through tunnels dug under Gaza.
Gantz vowed that the "barrier will provide Israeli citizens a sense of security". Israel says its Gaza blockade is necessary to guard against threats from Hamas, but critics blame it for dire humanitarian conditions in the territory. Israel has also built a security barrier along part of its land that connects to the West Bank, a Palestinian territory it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Sadr's road to pledges is strewn with obstacles
Ibrahim al-Zobeidi/The Arab Weekly/December 08/2021
Iraqis are waiting for Sadr to free them from the nightmares of fear, anxiety, poverty, disease and lack of services and from the foreign domination. With his new political approach, Muqtada al-Sadr has made millions of tired and concerned Iraqis, in addition to members of his own "current", believe in him. They are waiting for him to fulfil his promises, so that he can rid them of the nightmares of fear, anxiety, poverty, disease and lack of services and from the foreign domination that has undermined their security, confiscated their freedom and trampled on their dignity.
And if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that the miracle does occur, and that Sadr emerges victorious from this challenge, and begins to form a reform government, as he has promised, then many other, unresolved obstacles await him. The most important and most dangerous is the removal of weapons from the hands of armed factions. To achieve this, he must prepare for the unavoidable military showdown, provided he has the military force capable of restraining these factions and forcing them to surrender their weaponry.
But the truth is that in this presumed war, his own "current" will not constitute that indomitable force, because it is itself infiltrated by his opponents. And if he hopes that the government’s army will provide him with the qualified force capable of helping him crush the likes of Abu Fadak, Abu Ali al-Askari, Qais al-Khazali, Hadi al-Amiri and Faleh al-Fayyad, he will quickly discover that it, too, is infiltrated by hundreds of pro-Iranian elements wearing its uniforms, carry its weapons and receiving their salaries from its coffers. They are in fact sleeper cells of the militias, just waiting for the promised day.
When it comes to holding the corrupt accountable, as he has pledged, he has to start with the leading figures guilty of embezzlement, treason, squandering of money and bloodshed. If he des not, all his fulminating about corruption and the corrupt will look like just hot air.
Even if he miraculously manages to overcome all these hurdles, the biggest obstacle awaits him on which the fate of his entire reform programme will depend and which may deprive him of his hope to form the government he wants.
We are talking about Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which won 31 seats. The price he is demanding for joining the national majority government and leaving his old allies, is too high to accept.
Barzani, in addition to the usual, impossible demands that he repeats after every election, insists, this time, on seizing the presidency of the republic of Iraq, as it belongs to the Kurdish camp, according to the quota system. The KDP won more seats than its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has monopolised the presidency for eighteen years. He launched his dubious manoeuvres by issuing a surprising statement rejecting the election results and accusing the Judiciary and the Presidency of the Republic of manipulation. Since he had earlier praised the election, this is a premeditated manoeuvre aimed at twisting Sadr's arm and forcing him to agree. But for many reasons, it is difficult for Sadr to yield to Bazani's demands and give him the presidency.
The first is that the position was held by the Kurdish camp based on the quota system, before the last elections. But now Sadr vigorously rejects this.
The second is that Barzani’s candidate for the presidency is his uncle Hoshyar Zebari, who was dismissed by parliament on September 21, 2016, in a secret ballot, with the participation of 216 deputies. It was decided to remove him as minister of finance on suspicion of financial and administrative corruption.
If Muqtada Sadr agreed to appoint a minister dismissed from office on corruption charges to the position of president of the republic of Iraq, then he would not be able to hold any other corrupt Shia and Sunni figures accountable, despite having put accountability at the top of his list of reforms.
There is also another reason. Barzani has not managed to bring justice in just three small provinces of the homeland, has monopolised power and money there for his own benefit and that of his family, silenced his citizens and pushed the poorest among them to swim through frosty seas towards foreign countries in search of security, justice, livelihood and dignity. As for his political creed and proclamations of Iraqi patriotism, all Iraqis and the Kurds most of all, know that Masoud Barzani, along with his entire family and his entire party, have always and still believe in secession, even though he is currently nothing but the president of a small region of the country. So what would he do if he controls the top seats of power, one wonders? I admit to being pessimistic in my predictions, unless of course the Iraqi people, as a whole, took to the streets and squares in every city, to do what the Egyptians, Tunisians and Sudanese did before them. But is this possible in Iraq?

UAE, Saudi Arabia discuss cooperation, joint Gulf-Arab action
The Arab Weekly/December 08/2021
The visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz comes ahead of a Gulf summit this month.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, on a tour of the Gulf region, arrived on Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates, an ally and a strategic partner. He was met by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, on arrival in the capital Abu Dhabi on a two-day visit, state media said.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was expected at Dubai’s Expo site, after meeting and dining with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed on Tuesday. During their meeting, the two crown princes touched on the importance of activating the joint Gulf-Arab action and spoke on various aspects of the strategic cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. The two leaders talked about development opportunities in different fields, as well as regional developments and bilateral relations, according to the state-run Emirates News Agency (WAM). They also emphasised the importance of bolstering the pillars of regional stability, which serve as the foundation for development, construction and progress. The Saudi crown prince arrived in the UAE from Oman, where the two sides signed deals totalling $30 billion. He will also visit Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Security was tight at the Expo, where the Saudi pavilion was closed to visitors and a small crowd of onlookers, including women, gathered outside. Saudi songs, including one with the lyrics “Welcome Mohammed”, were playing on the loudspeaker at Al Wasl Plaza, Expo’s central venue. “The excellent relations between our countries keep growing stronger,” Abu Dhabi’s crown prince said after meeting his Saudi counterpart on Tuesday, according to the UAE’s official WAM news agency. “Saudi Arabia has been, and will always be a key regional player.”The tour comes ahead of a Gulf summit this month amid talks between Tehran and world powers aimed at salvaging a 2015 nuclear pact, a deal Gulf Arab states have criticised for not tackling Tehran’s missiles programme and regional behaviour. With Gulf uncertainty deepening over the US role in the region, Riyadh this year began direct talks with Iran to contain regional tensions as Gulf states double down on economic growth. Prince Mohammed’s visit comes after a top Emirati official went to Iran on Monday, the latest push by Abu Dhabi to mend ties with rivals including Turkey. Riyadh has been slower to respond to overtures by Ankara. The Saudi prince is due to visit Qatar on Wednesday for the first time since 2017 when Riyadh and its allies boycotted Doha in a row that Saudi Arabia declared an end to last January.

