Syria Captures Suburb of Capital From Insurgents

7/29/2019 Syria Captures Suburb of Capital From Insurgents

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Syria captures suburb of capital from insurgentsZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

Gains near airport are latest for regime; hope for peace talks fades

beirut Syrian troops pushed forward with their offensive against rebels Saturday, capturing a suburb near Damascus

nternational Airport as the United States warned that the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assads

orces and the involvement of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in the civil war threaten to put a proposed political

settlement out of reach.

REUTERS A rebel

fighter with the Free Syrian Army rehydrates as another prepares his weapon in a safe house in Deir al-Zour in

eastern Syria. Prospects for peace talks between the rebels and the Syrian regime have faded as the

government has made military gains in recent weeks.

The United States and Russia have been pressing for a peace conference in Geneva to end Syrias civil war, but

prospects for that have been dampened after a series of regime battlefield victories and hardened positions by both sides as

he death toll has surged to nearly 93,000 since the conflict began more than two years ago.

President Obamas decision last week to send weapons to the rebels and the deepening involvement of Shiite Hezbollah

ighters from Lebanon also have raised the stakes, setting up a proxy fight between Iran and the West that threatens to

engulf more of the Middle East.

The U.S. reversal after months of saying it would not intervene in the conflict militarily came after Washington said it

had conclusive evidence that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons, something Obama had said would be a red

ine.

Syria has denied the accusations, saying Obama was lying about the evidence to justify his decision to arm the rebels.

Syrias ally Russia also suggested Saturday that the evidence put forth by the United States of the use ofchemical weapons

doesnt meet stringent criteria for reliability.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry was quoted in a statement as saying that the United States continues to work

aggressively for a political solution with the goal of a second Geneva meeting. But the use of chemical weapons and
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ncreasing involvement of Hezbollah demonstrates the regimes lack of commitment to negotiations and threatens to put a

political settlement out of reach, he said in a telephone conversation Friday with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Russias Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S. evidence does not include guarantees that it meets the

requirements of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He said the organization specifies that samples

aken from blood, urine and clothing can be considered reliable evidence only if supervised by organization experts from the

ime they are taken up to delivery to a laboratory.

The OPCW is the autonomous body for implementing the international Chemical Weapons Convention that went into

effect in 1997. Its Web site says that Syria is one of six countries that have not signed or acceded to the convention.

Lavrov, after meeting with his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino, scoffed at suggestions that Assads regime would use

chemical weapons in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels.

The regime doesnt have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons,

moreover at such a small quantity? he said.

Russia has blocked proposed U.N. sanctions against Assads regime and acknowledged last month that it has

contracted to supply advanced S-300 air defense missiles to Syria. But President Vladimir Putin and other officials say the

policies do not constitute overt support for Assad.

The statements by Moscow and Washington came days before a summit in Northern Ireland among the Group of Eight

eading industrial powers. Obama is expected to push Britain and France to take similar action to arm the rebels when the

G-8 talks open. The United States, Britain and France also will urge Putin to drop his political and military support for Assad.

In fighting Saturday, Syrian government forces captured the rebel-held suburb of Ahmadiyeh near Damascus

nternational Airport two days after a mortar round landed near the airports runway and briefly disrupted flights, according

o the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. SANA said government forces killed several rebels and destroyed their hideouts

n the area.

Ahmadiyeh is part of a region known as Eastern Ghouta, where government forces have been on the offensive for

weeks in a move aimed at securing Assads seat of power in the capital.

A local rebel commander who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Hareth, for fear of government reprisals said

rebels have been firing mortar shells at the airport from Ahmadiyeh area and came under attack by the regime late Friday.

He said two rebel fighters had been killed.

He added that rebels destroyed three tanks in the battle, claiming that they have acquired a small number of antitank

missiles recently.

A large regime force is attacking the area today, Abu Hareth said via Skype on Saturday.

Intense clashes also continued in the northern city of Aleppo, Syrias largest city, according to the Britain-based Syrian

Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists around the county. It said regime forces tried to storm

he northern neighborhoods of Achrafieh and Bani Zeid after heavy shelling with mortar rounds and tanks, but failed to

advance after facing resistance from rebels.

In recent days, the city has witnessed some of the worst violence in months.

The Observatory also reported air raids and shelling of Jobar, a key district on the edge of Damascus.

