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Italian FM
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UNESCO outraged
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INTERNATIONAL
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Iran coach
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“1000 Kilometers of
Watercolors” connects
Tehran to Shiraz
A R T & C U L T U R E
I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
12 Pages Price 5000 Rials 36th year NO.12217 Saturday FEBRUARY 28 2015 Esfand 9 1393 Jumada Al awwal 9 1436
Removal of all sanctions is a
‘precondition’ for ﬁnal deal: Larijani
Ansarullah
accuses
Saudis of
fueling unrest
to divide
Yemen
NEWS
Bahrain protester
on death row
urges rallies to
continue
An anti-regime protester in Bahrain
on death row has sent out a message
from prison, urging the Bahraini people to press ahead with their rallies
against the Manama regime.
In a video message from prison
released on Friday, Abbas al-Same
said that the Bahraini revolution
should continue. He also insisted
that he is innocent.
On Thursday, a Bahraini court
sentenced three people, among
them Abbas al-Same, to death and
seven others to life in prison after
convicting them of allegedly killing
three policemen in anti-regime protests in a village near the capital,
Manama, last year.
According to Bahrain’s main opposition group, al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, the supreme criminal court
also revoked the Bahraini citizenship
of eight of the defendants.
On March 3, 2014, three police ofﬁcers, including one from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were killed
in a bomb attack in Daih village
near Manama. However, no group
claimed responsibility for the explosion, which occurred as Bahraini
troops attacked the mourners of an
anti-regime activist, who had died in
prison a few days earlier.
The ruling, the latest in a series
of strict penalties handed down to
anti-regime protesters, once again
brought people out into the streets.
In the island city of Sitra and several villages, regime forces ﬁred tear
gas and rubber bullets to disperse
the protesters who were calling for
the release of all political prisoners.
Since mid-February 2011, thousands of anti-regime protesters
have held numerous demonstrations on the streets of Bahrain,
calling for House of Khalifa regime
to relinquish power. Scores of Bahrainis have been killed and hundreds
of others injured and arrested in the
ongoing crackdown on peaceful
demonstrations. (Source: Press TV)
Rouhani terms anti-Iran sanctions as ‘unjust and cruel’
T E H R A N
Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani has
highlighted that the country’s
oﬃcials “seek to take away
the tool of sanctions from the
enemy through negotiations
because sanctions are unjust,
cruel and in contravention of
human rights,” reaﬃrming
that “talks are the best way” to
put an end to the Iranian nuclear standoﬀ with the West.
Addressing reporters in the
central Iranian city of Qom on
Thursday, Rouhani also added
that the U.S. should take the
necessary steps to correct the
wrong steps it has taken in Iran’s
nuclear talks.
He stated that if the U.S. had
not prevented Iran and the three
European countries of Britain,
France, and Germany from
Political Desk —
reaching an agreement, such a
deal would have been concluded
by the end of 2004.
Iran is seeking the removal of sanctions against the
country through nuclear talks
with the 5+1 group, the president noted, adding that in the
course of the nuclear talks, Iran
has acted in a way that if the
talks fail to lead to an agreement, the world community
will know that the opposite
side is to blame.
U.S. oﬃcials have admitted
and told Congress that if they
fail in nuclear talks with Iran,
they will be isolated, Rouhani
added.
Elsewhere in his remarks,
Rouhani underlined the expanding relations between Iran
and European and Asian countries, particularly with China.
President.ir
The leader of the Ansarullah (Houthi)
movement, in an unusually combative
speech on Thursday, accused Saudi
Arabia, Yemen’s powerful neighbor,
of ﬁnancing armed opponents and
trying to divide the country.
The Ansarullah movement controls the capital, Sana’a, in northern
Yemen, and much of the nation’s
military. Yet their authority faces a
sharp challenge from Yemen’s former President, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who ﬂed to the southern
city of Aden on Saturday and, with
the backing of Saudi Arabia and
other Persian Gulf monarchies, declared that he was still the country’s
legitimate leader.
Yemen has been without a government since late January, when Hadi
and his cabinet resigned under pressure from the Ansarullah movement.
Now the country appears more
and more splintered between competing ﬁefs in the north and south,
raising fears that it will suﬀer the
same fate as Libya, riven by increasingly bloody factional ﬁghting between rival governments.