In Turkey, UAE delegation discusses defence cooperation
The Arab Weekly/December 08/2021
Turkey believes the two countries have the potential to work together in the defence sector.
A delegation of United Arab Emirates government officials is in Ankara to discuss “cooperation opportunities” with Turkey’s defence industry, a Turkish official said on Tuesday. Ankara and Abu Dhabi signed accords for billions of dollars of investments two weeks ago and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they would herald a “new era” in ties.As part of a charm offensive launched last year, Turkey has also moved to repair ties with Egypt and Saudi Arabia but those talks have yielded little public improvement. The UAE delegation visited the government-run Defence Industries Directorate (SSB) on Monday, the official said on condition of anonymity. SSB Chairman Ismail Demir said at the weekend that the two countries had the potential to work together in the defence sector, indicating that Abu Dhabi had shown interest in the Turkish sector. “When we look at our defence industry figures, we see that our defence industry relations continued even during times of crises. There was contact even when relations were not at their highest,” Demir said. “I would like to point out that these contacts will be better when relations improve.” The Defence Industries’ Directorate and Aselsan did not respond to questions about the talks. The UAE’s media office and defence ministry also failed to reply. Turkey said in September it was in talks with the UAE over investments in energy such as power generation. The UAE, whose sovereign wealth funds have made significant investments in Turkish online grocer Getir and e-commerce platform Trendyol, has said it seeks deeper economic ties with Ankara. The UAE has accelerated a push to step back from regional conflicts and refocus on the economy. Its ties with Turkey had been strained over the role of Islamist groups in the tumult that followed the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and the countries were on opposite sides in Libya’s conflict.

Williams’ appointment signals US pressure to hold Libya elections on time
The Arab Weekly/December 08/2021
Observers view the developments at the UN as evidence of the continuation of international differences over Libya.
Libyan political sources told The Arab Weekly Wednesday that the appointment of American diplomat Stephanie Williams was a move by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to support the holding of presidential elections in the oil-rich North African country scheduled later this month. Williams’ appointment as the special adviser to the UN chief on Libya, a new position, follows the November 23 announcement that the UN special envoy for Libya, Jan Kubis, was resigning after only ten months in the job. The Geneva-based Kubis told the Security Council he was leaving to facilitate a change he considers vital: moving the mission chief’s job to Libya’s capital, Tripoli, to be on the ground at a high-stakes moment for the country. According to the same political sources the appointment of Williams was a US-backed move aimed at blocking political manoeuvres by some Libyan actors, who were betting on a new UN staff member who does not understand the file and who could be persuaded to back postponing the elections.Before Monday's announcement of Williams’ appointment reports had been circulating about her possibly returning to head the mission, with a Russian rejection of this scenario.
An Arabic-speaker, Williams served in 2020 as acting director of the UN’s Geneva-based Libya mission, after being its deputy director from 2018-2020. In her new role, she will reside in Tripoli, Libya. Her nomination by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as “special adviser” instead of “envoy” sidesteps the 15 -member Security Council and avoids an embarrassing vacancy before Libya’s presidential election on December 24, which aims to turn the page on ten years of war. Williams is credited for her success in ending the war that erupted on April 4, 2019 after an attack by the Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar on the capital Tripoli. Williams also helped bring about a permanent ceasefire and supervised the formation of a national unity government, tasked with preparing for the elections. Some observers, however, are underestimating the importance of her new position in influencing the course of affairs in Libya. They believe that her role will be limited to providing advice to Guterres, arguing that Russia will not allow Williams to effectively interfere in the management of the UN mission.
Observers also view the developments at the United Nations, which began with the sudden resignation of Kubis and then the appointment of Williams, as evidence of the continuation of international differences over Libya. “The appointment of Williams as an adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations by the Secretary-General himself, and not as an envoy, commissioned by the Security Council, is a dangerous indicator that suggests international disagreement on Libya, especially between Russia and the United States,” said rapporteur of Libya's Constitution Drafting Assembly (CDA) Ramadan Al Tuwayjer. “This appointment also indicates the challenge and concern felt by the US administration regarding the crisis in Libya and the Russian involvement, with Moscow having military forces and bases in Libya and the Maghreb countries for the first time in history,” he added.
Over the past few weeks, news has emerged of the existence of an international consensus to postpone Libya’s elections, pending US approval. Today, the United States seems more determined than ever to push for an elected and permanent authority in the country, perhaps in preparation for the next stage that could see the exit from Libya of Wagner mercenaries, Sudanese and Chaddian fighters, Turkish troops and their Syrian levies, reckoned in total to number around 20,000. Russia, along with Niger, has voiced a desire to postpone the elections in Libya. French media reports during the past few days have focused on the need to be careful before moving to hold the elections on time. The past few days were also marked a radical change in the position of Libya’s House of Representatives. Parliament which had earlier been pressing to hold the vote on time, is now moving toward postponement.. During a closed session on Tuesday, the House of Representatives reportedly discussed the developments of the electoral process. Informed sources told The Arab Weekly that the meeting's goal was to postpone the elections and block the release of the final list of presidential candidates. The candidacy of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi and Prime Minister Abdel Hamid al-Dbeibah confused the calculations of the House of Representatives, which is close to Haftar, who is also running for the presidency. Over the past few days, Libya has seen court battles, with appeals against Dbeibah’s candidacy and a challenge by Gadhafi's son of the Electoral Commission's rejection of his candidacy to return to the race again.

Libyan political body calls for election delay as disputes grow
Reuters/December 08, 2021
TRIPOLI: A Libyan political body on Wednesday called for a Dec. 24 presidential election to be delayed to February amid growing jostling over the rules and legal basis of a vote aimed at ending a decade of instability. The statement by the High State Council (HSC), an advisory body installed through a 2015 peace agreement but not recognized by all other Libyan political entities, comes less than three weeks before the vote. In Libya’s complex, fractured political environment the extent of the HSC’s powers is debated, but its statement adds to the doubts surrounding the election.
The electoral commission has not yet announced a final list of candidates for the presidential race following a fractious process of court appeals over the eligibility of the 98 who registered to run. The arguments over some highly divisive candidates, including major figures from Libya’s conflict, have already threatened to torpedo the contest. Those disputes revealed deeper disagreements over the basis for a voting process that has already diverged from both the UN-backed roadmap that set the vote and a controversial election law issued in September by the parliament speaker.
The roadmap envisaged the election as a way to end disputes over the legitimacy of Libya’s rival political bodies, which were formed during earlier transitional periods following the 2011 revolution that ousted Muammar Qaddafi. The HSC was drawn from members of a national assembly elected in 2012 who rejected the results of a 2014 election that created the current parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR). Despite the 2015 political agreement that enshrined a legislative role for the HoR and an advisory role for the HSC, they do not formally recognize each other, though they have held sporadic peace negotiations in Morocco. Some Libyans fear the disputes over the current election process could trigger a similar crisis to that surrounding the 2014 vote, when Libya split between warring eastern and western factions with parallel administrations in Tripoli and Benghazi.
The HSC statement on Wednesday said the presidential and parliamentary elections should both take place on the same day, as was originally demanded by the UN roadmap. Laws issued in September and October by HoR speaker Aguila Saleh, a presidential candidate, set a first round presidential vote for Dec. 24 but delayed the parliamentary vote. Saleh’s critics accuse him of issuing the laws without a quorum or a proper vote in parliament and after intimidation against some members. Saleh and his allies deny wrongdoing and say the laws were passed properly.