Private funding of Syrian rebel groups complicates U.S. effortsZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

From page A1groups.
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YOUTUBEA screen-grab

shows a YouTube video posted by the Syrian rebel Hajjaj al-Ajmi Brigade, named for its chief sponsor, a

Kuwaiti sheik.

U.S. and Middle Eastern officials describe the money as a small portion of a vast pool of private wealth being funneled

o Syrias warring factions, mostly without strings or oversight and outside the control of governments.

The private funding of individual militias some with extremist views further complicates the task facing the Obama

administration as it ventures into arming Syrias rebels. With its decision to increase support for the Syrian opposition,

Washington is seeking to influence a patchwork of militia groups with wildly different abilities and views about how Syria

should be run after the war.

The reluctance of Western governments to intervene over the past two years has allowed private donors to play an

outsize role in shaping the Syrian conflict, officials say. From Persian Gulf cities hundreds of miles from the battlefield,

wealthy patrons help decide which of Syrias hundreds of rebel groups will receive money to pay salaries and buy weapons

and supplies for the fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

In practice, these donors overwhelmingly back Islamist groups whose ultraconservative views reflect their own,

ntelligence officials and analysts say.

Direct money from the gulf is super-empowering some of the jihadi groups, said William McCants, a former adviser to

he State Department and an expert on radical Islam. With the United States holding back, there is a vacuum. And within

his vacuum, private money is giving the jihadists more pull.

So fierce is the competition for private funds that some Syrian groups adopt the language and dress of Islamists

growing beards, for example to improve their chances with potential patrons, analysts say. Others post videos on

YouTube thanking their gulf sponsors for past assistance and pleading for more.

A few have even named themselves after a gulf benefactor, like sports teams that adopt the logo of a corporate

sponsor. One rebel group in eastern Syria now calls itself the Hajjaj al-Ajmi Brigade, in a tribute to the Kuwaiti sheik. A

YouTube video posted by the group opens with a banner emblazoned with the sheiks name and then shows a dozen

masked fighters wearing camouflage fatigues and brandishing assault rifles.


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Its anyones game,said a U.S.-based Middle Eastern diplomat whose country has provided aid to some of the rebel

actions opposed to Assad.

Non-state actors are now involved in a big way. You see different players looking to create their own militias, said the

diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss politically sensitive aid to the Syrian opposition. It is beyond

control.

It is difficult to obtain reliable estimates of the amount of nonofficial aid given to Syrian groups. The donors are private

citizens, and the deliveries typically take the form of cash-stuffed suitcases handed off to rebel emissaries at the Turkish

border. Government experts and private analysts say the figure is certainly well into the millions of dollars. It is roughly the

same pattern of private giving that funded the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and, years later, the militant Islamist

movement that came to be known as al-Qaeda, analysts say.

Virtually all of the money from gulf states flows to anti-Assad forces that share a similar Sunni Arab background.

Similar cash flows have bolstered pro-Assad forces in Syria, analysts say, including donations from Shiites in Iraq, Iran and

Lebanon, mirroring the larger regional schism between the two major branches of Islam. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant

group based in Lebanon, has provided fighters and training for Syrian government forces.

Clues about the impact of private giving can be gained from the YouTube and Facebook postings of several Syrian

groups that acknowledged gifts with online thank-you notes. Last year, the Syrian Revolutionary Front, an Islamist

organization with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, acknowledged receiving nearly $600,000 from the Popular Commission to

Support the Syrian People, a fund managed by Ajmi and another Kuwaiti sheik, Irshid al-Hajri.

Ahar al-Sham, considered one of the most radical of the Syrian Islamist militias, recorded a similar public thank-you for

$400,000 the group says it received from the same fund. In its Web posting, the group specifically thanked Ajmi and Hajri,

saying it asks God to reward them and those behind them with the best of rewards.

In an interview with the international Arab newspaper alHayat, an Ahar al-Sham official said private gifts are highly

valued because they are not subject to government interference or corruption.

The difference is that the aid that comes to us reaches us directly. As for the other factions, the aid they receive stops

n Istanbul and does not reach Syria, said the official, identified as Abu Zayd, the militias officer in charge of enforcing

sharia law. He described the groups principle backers as Syrian expatriates in the gulf in addition to Arab and international

charitable societies.