French FM attempts 'relaunch' of relationship with Algeria with visit
The Arab Weekly/December 08/2021
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian holds talks in Algeria on Wednesday in a bid to heal the latest rift between the North African country and France. Le Drian’s trip is a “working visit, to evaluate and relaunch the relationship” and he is set to meet President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, a French foreign ministry said. Le Drian’s visit and his schedule, made public at the last minute, were confirmed by Algerian state media. Relations between Algiers and Paris have been strained for much of the six decades since the former French colony won its independence after an 130-year occupation.
President Emmanuel Macron has gone further than his predecessors in owning up to French abuses during the colonial era. But ties collapsed in October after Macron accused Algeria’s “political-military system” of rewriting history and fomenting “hatred towards France”. In remarks to descendants of independence fighters, reported by Le Monde, Macron also questioned whether Algeria had existed as a nation before the French invasion in the 1800s. Coming a month after Paris decided to sharply reduce visa quotas for citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, those comments sparked a fierce reaction from Algeria. The country withdrew its ambassador and banned French military planes from its airspace, which they regularly use to carry out operations against jihadist groups in West Africa and the Sahel region. The comments also prompted Tebboune to boycott a major November summit in Paris on Algeria’s war-torn neighbour Libya, vowing that Algeria would “not take the first step” to repair ties.
Historical reconciliation
The dispute prompted a rare expression of contrition from the French presidency, which said it “regretted” the misunderstandings caused by the remarks. An aide from Macron’s office said the French leader “has the greatest respect for the Algerian nation and its history and for Algeria’s sovereignty.” Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra welcomed that statement and, in the end, represented Algeria at the Libya conference. Lamamra is also due to meet Le Drian during his visit this week. Le Drian’s visit comes as Algeria prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its independence in March. Macron, France’s first leader born after the colonial era, has made a priority of historical reconciliation and forging a modern relationship with former colonies. Earlier this year, he recognised that French officers tortured and killed Algerian lawyer Ali Boumendjel in 1957.
Macron also in October condemned “inexcusable crimes” during a 1961 crackdown against Algerian pro-independence protesters in Paris, during which French police led by a former Nazi collaborator killed dozens of demonstrators and threw their bodies into the Seine. A report commissioned by the president from historian Benjamin Stora earlier this year urged a truth commission over the Algerian war but Macron ruled out issuing any official apology. Moreover, as he seeks re-election next year, he is wary of providing ammunition to far-right nationalist opponents Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.

Ukraine President Says Biden-Putin Talks 'Positive'
Agence France Presse/December 08/2021
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that a video call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin was "positive." "I think it is positive that the president of the United States spoke with the president of Russia," Zelensky said, a day after Biden warned Putin of "strong" Western economic retaliation for any Russian attack on ex-Soviet Ukraine.

Putin Says Russia Has 'Right to Defend Its Security' amid NATO Tensions
Agence France Presse/December 08/2021
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking publicly for the first time since his high-profile talks with U.S. leader Joe Biden, said Wednesday that Moscow reserves the right to "defend its security" but refused to say if he planned to invade Ukraine. "Russia has a peaceful foreign policy, but has the right to defend its security," Putin said at a news conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, adding that simply watching NATO move closer to Russia's borders would amount to "criminal inaction." Putin hailed his talks with Biden as "constructive."

Scholz Replaces Merkel as German Chancellor, Opening New Era
Associated Press/December 08/2021
Center-left leader Olaf Scholz became Germany's ninth post-World War II chancellor Wednesday, opening a new era for the European Union's most populous nation and largest economy after Angela Merkel's 16-year tenure.
Scholz's government takes office with high hopes of modernizing Germany and combating climate change but faces the immediate challenge of handling the country's toughest phase yet of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers voted by 395-303 with six abstentions to elect Scholz — a comfortable majority, though short of the 416 seats his three-party coalition holds in the 736-seat lower house of parliament. That's not unusual when chancellors are elected, and some lawmakers were out sick or in quarantine.
Merkel, who is no longer a member of parliament, looked on from the spectators' gallery as parliament voted. Lawmakers gave her a standing ovation.
Scholz, 63, Germany's vice chancellor and finance minister since 2018, brings a wealth of experience and discipline to an untried coalition of his center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. The three parties are portraying the combination of former rivals as a progressive alliance that will bring new energy to the country after Merkel's near-record time in office. "We are venturing a new departure, one that takes up the major challenges of this decade and well beyond that," Scholz said Tuesday. If the parties succeed, he added, "that is a mandate to be reelected together at the next election." Scholz, an unflappable and supremely self-confident figure who in the past has displayed an ability to put aside setbacks quickly, cracked a smile as he was elected and as he was formally appointed by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The new chancellor then returned to parliament to be sworn in. Scholz, who has no religious affiliation, omitted the optional phrase "so help me God" from his oath of office, as did Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.
Merkel has said she won't seek another political role. The 67-year-old hasn't disclosed any future plans but said earlier this year that she will take time to read and sleep, "and then let's see where I show up."
Scholz's style has often been likened to Merkel's, although they are from different parties. Like the former chancellor, he isn't given to public displays of emotion or rousing speeches. The former labor minister and Hamburg mayor has portrayed himself in recent months both as her natural successor and an agent of change, and fashions himself as a strong leader. The new government aims to step up efforts against climate change by expanding the use of renewable energy and bringing Germany's exit from coal-fired power forward from 2038, "ideally" to 2030. It also wants to do more to modernize the country of 83 million people, including improving its notoriously poor cellphone and internet networks.
It also plans more liberal social policies, including legalizing the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes and easing the path to German citizenship while pledging greater efforts to deport immigrants who don't win asylum.
The government also plans to increase Germany's minimum wage and to get hundreds of thousands new new apartments built in an effort to curb rising rental prices. Scholz has signaled continuity in foreign policy, saying the government will stand up for a strong European Union and nurture the trans-Atlantic alliance. The government said that he will make his first trip abroad with a trip to Paris on Friday - maintaining a tradition for German chancellors - and plans to travel to Brussels the same day to meet EU and NATO leaders.
His three-party alliance brings both opportunities and risks for all the participants, perhaps most of all the Greens. After 16 years in opposition, they will have to prove that they can achieve their overarching aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions while working with partners who may have other priorities.
Green co-leader Robert Habeck will be Scholz's vice chancellor, heading a revamped economy and climate ministry. The government's No. 3 official will be Christian Lindner, the finance minister and leader of the Free Democrats, who insisted that the coalition reject tax hikes and looser curbs on running up debt.
"It won't be easy to keep three different parties together," Schroeder, who led Germany from 1998 to 2005 as the country's last center-left chancellor, told Phoenix television. "But I think Olaf Scholz has the patience, but also the determination, to manage it."
The incoming government is portraying itself as a departure in both style and substance from the "grand coalitions" of Germany's traditional big parties that Merkel led for all but four years of her tenure, with the Social Democrats as junior partners.
In those tense alliances, the partners sometimes seemed preoccupied mostly with blocking each other's plans. Merkel's final term saw frequent infighting, some of it within her own center-right Union bloc, until the pandemic hit. She departs with a legacy defined largely by her acclaimed handling of a series of crises, rather than any grand visions for Germany. The agreement to form a coalition government between three parties that had significant differences before the election was reached relatively quickly and in unexpected harmony. That will now be tested by the reality of governing; Scholz has acknowledged that dealing with the pandemic "will demand all our strength and energy." German federal and state leaders last week announced tough new restrictions that largely target unvaccinated people. In a longer-term move, parliament will consider a general vaccine mandate. Germany has seen daily COVID-19 infections rise to record levels this fall, though they may now be stabilizing, and hospitals are feeling the strain. "People are hoping that you...will show leadership and take the right measures," President Steinmeier told the newly appointed Cabinet. "What matters is not listening to the loudest, but ensuring that the pandemic doesn't keep us firmly in its grip for another year and that public life can once again become a matter of course."