Most of the private support comes as cash usually dollars or euros. The money enables militias to buy whatever

weapons are available on the regions bustling black market, free of limits or restrictions attached to government money,

analysts say.

In some cases, private donors have been directly involved in arranging arms shipments, said Asher Berman, a blogger

and contributing writer for the Foreign Policy Research Institute who has researched Syrias rebel factions.

Its all about obtaining weapons, Berman said. The Libyans particularly have a lot of weapons that can be directly

ransferred to Syria, and you hear about sheiks from the gulf arranging weapons purchases.

The freewheeling nature of the private assistance has prompted attempts by gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the

United Arab Emirates to restrict donations to Syrian fighters by charities and wealthy individuals. But Sunniled governments

n Bahrain and, most notably, Kuwait, have largely declined to interfere with private fundraising efforts.

McCants, the former State Department adviser, attributed Kuwaits prominent role to relatively weak terrorism financeaws and to the countrys large and politically connected community of Salafists, who practice an austere form of Islam.

Among the Kuwaitis, no one is more public about the Syria fundraising than Ajmi, scion of a prominent Kuwaiti family

whose vast wealth was derived from oil and construction businesses. Ajmi and a small group of relatives and partners have


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aggressively promoted their Popular Commission charity on social media while making numerous trips to Syria to meet with

eaders of favored rebel groups.

Ajmis Web postings have featured photos of the bushy-bearded sheik posing with Syrian rebel leaders, including the

head of Liwaa al-Umma, a Syrian rebel group whose Web site calls for the establishment of Islamic governance in post-

Assad Syria.

Ajmi, who did not respond to a request for an interview, has been unabashed in taking credit for his role in supporting

he rebels. His prolific tweets include near-daily appeals for donations for mujahid literally, holy warriors in Syria,

as well as for civilian victims of the civil war, which began as an uprising in March 2011. His online messages are often

accompanied by photos of Syrian children killed or wounded in the fighting.

Mouaz Moustafa, director of the Syria Emergency Task Force, which supports humanitarian efforts in Syria,

acknowledged that private donors have made positive contributions by helping deliver essential supplies to communities

destroyed by fighting.

Humanitarian aid from outside groups is not only good, its essential, said Moustafa, who escorted Sen. John McCain

R-Ariz.) during his surprise visit last month to northern Syria.

But, he added, the aid becomes problematic when you see private groups deciding to arm different brigades. It

undermines unity, and it hurts the opposition in the long run.

Other analysts noted that the rebels already are badly and perhaps hopelessly fragmented, a problem for which many

say the West deserves at least part of the blame. Mustafa Alani, a counterterrorism expert at the Dubaibased Gulf Research

Council, said private donors became power brokers among rebel groups by default because the United States and other

Western powers declined to support more moderate groups within the Syrian opposition.

The Obama administration was always afraid that the wrong side would get the weapons, Alani said. But now we

have a situation in which the wrong side already has them. And that side is self-supplying and self-financing.

Egyptian leader cuts ties with Syria, calls for Hezbollahs exitZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

cairo Egypts Islamist president announced Saturday that he was cutting off diplomatic relations with Syria and

closing Damascuss embassy in Cairo, decisions made amid growing calls from hard-line Sunni clerics in Egypt and

elsewhere to launch a holy war against Syrias embattled regime.

Mohamed Morsi told thousands of supporters at a rally in Cairo that his government was also withdrawing the Egyptian

charge daffaires from Damascus. He called on Lebanons Hezbollah to leave Syria, where the Iranian-backed Shiite militant

group has been fighting alongside troops loyal to embattled President Bashar al-Assad against the mostly Sunni rebels.

Hezbollah must leave Syria. This is serious talk: There is no business or place for Hezbollah in Syria, said Morsi,

Egypts first freely elected president.

Morsis address, particularly his call on Hezbollah to leave Syria, and the fiery rhetoric used by well-known Muslim

clerics this weekend point to the increasing perception of the Syrian conflict as sectarian. At least 93,000 people have been

killed since turmoil there began more than two years ago.

The rally that Morsi addressed on Saturday was called for by hard-line Islamists loyal to the Egyptian president to show

solidarity with the people of Syria. However, Morsi also used the occasion to warn his opponents at home against the use of

violence in mass protests planned for June 30, the anniversary of his assumption to power.

Morsi repeated the allegation that Egyptians loyal to the now-ousted regime of autocrat Hosni Mubarak were behind the

planned protests and that they were working against the January 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak.

Some who are delusionary want to pounce on the January revolution and think that they can undermine the stability

hat is growing daily or undermine the resolve that people have clearly forged with their will, Morsi said.
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Morsis government is widely thought to have failed to tackle any of the seemingly endless problems facing the country,

rom power cuts and surging crime to unemployment, steep price rises and fuel shortages. The declared aim of the June 30

protests is to force Morsi out and hold early presidential elections.

Morsis allies say the protests have no legal basis and amount to a coup against his legitimate rule. They have been

calling on opposition leaders to enter a national political dialogue to resolve the crisis, but the opposition has turned down

he offer, claiming that previous rounds of dialogue did not yield results.

Spearheading the opposition to Morsis rule now is a youth protest movement called Tamarod, or rebel, which claims to

have collected millions of signatures of Egyptians who want Morsi to step down. Organizers say they aim to collect the

signatures of more people than those who voted for Morsi in the June 2012 election.

THE BIG DATA PRESIDENTZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

Obamas faith in data goes far beyond NSA surveillance, says journalist Nancy Scola

From page A1In the political world, the promise of data whether its Nate Silvers spot-on election predic

Obama is meta about dataZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

From page B1This constant emphasis on data-driven decision-making is, in some respects, a deliberate break from

he George W. Bush years, the revenge of the realitybased community that a Bush aide famously disdained, describing its

members as people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. The White Houses

embrace of big data is meant to suggest that ideology is less important than inarguable facts. In some ways, this faith in

data over ideology defines what it means to be part of Team Obama.

Faith in datas power is, no doubt, part of Obamas political genealogy. Both his 2008 campaign and last years

reelection bid made extensive use of organized and analyzed information. (His teams datamining and microtargeting

became one of the big stories of those campaigns.) Obama campaign folks dismiss the idea that they were using data to sell

he president like soda pop by burrowing into our brains with targeted appeals. In campaign politics, they say, the power of

data is in making the most of resources, whether ad dollars or volunteer enthusiasm.

Generally, though, the conversation went something like this: Our mastery of data is (1) world-changingly powerful

and (2) not something the public should worry about too much.

Obama didnt first learn about the power of data on the campaign trail. One of his legislative accomplishments during

his brief time in the Senate was a bill co-authored with Sen. Tom Coburn (ROkla.) that called for the creation of an online

ederal spending database. At the time, they called it a significant tool that will make it much easier to hold elected officials

accountable for the way taxpayer money is spent. (The result: USAspending.gov.) The transparency bill helped establish

Obamas bona fides as bipartisan as well as tech-savvy.

And this reputation carried over into the White House. Cass Sunstein, Obamas first-term regulatory czar and now a law

professor at Harvard, often said that regulations should be evidence-based and data-driven. Meanwhile, U.S. Chief

Technology Officer Todd Park, an assistant to the president, declared that we are witnessing the emergence of a

datapowered revolution in health care in the lead-up to the latest Health Datapalooza, an annual conference showcasing

nnovations in the use of data by companies, academics and government agencies. Data in the hands of both patients and

medical practitioners, Park argues, has the power to lower costs and improve health care.

That work is of a piece with the Obama administrations release last month of a massive price list showing what morehan 3,000 U.S. hospitals charge to treat 100 different conditions a move inspired by Steve Brills Time magazine cover

story this year on health-care costs. The government collects that data in the course of administering Medicare and chose to

release it to bolster public support for Obamas health-care overhaul.
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Sometimes, too, data has been for Obama a way of routing around awkward confrontations. His Federal

Communications Commission has been hammered by some advocates for, as they see it, failing to put the publics interest

n cheaper, faster and more widespread Internet access ahead of the demands of telecom companies such as Verizon and

AT&T. The FCC has focused its energies on techniques such as a broadband speed test that asks people to gauge how well

heir Internet connection works, data that providers arent eager to release. A neat hack, maybe, but some advocates would

rather the FCC focus on getting tougher with industry.

In his talks on new approaches to government regulations, Sunstein is fond of quoting the late legal scholar (and, like

Sunstein, former University of Chicago law professor) Karl Llewellyn: Technique without morals is a menace, Llewellyn

supposedly remarked, but morals without technique is a mess.

The enduring challenge of those words has reappeared in the NSA controversy. Are the agencys techniques a menace?