Canada announces renewed commitments to peacekeeping at 2021 United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial
December 7, 2021 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of National Defence, participated in the 2021 Seoul United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial (UNPKM) virtual conference hosted by South Korea. Minister Anand participated in her role and on behalf of the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
During the UNPKM plenary session, entitled Sustaining Peace, Minister Anand announced that the Government of Canada will provide $85 million in new projects and contributions, as well as commit to further multi-year funding, to continue responding to the needs of UN peace operations and peacebuilding. Canada, as co-chair of the UNPKM, pledged to support UN peace operations and peacebuilding by:
Increasing funding to the UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund and providing it on a multi-year basis ($70M over 3 years);
Advancing gender equality and the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda through the extension and expansion of Canada’s flagship Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations;
Supporting international implementation of the Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers, including their integration in UN peacekeeping policy, guidance and training; and,
Renewing support and funding for peace operations training, notably for e-learning technologies and medical response.
Today’s announcement reaffirms Canada’s enduring commitment to the United Nations and multilateral engagement to address global peace and security challenges. Canada will continue to support effective and inclusive peace operations, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding.
Quotes
“As we continue to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic, support for inclusive and effective peacekeeping operations has never been more crucial. Canada is committed to continue supporting United Nations needs and ensuring the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in all aspects of conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.”
- Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“Canada is committed to helping United Nations peace operations become more inclusive and more effective. Alongside our partners, we will continue to strengthen UN peacekeeping to build a more peaceful world. Canada will continue to strengthen UN peacekeeping through ongoing military assistance and financial support to the UN’s peace operations reform, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding efforts. We recognize that military solutions alone do not create durable peace.”
- Anita Anand, Minister of National Defence
Quick facts
The objective of the UNPKM is to strengthen UN peacekeeping, including by improving the performance and impact of UN peacekeeping operations in line with the UN Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping initiative. This includes filling capability gaps through concrete pledges and facilitating new and sustainable partnerships while strengthening existing ones.
Canada’s contributions to UN peace operations are part of our broader military, police, civilian and foreign policy contributions to global peace and security, which include peacekeeping, peacebuilding, conflict prevention and stabilization.
Canada is the ninth-largest financial contributor to UN peace operations through assessed contributions and one of the largest voluntary funders.
Through its Peace and Stabilization Operations Program, Canada has provided more than $86 million since 2016 in voluntary contributions to the UN and civil society to make peace operations more effective and inclusive. Canada has also consistently been a top supporter of the UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund.
The last UN Peacekeeping Ministerial was held on March 29, 2019, at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, where Canada announced more than $45 million to support UN peace operations.
Canada hosted the 2017 UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial from November 14 to 15, 2017, in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In Vancouver, the Government of Canada made a series of commitments, including a number of military, police and civilian capabilities to support UN peacekeeping.

The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 08-09/2021
Sadr's road to pledges is strewn with obstacles
Ibrahim al-Zobeidi/The Arab Weekly/December 08/2021
Iraqis are waiting for Sadr to free them from the nightmares of fear, anxiety, poverty, disease and lack of services and from the foreign domination.
With his new political approach, Muqtada al-Sadr has made millions of tired and concerned Iraqis, in addition to members of his own "current", believe in him. They are waiting for him to fulfil his promises, so that he can rid them of the nightmares of fear, anxiety, poverty, disease and lack of services and from the foreign domination that has undermined their security, confiscated their freedom and trampled on their dignity.
And if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that the miracle does occur, and that Sadr emerges victorious from this challenge, and begins to form a reform government, as he has promised, then many other, unresolved obstacles await him. The most important and most dangerous is the removal of weapons from the hands of armed factions. To achieve this, he must prepare for the unavoidable military showdown, provided he has the military force capable of restraining these factions and forcing them to surrender their weaponry.
But the truth is that in this presumed war, his own "current" will not constitute that indomitable force, because it is itself infiltrated by his opponents.
And if he hopes that the government’s army will provide him with the qualified force capable of helping him crush the likes of Abu Fadak, Abu Ali al-Askari, Qais al-Khazali, Hadi al-Amiri and Faleh al-Fayyad, he will quickly discover that it, too, is infiltrated by hundreds of pro-Iranian elements wearing its uniforms, carry its weapons and receiving their salaries from its coffers. They are in fact sleeper cells of the militias, just waiting for the promised day.
When it comes to holding the corrupt accountable, as he has pledged, he has to start with the leading figures guilty of embezzlement, treason, squandering of money and bloodshed. If he des not, all his fulminating about corruption and the corrupt will look like just hot air.
Even if he miraculously manages to overcome all these hurdles, the biggest obstacle awaits him on which the fate of his entire reform programme will depend and which may deprive him of his hope to form the government he wants.
We are talking about Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which won 31 seats. The price he is demanding for joining the national majority government and leaving his old allies, is too high to accept.
Barzani, in addition to the usual, impossible demands that he repeats after every election, insists, this time, on seizing the presidency of the republic of Iraq, as it belongs to the Kurdish camp, according to the quota system. The KDP won more seats than its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has monopolised the presidency for eighteen years.
He launched his dubious manoeuvres by issuing a surprising statement rejecting the election results and accusing the Judiciary and the Presidency of the Republic of manipulation. Since he had earlier praised the election, this is a premeditated manoeuvre aimed at twisting Sadr's arm and forcing him to agree.
But for many reasons, it is difficult for Sadr to yield to Bazani's demands and give him the presidency.
The first is that the position was held by the Kurdish camp based on the quota system, before the last elections. But now Sadr vigorously rejects this.
The second is that Barzani’s candidate for the presidency is his uncle Hoshyar Zebari, who was dismissed by parliament on September 21, 2016, in a secret ballot, with the participation of 216 deputies. It was decided to remove him as minister of finance on suspicion of financial and administrative corruption.
If Muqtada Sadr agreed to appoint a minister dismissed from office on corruption charges to the position of president of the republic of Iraq, then he would not be able to hold any other corrupt Shia and Sunni figures accountable, despite having put accountability at the top of his list of reforms.
There is also another reason. Barzani has not managed to bring justice in just three small provinces of the homeland, has monopolised power and money there for his own benefit and that of his family, silenced his citizens and pushed the poorest among them to swim through frosty seas towards foreign countries in search of security, justice, livelihood and dignity.
As for his political creed and proclamations of Iraqi patriotism, all Iraqis and the Kurds most of all, know that Masoud Barzani, along with his entire family and his entire party, have always and still believe in secession, even though he is currently nothing but the president of a small region of the country. So what would he do if he controls the top seats of power, one wonders?
I admit to being pessimistic in my predictions, unless of course the Iraqi people, as a whole, took to the streets and squares in every city, to do what the Egyptians, Tunisians and Sudanese did before them. But is this possible in Iraq?

Political tumult in Europe could be harbinger of change
Andrew Hammond /Arab News/December 08, 2021
December is traditionally a quiet month in international politics, yet much is changing in Europe at the moment, as will be showcased at the EU summit of 27 presidents and prime ministers that begins in Brussels on Dec. 15.
Exhibit one is the new German government, which took office on Wednesday. This follows the voting in of left-of-center Social Democrat leader Olaf Scholz as Angela Merkel’s successor as chancellor. He leads a three-way coalition with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democratic Party that could bring much change to Germany. Exhibit two is the new Quirinal Treaty signed last month by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and French President Emmanuel Macron to bolster bilateral cooperation in Europe. The agreement has drawn comparison with the Elysee Treaty between France and Germany, which was created to rebuild their relationship after the Second World War, and could see significantly stronger international cooperation between Paris and Rome in the coming years.
However, while these twin changes are perceived broadly positively in Brussels, there are countervailing forces, mainly in Eastern Europe, that complicate the picture. Exhibit three is the Hungarian government, the only EU administration not to be invited to US President Joe Biden’s summit of democracies this week, with Budapest blocking Brussels from taking a common position toward the big conference.
Hungary is not alone in Eastern Europe with its antagonism to the EU. Only a few weeks ago, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that key articles of one of the EU’s primary treaties were incompatible with Polish law; in effect rejecting the principle that EU law has primacy over national legislation in certain judicial areas. The challenge made by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to one of the EU’s core legal principles has escalated his government’s dispute with Brussels, fueling concerns that Warsaw is heading toward the door, or “Polexit.” Key states, including France, say such a departure is now a “de facto risk” and have rebuked Poland, saying EU membership relies on “complete and unconditional adherence to common values and rules,” and was “not simply a moral commitment but also a legal commitment.”
Amid this political tumult, the future of the EU is difficult to decipher given the multitude of views across the continent. The debate could remain blurry for months to come, potentially at least until May’s French election, which could offer continuity in the form of a second term for Macron or significant change in the form of a far-right leader, possibly Marine Le Pen, who was the runner-up last time around.
Forward movement for the integrationists is far from certain and the full spectrum of scenarios also includes the possibility of a post-Brexit EU retreat.
At least until this political mist clears in France, Scholz, Draghi, Morawiecki and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be key players seeking to shape the debate about the continent’s future. And next week’s summit offers a key opportunity to further their ambitions.
The future that, by and large, Macron, Scholz and Draghi, plus some others including Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, broadly favor is the 27 member states deciding to do more together, reigniting European integration by deepening cooperation, with decisions agreed faster and enforced more quickly.
Building from the decision last year to give the bloc, for the first time in its history, debt-raising powers to finance a €750 billion ($850 billion) post-coronavirus recovery plan, announcements to watch for in 2022 might include a push for the creation of a deeper European Defense Union, which has assumed new importance for some in Europe since the announcement of the US-UK-Australia security pact.
Should there be persistent blockers to these agendas, however, it is plausible that France, Italy, Germany and others such as Spain — incidentally the four largest EU economies — may move toward more coalitions of the willing in select policy areas to push the integration agenda forward on a flexible, rather than across-the-board, basis. A model here is the eurozone, where about 19 of the current 27 EU members have entered into a monetary union, with the euro as the single currency.
Yet, even this kind of partial forward movement for the integrationists is far from certain and the full spectrum of scenarios in the period to come also includes the possibility of a post-Brexit EU retreat. This might even see, for instance, a return to little more than the current economic single market, which seeks to guarantee freedom of movement of goods, capital, services and people. In this dynamic context of push and pull, perhaps the most plausible scenario is a broad-based continuation of the status quo. This would see the EU muddling through and seeking to deliver on the 2016 Bratislava Declaration, agreed just weeks after the UK’s Brexit referendum, of better tackling migration and border security, beefing up external security and defense, and enhancing economic and social development.
While the direction of the EU is uncertain, what is clear is that the recent changes across the continent have left the kaleidoscope in flux. Next year could have an outsized impact in defining the economic and political character of the bloc not just in the 2020s, but well beyond.
• Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.

Thanks to Brexit, Anglo-Irish relations are at a crossroads
Frank Kane/Arab News/December 08/2021
One hundred years ago this week, a peace agreement was signed in London between British and Irish politicians that aimed to put an end to centuries of intermittent, but intense, conflict between the two countries.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 allowed for the establishment of an independent Ireland, while also allowing Northern Ireland to remain within the UK. It was always a stop-gap arrangement, designed to defuse an escalating war while satisfying the aspirations of the two historical traditions of Ireland — Catholic nationalist and Protestant unionist. Perhaps the agreement was the best that could have been devised in the circumstances but, on the evidence of the past century, it was deeply flawed. All that followed — the Irish Civil War, trade disputes with Britain, the impoverishment of immigration, and sporadic and low-level sectarian violence culminating in nearly three decades of open warfare during the Troubles — show the treaty to have been an abject failure.
So how ironic that now, in the wake of Brexit and amid rising populist nationalism in the UK under Boris Johnson, the end of the treaty era looks in sight. The reunification of Ireland under one political system appears more likely and more imminent than at any time since the Act of Union in 1801 that set up the UK. Full disclosure: I am an Irish citizen and believe that the reunification of Ireland is a legitimate aspiration and a desirable goal — as long as it is achieved with the consent of a majority within the whole of Ireland and, crucially, with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.
For most of the past 100 years, it looked extremely unlikely that such a majority would come in the north. The state, sometimes misleadingly called Ulster, was set up explicitly to keep Northern Ireland in the UK and London underwrote that goal, constitutionally and financially.
The founders of Northern Ireland were acutely aware of the demographics. Because Catholic nationalists had a higher birth rate than Protestant unionists, at some stage they would overtake them in population terms and likely vote for a united Ireland.
So a whole arsenal of techniques was employed to ensure that nationalists born in Northern Ireland would not want to stay there much past voting age. Discrimination in housing and employment, alongside the actions of a blatantly sectarian system of law and order, meant many Catholics gave up on their own country and left — for Britain, the US and other parts of the world.
Not many went to the Republic of Ireland, which speaks volumes about the other failure of the treaty. The independent Irish state it created was poor, conservative and dominated by the Catholic Church to such an extent that even their co-religionists in the north did not want to live there.
All that began to change with the entry of Ireland into the EU in 1973, at the same time as the UK. Capital began to flow from Brussels to the whole of Ireland, but more to the poorer south. Things began to look up in the republic, just as the north was descending into sectarian mayhem.
Socially and culturally, too, Ireland was changing. It was becoming more liberal and tolerant, less Catholic, even though the vast majority still formally ticked the box labeled “RC” for Roman Catholic (as do I). By the early 2000s, the Celtic Tiger economy was roaring in the south.
In the north, the economy was improving, too, largely thanks to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which effectively ended the Troubles.
The vote for Brexit in 2016 threw all this up in the air. The north voted to remain by a big majority, underlining the difference between it and the rest of the UK. The frontier between the two parts of Ireland — often a killing zone during the Troubles — was suddenly the only land border between the UK and the EU, and nobody wanted to see it closed down again in a renewed cycle of violence.
To avoid this, the Johnson government put the border in the Irish Sea, effectively making Ireland a common economic and customs zone, including the north. Die-hard unionists did not like that, but the effect has been transformational. Trade between north and south is at record levels, while exports from Ireland to the UK are also booming. The reunification of Ireland under one political system appears more likely and more imminent than at any time since the Act of Union in 1801 that set up the UK. Meanwhile, Catholic nationalists — no longer forced into exile by economic and sectarian pressure — are approaching a majority in the north. Nobody can say when it will happen, but at some stage in the next decade, they will be dominant. There is one big unknown: How will unionists react when they find themselves in a minority in their statelet? Given the history, the auguries are not good.
The choice is between peace, economic development and rising living standards under a united Ireland and sectarian violence and conflict under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. As its era draws to a close, Ireland is at a historic crossroads.
*Frank Kane is an award-winning business journalist based in Dubai. Twitter: @frankkanedubai