Obama says he is happy to have the conversation. I think its a sign of maturity, the president said recently in California.

Because probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate. But he hasnt been entirely

helpful in getting the debate going. Nobody is listening to your telephone calls, he said with a slight smile that quickly

urned downward. Thats not what this program is about.

Unfortunately, data-driven has become a conversation-ender, rather than a conversation-framer. There are scores of

substantive policy discussions to be had, about big issues such as PRISM and small, like how the Obama

administration chooses to order the health-care plans detailed for the public on HealthCare.gov, which can nudge Americans

oward one provider or another. But there are gaping holes in the understanding of big data among the private sector,

elected officials and policy specialists not to mention the public at large.

The PRISM and Verizon episodes have made plain that we lack even a common vocabulary for talking about big data.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has for years tried to dance between his responsibilities as a member of the Senate Intelligence

Committee and his desire to galvanize public attention on the NSAs operations. In a March hearing, he asked Director of

National Intelligence James Clapper for a yes-or-no answer to a seemingly straightforward question: Does the NSA collect

any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

No, sir, came Clappers response. Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect,

but not wittingly.

In light of the PRISM and Verizon revelations, critics have seized on these remarks as evidence of the agencys

duplicity. But as the Electronic Frontier Foundation has pointed out, the intelligence community uses a different definition of

collect than other humans do, holding that it refers to the act of actively processing materials rather than, you know,

collecting them.

This job cannot be done responsibly if senators arent getting straight answers to direct questions, a frustrated

Wyden said this past week. (Nor is it always possible in these things to simply pretend its Opposite Day. Under federal law,

content includes details such as e-mail subject lines. But the NSA has held that it isnt parsing content when it evaluates

he subject lines of e-mails it has collected. Or is that collected?)

In the high-tech and business worlds, big data is all upside and potential. Data on a giant scale exposes truths hidden

n smaller sets. But in the policy realm, when big data is discussed at all, the conversation tends to focus on angst over

personal privacy and whether big data is a major threat.

Thats a limited view of whats at stake. The government would have a strong self-interest in knowing, for instance,whether some small slice of the 1.1 billion Facebook users was discussing a coup, even if it couldnt pinpoint the planners.

That would be particularly true if, at the same time, it saw an upswing in people pulling up Google Maps images of the

Ellipse across from the White House. Patterns are powerful.


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Obama has sought to dismiss the hype that weve been hearing, as he put it, about the NSAs data-crunching efforts

by arguing that theyre complex answers to national security challenges and ones that Congress has been fully briefed

on. But theres much to discuss about the nature of PRISM and similar programs before we get into the security nitty-gritty.

And if its a complicated discussion, all the evidence suggests that it isnt one that Congress is well equipped to have on its

own.

What else should that discussion cover? Theres what the intelligence world calls the mosaic effect when a nugget

of data that is insignificant on its own takes on new meaning when combined with other bits of information. The White

House warned of the risks of this effect in a new set of open-data rules it unveiled last month. Theres what big data means

or the relationship between the government and large tech firms; beyond PRISM, for instance, the White House relies on

data held by Google and Facebook to line up participants in its frequent online hangouts and chats. And then theres what it

means to be truly informed about what rights were giving away to the government the end-user terms of service, in

other words, for big data programs.

Old frameworks take us only so far. The Constitutional text provides us with the general principle that we arent

subject to unreasonable searches by the government, wrote yet another former University of Chicago law professor. It

cant tell us the Founders specific views on the reasonableness of an NSA computer data-mining operation. That was Sen.

Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope, not long before entering the White House.

In his military-industrial complex speech in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the American people that in

holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger

hat public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. He said, It is the task of statesmanship

o mold, to balance and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system,

ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

More than 50 years later, the task of the modern statesman and stateswoman is to engage the public in the work of

ntegrating the old and the new.

And if they dont, well, see you on the Internet.

dont want to threaten any warsZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

From page B1resume talks without Israel freezing settlement construction? Is Israel really willing to stop building

settlements?
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PABLO MARTINEZ

MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS Israeli President Shimon Peres, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

greeted President Obama when he arrived in Tel Aviv in March.

We can find a way to overcome this disagreement. Do you think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to

overcome it?

I dont want to go into details. I shall satisfy myself by saying there are ways to overcome. Do you think President

Abbas is a real partner for peace?