New approach to data can make multilateralism work again
Harold JamesArab News/December 08, 2021
One clear lesson from last month’s damp squib of a climate summit in Glasgow is that multilateralism is difficult to pull off. This has always been the case. Many of history’s biggest international forums ended in failure, not least the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the 1933 London World Economic Conference, and pretty much every G7 or G20 meeting. Big successes like the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and the April 2009 G20 meeting in London were exceptions that prove the rule.
Does the latter meeting, convened amid the global economic turmoil triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers the previous September, offer a blueprint for improving international summits? One takeaway is that, whatever emergency is meant to be addressed, participants need to define their objectives precisely. The lack of a clear vision — or at least a basic understanding of the goal — will inevitably produce failure. Reflecting on the world’s collective inability to provide solutions to the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes suggested that a workable plan could be produced only by “a single power or like-minded group of powers.”
Blame games also tend to produce failure. Nowadays, pretty much every global issue invites debate about who was originally responsible. Consider COVID-19. Since the virus emerged in China, shouldn’t China pay? The Trump administration thought so and even issued that demand in international forums.
Climate change is the subject of a similar debate. If the original acceleration in the rise of Earth’s temperature is a consequence of the early industrialization that enriched Western countries (above all, the US and the UK), don’t they have a responsibility to pay up? To a historian, this all sounds like the poisonous reparations debates after 1918, when the argument was over who bore responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War. There is a better path. We should focus on how the current problem can be measured, rather than on how it originated. Unless phenomena can be mastered through calculation, they will remain abstractions, fueling nervousness and recrimination. Reliable data about costs are essential to building a consensus on solutions. The success of the Bretton Woods negotiations enabled the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to tackle development in a new way, because they were operating under a new framework of national income accounting. Although that framework had been developed in industrialized countries to meet the challenge of mobilizing resources for war, it could also be used for building peace.
We should focus on how the current problem can be measured, rather than on how it originated. Now, it is the old framework that gets in the way. It is too simple for today’s world and it directs attention in the wrong direction. When journalists report on the twice-yearly IMF meetings, they focus on the participants’ assessments of gross domestic product growth, because that is what the IMF puts front and center. Yet, when it comes to the biosphere, GDP is not an asset but a liability, eroding rather than enhancing the wealth of nations.
In a 2021 review of the “economics of biodiversity” for the UK government, Partha Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge highlighted the need to think differently about growth by including an indicator that captures the depletion of natural resources. We need to identify the wedge between “the prices we pay for nature’s goods and services and their social worth in terms of what economists call ‘externalities.’” If such accounting is treated merely as a rhetorical exercise in persuasion, no action will follow from it. It is prices that drive behavior. Without that mechanism, we cannot ensure that externalities are accounted for. The threat of biosphere degradation is not the only development that should provoke concern. Another worrying megatrend that demands international attention is the data revolution and the application of new techniques to manage it, not least artificial intelligence. Managing these developments calls for more detailed and more frequently updated data. The ideal is real-time data provision, not once every six months when the IMF releases a new World Economic Outlook.
Securing correct and timely data from member countries has always been a contentious issue for the IMF. The requirement that members supply data, including on gold supplies, was probably responsible for an early decision that profoundly affected the IMF’s role in the postwar architecture of global governance: The Soviet Union’s refusal to participate in the ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements in December 1945.
Such disruptions are very much still with us. We are living in a world where security concerns — often loosely described as shifting “geopolitics” — dominate the economic news, whether it is Russia’s pricing and provision of gas to Europe or the escalation of tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Addressing climate change requires a proper accounting of national wealth. And that, in turn, will require the latest tools and methods, as well as negotiations between powerful, increasingly assertive nation states whose interests do not necessarily align. Precise and accurate data will be the critical instrument in defusing anger, preventing a blame game and promoting constructive engagement.
• Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate

Germany's Multicultural Suicide
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/December 8, 2021
"I will continue to take a critical stance against those... who use the liberal structure and tolerance of the constitution to impose totalitarian views of the state and who undermine the rules of the rule of law, using anti-Western indoctrination.... I will not adapt my vision of freedom of expression to... 'Everyone has the right to freely express their opinion in a way that is not contrary to Sharia law'". — Ralph Giordano, FAZ.net.
Once a dam breaks, there is only a competition to see who gives way faster.
The city is also changing the name of its squares.... The new name of a square in Aachen is "Moscheeplatz" ("Mosque Place"), a name desired by the Mayor Marcel Philipp, in agreement with the Turkish [Department of Religious Affairs] ...
Then there is the question of demographics: 70% of Raunheim's population are migrants. "Here we have more Muslims than Christians". — Mayor Thomas Jühe, Social Democrats, Die Welt, November 16, 2021.
Despite this, they say that the "Great Replacement" and the Islamization of Europe are just conspiracy theories. Have we really understood what the Europe of tomorrow will be like?
The mosques of Cologne, the fourth-largest city in Germany, have obtained permission to broadcast the call to prayer every Friday over minaret loudspeakers. To some residents of Cologne, the Muslim call to prayer represents the same cry of conquest that the Christians of the Middle East and Africa hear five times every day and night at the doors of their churches and homes. Now it is Germany's turn.
"Western hegemony is over," said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently. "It lasted centuries, but it is over".
At the same time, the mosques of Cologne, the fourth-largest city in Germany, have obtained permission to broadcast the call to prayer every Friday over minaret loudspeakers.
"Many residents of Cologne are Muslims," said Mayor Henriette Reker, "and in my opinion it is a sign of respect to allow the call of the muezzin."
To others, the Muslim call to prayer represents the same cry of conquest that the Christians of the Middle East and Africa hear five times every day and night at the doors of their churches and homes. Now it is Germany's turn.
Sixteen years ago, Pope Benedict XVI made his first papal visit to Cologne. He invited the young people of Europe to return to their roots on a pilgrimage to the tomb of the Magi. A year later, in Regensburg, he warned against the intrinsic violence of Islam. Cologne is now where Germany just signed its surrender to political Islam.
Journalist Daniel Kremer, writing in Bild, recalled that many of Cologne's mosques are funded by the Turkish government and run by Erdogan, "a man who opposes the liberal values ​​of our democracy", adding:
"It's wrong to equate church bells with the call to prayer. The bells are a signal without words that also helps tell the time. But the muezzin calls out 'Allah is great!' and 'I testify that there is no God but Allah.' That is a big difference."
Church bells do not proclaim that the Christian god is the only god and that Jesus is his son.
Integration expert Ahmad Mansour also contested the Mayor Recker's position. "It's not about 'religious freedom' or 'diversity', as mayor Reker argues," Mansour said. "The mosque wants visibility. The muezzin is a show of power".
A court in the city of Münster last year ruled that a local mosque was authorized to carry out the Friday call to prayer in public over loudspeakers. That mosque is managed by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB). As the largest umbrella organization of mosques in Germany, DITIB provides imams and financing, manages about 900 mosques in Germany and has approximately 800,000 members.
Shortly after the ruling, the state government of Hesse ruled that the muezzin's calls to prayer through minaret loudspeakers are allowed even without permission.
Eight of Germany's 100 most populous cities, Der Spiegel noted, have previously given a green light for broadcasting Islamic calls to prayer in public. In Düren, the Turkish Fatih mosque calls the faithful to prayer three times a day. Ethnology professor Susanne Schröter of Goethe University in Frankfurt, argues that Muslims view calls to prayer as the triumph of a "strong Islam" over a "weak Christianity" -- reportedly accompanied by a wish to have the Islamic crescent replace the stars of the European Union.
"Will the call of the muezzin be heard all over Germany?" asked Germany's most popular newspaper, Bild. The call of the muezzin can already be heard in Munich. Since April 2020, five mosques there have been broadcasting the call to prayer with loudspeakers. "The call of the muezzin does not require approval," said the authorities of Hanover, where there are 27 mosques . "It is like the sound of church bells, of the free religious practice that is constitutionally protected".
A similar answer came from Dresden: "We see ourselves as a diverse and cosmopolitan urban society".
From Frankfurt, home to a mosque that accommodates up to 6,000 of worshippers, the mayor declared: "The law does not provide for an approval procedure for the muezzin's prayer, just as for church bells".
Cities such as Dortmund, Hamm, Siegen, Düren and Oldenburg have also allowed mosques to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer over loudspeakers. In Nuremberg, which hosts a dozen mosques, allowing the call of the muezzin is apparently "not a problem".
The former President of the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia, Michael Bertrams, speaks of a "political triumph" for Turkey's president, while Hamed Abdel-Samad, a sociologist who lives under armed guard due to Islamist death threats, is even clearer:
"The call to prayer begins with 'Allahu Akbar', which is also the rallying cry of Muslims. It means that Allah is greater. Greater than the enemy, greater than the people, greater than life, greater than Germany, greater than everything. And since he is greater than everything, in the end only his law applies, the sharia".
Bundestag member Malte Kaufmann wrote:
"From now on every Friday in Cologne, 'There is no other god but Allah!' But Islamization is not supposed to happen in Germany at all ... We have been warning against it for years! The appeal to the muezzin is a claim to power. Step by step, the Christian West is betrayed".
"The history of the Cologne Central Mosque documents the naivety of the German authorities in dealing with Islamic organizations", reported Switzerland's Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the oldest German-language newspaper in Europe.
"Before construction began, the Turkish Association promised the then-mayor of Cologne, Fritz Schramma, that the sermons would be held in German and that the mosque would become a meeting place for members of different religions. The former mayor, one of the mosque's biggest sponsors, was not invited to the inauguration. They wanted to build a house for intercultural encounters in which Islam was preached in German. In the spirit of Erdogan, an Islamist nationalist center was created. After this story, anyone who thinks that the muezzin will stop at five minutes is being lulled into the world of fairy tales".
What seems to exist is an extremely wide-eyed, childlike atmosphere of capitulation. "Whoever says yes to bell towers must also say yes to minarets," said Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, archbishop of Cologne. It looks as if German churches are committing suicide. The archdiocese of Cologne -- the largest in Germany and one of the richest in the world -- is planning to reduce its parishes from 500 to 50 by 2030. In Cologne, Erdogan came to inaugurate the largest mosque, welcomed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the daughter of a Prussian pastor. This gesture of goodwill did not prevent the Turkish president, in 2020, from turning the great Byzantine basilica of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. The Catholic Church of St. Theodore in Cologne even contributed to the Islamization of the city by financing the mosque, in the name of some imaginary inter-religious dialogue.
It was a Jewish writer who escaped the Holocaust, Ralph Giordano, who criticized the Cologne decision, "political Islam" and the "gigantomania of the great mosque", which, from his point of view, is "a kind of declaration of war". In an article for the FAZ, Giordano wrote:
"I will continue to take a critical stance against those imams who use the liberal structure and tolerance of the constitution to impose totalitarian views of the state and who undermine the rules of the rule of law, using indoctrination, anti-Western, to teach Sharia law...
"I want to be able to say that I do not want to see burqas or chadors on the German streets, any more than I want to hear the calls of the muezzins from the minarets. I will also not adapt my vision of freedom of expression to a demon who interprets it as follows: 'Everyone has the right to freely express their opinion in a way that is not contrary to Sharia law'. No and three times no!".
Once a dam breaks, there is only a competition to see who gives way faster. Even the head of the German Chancellery who apparently would like to become the leader of Angela Merkel's CDU party, Helge Braun, spoke in favor of allowing mosques to broadcast the call to prayer.
In Aachen, the city of the emperor Charlemagne and his marvelous cathedral, and its surroundings, the muezzin's call is not only at home. The city is also changing the name of its squares to make room for Islam. "Moscheeplatz" ("Mosque Square") is the new name of a public plaza in Aachen. The change was evidently desired by Mayor Marcel Philipp, in agreement with the Turkish DITIB: "I am very happy as mayor to have a Mosque Square", the mayor said.
On November 11, the muezzin arrived in Raunheim, a town on the outskirts of Frankfurt, the first in Hesse officially to allow prayer through loudspeakers every Friday and, during Ramadan, every day before sunset prayer.
"The principle of equality also applies to religion in a democratic society", explained Mayor Thomas Jühe. Then there is the question of demographics: 70% of Raunheim's population are migrants. "Here we have more Muslims than Christians", Jühe said.
Despite this, they say that the "Great Replacement" and the Islamization of Europe are just conspiracy theories. Have we really understood what the Europe of tomorrow will be like?
In an interview with Boulevard Voltaire, Thilo Sarrazin, the former head of Germany's central bank and author of two bestsellers on multiculturalism and Islam that shook up the debate in Germany, says the Cologne decision is perfectly in line with Germany's demographic future:
"The German population, if the trend continues, will die out in the next 100 years. In the last chapter of Germany is Disappearing, I sketched the direction that the situation will take over the next years... The decision in Cologne does not surprise me at all. It corresponds to my image of how things will evolve in this area. In France, I find that Michel Houellebecq sends the same message in his book Soumission".
Even the two major German establishment newspapers criticized the growing trend.The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung took sides against Cologne's decision to authorize the muezzin's prayer from 50 mosques in the city. Ronya Othmann wrote:
"In contrast to the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, the ringing of bells is only a sound, not a message. 'Tolerance' is a word like 'diversity' and 'respect', an old gum chewed until it no longer has taste. If Erdogan has carpeted Alevis and Yazidi villages with mosques and made them resonate with Islamic belief five times a day, it is an act of Islamist submission and we should not allow [it in] Cologne".
The Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich was also harsh:
"The call to prayer is not new in Germany. It has been playing in dozens of cities for a long time. The Christian West, if it still exists, will therefore not immediately fall. But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once quoted a poem: 'Minarets are bayonets, domes are helmets, ... believers are soldiers'. One thing is undeniable: Islamism has been on the rise for decades. The rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan is hailed by Islamists as a triumph blessed with the power of faith. Then the transformation of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.... This may have little to do with the ideas and thinking of most Muslims in Germany. But for an Islamist, the adhan is the daily confirmation of the political mandate".
We now have loud music echoing from a tent above Leipzig's Willy-Brandt-Platz, huge green banners with Arabic lettering, and young people distributing leaflets to passers-by. Bild tells us that Muhammad's birthday is being celebrated in a major German city. If France is the country of Islamist aggression, Germany is the country of surrender. The Pew Research Center estimates that by 2050, Germany's Muslim population will be 17.5 million or 20% of the population. Today it is only 8%. Will the "city of the Three Magi" be renamed the "city of the Muezzins"?
"Get ready for the daily muezzin...." warned Henryk Broder in the Die Welt. "It is already a reality in Stockholm, London, Brussels, Amsterdam ...."
*Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2021 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.'