One hundred percent. When President Abbas recently spoke at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, his speech was

perceived by many to be hostile to Israel.

He wasnt speaking to our audience he was speaking to the ears of the Palestinians who criticize him. He has to

show toughness. But if you really want to judge Abu Mazen, how many Arabs do you know who have stood up and said, I

am from Safed [a town in the north of Israel], but I shall not return to Safed? He was risking his life. So youre saying

when Israelis use hard-line rhetoric, its returned by the other side.

When you engage in high voices, everybodys voice becomes high. Im not saying who started, who didnt start.

Turning to Syria, do you approve of the idea of the U.S. and some European countries arming the Syrian opposition?

Look, if it were dependent on me, I would pursue a totally different policy. I would turn to the Arab League and say:

Syria is a member of the Arab League. It is for you to enter Syria as a transitional government, stop the bloodshed, go to

elections and do it in the name of the United Nations all of us will support you. But how do you see the situation on the

ground in Syria?

There were times when we have talked about secure borders. Well, [now] we dont have secure peoples. Everybody is

ighting all over the place. We dont have peace or war or governments. Historically, the Middle East was governed by

empires. The empires drew the lines between nations without paying attention to the ethnicity of the peoples in the nations.


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Now, you dont have a single country that is cohesive in the Middle East. For that reason, you see civil wars all over the

place.

What is breaking up nations today is terror. Even the countries that encourage terror are becoming its victims. Iran, for

example. In Iraq, you have groups that encourage terror. Lebanon is broken by terror. Gaza is broken by terror. In Gaza,

you have four terrorist groups.

It is an end to the era of classical wars. Classical wars unified nations. But the terrorists dont have the full support of

any nation. Do you see the situation in Syria evolving into a war between Israel and Hezbollah, because Israel has said that

t wont allow Hezbollah to receive certain types of weapons?

We shall do whatever we can to prevent it, but I dont want to threaten any wars. Are you concerned about Israels

northern border, which has been so stable for many years?

Yes, Im concerned not only about the northern border; Im concerned about all borders. Im concerned about the

whole Middle East. I dont think that the Arab Spring is over. Now what can I say on the positive side? You know, there are

350 million Arabs. Ninetynine million of them are already online. The iPhone affected the situation in the Middle East [more]

han a declaration by Russia or America. Can you believe what has been going on in Turkey?

I dont know of any experts we have that forecasted it. Whats your assessment of the developments in Egypt and in

he Sinai?

I see more and more that Sinai is a problem for us but also a challenge for the Egyptians. I do not see that they can

remain indifferent, and they wont. They will not?

They will not. They [the Egyptian military] are making an effort, and we

responded to some of their requests. On alterations on the number of troops allowed in the Sinai under the Camp

David Accords?

In the deployment of forces, yes. The Jordanians are complaining about the Egyptians cutting off the naturalSee page

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11/14

SARAH A. KING FOR THE

WASHINGTON POST

tions or President Obamas clearinghouse of government information, Data.gov is that we no longer have to take so

much on faith. What do the data show? is the new What do you think?, the new Is this a good idea? But belief in the

clarifying power of data is its own kind of faith, and it is one Obama has embraced, even before winning the presidency. And

now, with the revelation that the National Security Agency is processing huge caches oftelephone records and Internet data, the American public is being asked to take on faith how data and how much

data is

being gathered and used in Washington.


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The big data presidency transcends intelligence-gathering and surveillance, encompassing the White Houses

approach on matters from health care to

reelection. A big-data fact sheet the White House put out in March 2012 upon the launch of its $200 million Big Data

Research and Development Initia

tive listed more than 85 examples of such efforts across a number of agencies. They include the CyberInfrastructure

or Billions of Electronic Records (CI-BER), led in part by the National Archives and the National Science Foundation, and

NASAs Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which the fact sheet described as a collaborative,

nternational effort to share and integrate Earth observation data. And the Defense Department is putting about $250

million a year into the research and development of such projects a big bet on big data, as the White House called it.

In the same way that past Federal investments in information-technology R&D led to dramatic advances in

supercomputing and the creation of the Internet, said a statement from John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office

of Science and Technology Policy, the initiative we are launching today promises to transform our ability to use Big Data for

scientific discovery, environmental and biomedical research, education, and national security.See page 24

These wont be Turkeys last protestsZoomBookmarkSharePrintListenTranslate

Prof. Soli zel says the Gezi Park demonstrations reveal a new, liberal Turkish identity

The ruling party can no longer present itself to the outside world as intent on establishing a liberal democratic order based on the rule

of law. And within Turkey, it has lost credibility in the eyes of the middle class.