Christianity: The #1 Recipient of Hate Crimes
Raymond Ibrahim/December 8, 2021 
Hate crimes against Christianity and its followers in Europe — formerly and for centuries the guardian and disseminator of Christ’s teachings — are at an all-time high. According to a recent report, at least a quarter of all hate crimes registered in Europe in 2020 were anti-Christian in nature — representing a 70-percent increase in comparison to 2019. Christianity is, furthermore, the religion most targeted in hate crimes, with Judaism at a close second.
Worse, the true number of hate crimes against Christians is likely even higher. As the Nov. 16, 2021 report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) explains (boldface in original):
24 states report data on hate crimes committed due to racism or xenophobia, 20 on LGBT groups, 16 states on anti-Semitism, and 14 on incidents against Muslims, but only 11 countries report data on hate crimes against Christians, and this obviously distorts the statistics significantly. Furthermore, of the 136 civil society organisations that provided descriptive data, only 8 organisations (!) consistently reported incidents against Christians. Both of these findings put the reality of the situation into a different perspective, which indicates that the actual number of hate crimes against Christians is probably way higher. When comparing the numbers of incidents from last year to the number of this year, we can see an increase of almost 70%. What is also striking, is the fact that of the 4,008 descriptive cases [of 2020], 980 are hate crimes against Christians, almost 25%, more than against any other religious group.
Indeed, whereas 980 hate crimes were anti-Christian in nature, 850 were anti-Semitic and only 254 anti-Islamic. But as the report explained, the true numbers are probably significantly higher — for whereas the majority of racial, anti-Islamic, or anti-homosexual attacks are reported as such, a great number of anti-Christian attacks are not. Even so and despite this discrepancy, attacks on Christians are still greater than against any other religious group.
Discussing these findings, Madeleine Enzlberger, head of Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, said, “The media and politicians do not see the rise in hatred of Christians in Europe as a growing social problem. The OSCE report shows only part of this problem, yet it sends a very clear signal against indifference and the almost fashionable bashing of Christians.”
After offering the OSCE’s formal definition of “hate crimes” — “An offense against a particular group or a prejudice against a particular group that serves as a motive to commit certain crimes against this group” — Danish journalist Sonja Dahlmans elaborates,
This can be the destruction of Christian buildings such as churches or schools, but also Christian symbols such as a crucifix or a statue of Mary. It may also involve violent crimes against Christians, such as the attack on Orthodox priest Nikolas Kakavelakis in the French city of Lyon and the murder of Sir David Amess, a conservative Roman Catholic member of the British Parliament. Amess was murdered [by a Muslim youth] in a church during public conversations with his supporters. … The conclusion is that there are more and more anti-Christian hate crimes in Europe, but that the full state of affairs is unknown because not everything is reported to the competent authorities.
The growing number of hate crimes against Christians in Europe is consistent with other reports. Open Doors’ World Watch List, which annually ranks the 50 nations that most persecute Christians for their faith, has been consistently recording ever-growing numbers around the world. According to its 2021 statistics, “more than 340 million” Christians “experience high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.” This represents a 31% increase from 2020 when only “260 million Christians experience[ed] high levels of persecution.” That represented a 6% increase from 2019 when the number was only 245 million Christians. And that represented a 14% increase from 2018 when 215 million was the number. In other words, between just 2018 and 2021, the persecution of Christians has shot up by nearly 60% around the world.
Who is responsible for this dramatic spike in anti-Christian sentiment? Although many groups affiliated with the so-called “left” are increasingly behind these hate crimes — from Antifa and BLM to neo-pagans — the lions’ share still goes to Islam. For every consecutive year, as many as 40 of the 50 worst nations ranked by the World Watch annual reports have been Islamic.
While European nations rarely if ever make the top 50, it only follows that the more Europe’s Muslim population grows, the more phenomena intrinsic to the Islamic world — from attacks on churches and crosses to the rape and forced conversion of Christian women — will grow with it, based on Islam’s Rule of Numbers.
Nor is this assertion merely deductive or conjectural. European regions with large Muslim migrant populations often see a concomitant rise in attacks on churches and Christian symbols. Consider Germany, where, according to the recent OSCE report, anti-Christian hate crimes have more than doubled since 2019; it too just so happens to have one of the largest Muslim populations of Western Europe — one that has exponentially grown in recent years.
Thus, according to a late 2017 German-language report, in the Alps and in Bavaria alone, some 200 churches were attacked and many crosses broken: “Police are currently dealing with church desecrations again and again,” the report relayed, before honestly adding, “The perpetrators are often youthful rioters with a migration background.” Before Christmas, 2016, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, where more than a million Muslim migrants reside, some 50 public statues of Jesus and other Christian figures were beheaded and crucifixes broken. In 2015, following the arrival of another million Muslim migrants to Dülmen, a local newspaper said “not a day goes by” without attacks on Christian statues.
France, another Western nation that holds a significantly large Muslim population — and where two churches are reportedly attacked every single day, some with human feces — is also indicative that where Muslim numbers grow, so do attacks on Christianity, especially cowardly, anonymous ones on churches. A January 2017 study revealed that “Islamist extremist attacks on Christians” in France rose by 38 percent, going from 273 attacks in 2015 to 376 in 2016; the majority occurred during the Christmas season, and “many of the attacks took place in churches and other places of worship.” (For more on the plight of churches in increasingly Islamizing Europe, see here.)
Of course, just as most hate crimes against Christians are not recorded as such, so too are the identities of those most committing these crimes often left out. Moreover, in a climate where the media do everything possible to conceal the identities of Muslim criminals caught red-handed, surely there will not be a peep to suggest that Muslims might be responsible when the evidence is not concrete.
After all, the “news” is all about maintaining the narrative, one that paints Christians as aggressors and anyone and everyone else as victims — Muslims chief among them.