From page B1The peppery smell of tear gas hung in the air of Istanbuls Gezi Park when I walked through with my

amily just after midnight on Wednesday. It was relatively quiet under the sycamore trees, a fleeting interlude betweenepisodes of turmoil. On Tuesday, police gassed the park and cleared surrounding Taksim Square with the help of water

canon and rubber bullets, scattering thousands of panicked protesters and sending many to take refuge in the nearby Divan

Hotel. Wednesday morning, defiant demonstrators would again fill the park some objecting to a government plan to

replace the trees with a shopping mall, others protesting the violence used by police, all united in their anger at Prime

Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogans increasingly authoritarian style of ruling.
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Police brought out the tear gas and water canon again on Saturday, emptying the park ahead of Erdogans triumphant

entry into Istanbul for a scheduled mass rally on Sunday. But even if the protests that have unsettled Turkey since late May

are coming to an end, this is not the end of the countrys unrest.

Efforts to explain what happened in Turkey these past few weeks have sought various historical analogies. Is this like

France in 1968? Or the American Occupy Wall Street movement? Or is it another Tahrir Square, an extension of the Arab

Spring? Is the state that was supposed to be the model for the new Arab world instead modeling itself on the regimes of

hat worlds ousted leaders?I see a different parallel: Irans Green Movement four years ago. As in Turkey, the majority of Iranian protesters

were educated, middle-class urbanites. The regime attacked peaceful demonstrations with the full range of brutal means at

ts disposal, ultimately crushed the movement and held onto power. It wasnt until this Friday that Iranian voters got to

elect a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and even then the choices were limited to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

oyalists.

Turkey, of course, is different from Iran in that it is an open society with free and fair elections. Its government

depends on popular support. But it appears that Erdogan will emerge from the protests with the approval of his core

constituency intact, and there is no viable challenger to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). They are certain to

maintain their grip at least for now.

The Gezi Park protest and the demonstrations it prompted in other Turkish cities have diminished the AKPs legitimacy

abroad and at home. The AKP can no longer present itself to the outside world as a party intent on establishing a liberal

democratic order based on the rule of law. And within Turkey, it has lost credibility in the eyes of those who supported it in

he past against the military and the middle class it nurtured.

Capitalizing on Turkeys decades-long economic liberalization and the European Union accession process, Erdogan

significantly raised the national income and the Turkish populations prosperity. He also pushed reforms that made housing,

health care and education more accessible. Turkey saw a veritable middle-class explosion with its attendant consumerism

and individualism.

It is a segment of this middle class, mainly secular, that has been most incensed at other aspects of the ruling partys

agenda. Long quiescent and atomized, the urban public revolted against the arbitrariness of the government. The anger


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blows against the increasing authoritarianism and discursive brutality of the prime minister, against efforts to keep citizens

rom taking part in decisions that affect their lives.

The discontent also has roots in the social costs of the AKPs economic policies and its construction craze. In fact, the

participation of groups from the more impoverished areas of Istanbul, as well as the involvement of soccer club fans, gave

he movement a cross-class identity.

Finally, the movement reflects resistance to attempts to regulate social and private life for example, imposing

urther restrictions on alcohol and on abortion and calling for women to have at least three children each.

With their protests, Turks have shown that they seek to redefine citizenship and to enlarge the liberal-democratic space

n the nations politics. The demonstrators, especially those in Taksim Square, have defied Erdogans strictly majoritarian

understanding of democracy. Their extraordinarily pluralist makeup runs counter to the ruling partys restrictive religious

and cultural definition of citizenship and society.

This civil, spontaneous, politically unaffiliated movement on a massive scale is unprecedented in Turkey. It reflects

deep-seated social impulses that wont go away even if, for the moment, they have been suppressed. And sooner or later it

will find a political outlet.

After all, this upheaval is about Turkeys future identity. And that identity is much better represented by the humor,

pluralism and liberalism of the protesters than by the dour disciplinarianism and provincial conservatism of the ruling party.

Syria Captures Suburb of Capital From Insurgents

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