Contd. on P. 11
Iran not to allow enemies to use
tool of sanctions in talks: Rouhani
Syria domestic, exiled opposition agree to roadmap
Syria’s main domestic and exiled
opposition groups said on Friday that they had agreed a joint
draft roadmap for the ﬁrst time
calling for a transitional governing body and an end to the brutal conﬂict.
The draft document comes
after representatives from the
exiled Syrian National Coalition and the domestic National
Coordination
Committee for
Democratic Change (NCCDC)
met in the French capital, Paris.
“This is the ﬁrst time that
we have an agreement between both organizations, the
Coalition and the NCCDC,” said
Khalaf Dahowd, a member of
the NCCDC’s executive bureau.
Dahowd said representatives
from the two opposition groups
met in Paris between Sunday
and Tuesday, at talks hosted by
France but carried out without
international involvement.
“It was Syrian-Syrian. There
was no foreign power involved.
No one was in our meetings, and
that was very good,” he told AFP.
He said the two sides had
agreed a draft document based
on the United Nations Security
Council resolutions on Syria and
the so-called Geneva communiqué that emerged from peace
Syrian opposition chief negotiator Hadi al-Bahra (2nd L), spokesperson for the Syrian
National Coalition Louay Safi (2nd R) and General Secretary of the Syrian National
Council Badr Jamous (R) arrive to take part in a meeting during the second round of
peace talks, “Geneva II”, at the United Nations on February 14, 2014. in Geneva.
talks in the Swiss city in 2012.
In a statement, the National Coalition said the document
“speciﬁes that the primary goal
of negotiations with the Assad
regime is to establish a civil,
democratic, pluralistic system
that ensures equal rights and
duties for all Syrians.”
“It stresses that a regional
and international consensus is
needed for negotiations to succeed,” the statement added.
The National Coalition is the
key political representative of
Syria’s opposition and is oﬃcial-
ly recognized by much of the international community.
It has participated in several
rounds of failed peace talks and insists that Syria’s President Bashar
Assad must step down in any
resolution of the country’s nearly
four-year-old conﬂict.
The NCCDC, which is also
known as the National Coordination Body, is part of
the country’s small so-called
“tolerated” opposition, operating inside Syria under tight
restrictions.
The two opposition groups
met in the Egyptian capital, Cairo in January, but the Coalition
was only represented informally, and no agreement emerged.
A key sticking point in peace
talks has been the future of Assad.
The Coalition insists he must
step down, while the NCCDC has
called for a transitional body,
without referring speciﬁcally to
Assad’s role.
Dahowd said the draft document referenced the Geneva communiqué’s call for a transitional body with full powers.
“The Geneva communiqué
talks about a transitional government body that should have
full power, so that includes executive powers,” he said.
The meeting drew praise
from Washington, a key backer
of the Coalition.
“The effort reflects the
moderate opposition’s ongoing work for a democratic,
pluralistic, united Syria that
fully respects the state of
law and the rights of every
citizen through a negotiated
process consistent with the
principles of the Geneva communiqué,” State Department
spokeswoman Jen Psaki said
on Thursday.
(Source: AFP)
Bomb blasts, mortars kill 8 in and around Baghdad
At least eight people have been killed in a series of bombings and mortar attacks on areas in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
Iraqi police and medical oﬃcials said two
people lost their lives and four others sustained injuries when mortar shells slammed
into a residential area in Baghdad’s southern
district of Dora on Friday.
In the western neighborhood of Sadiyah,
a bomb blast killed three civilians near a
wholesale vegetable market.
A similar bomb attack near an outdoor
market in Sabaa al-Bour city, located approximately 28 kilometers (18 miles) northwest
of Baghdad, also killed three people and
wounded eight others.
Meanwhile, security forces have recov-
ered six bodies with gunshot wounds to the
head and chest in a northern Baghdad suburb.
No group has claimed responsibility for
the acts of violence, but such incidents are
often attributed to the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) terrorists.
Iraq casualties in January
According to the UN Assistance Mission
for Iraq (UNAMI), a total of 1,375 Iraqis
lost their lives last month, while 2,240 others were injured as a result of attacks in
the country.
The UN mission added that 790 civilians
were among the fatalities. The number of
civilians injured also stood at 1,469. Violence
also claimed the lives of a further 585 mem-
bers of the Iraqi army, while 771 others sustained injuries.
A great portion of the casualties was
recorded in Baghdad, where 256 civilians
were killed and 758 others were wounded.
ISIL started its terrorist activities in Iraq
in early June 2014. The heavily-armed terrorist group took control of the city of Mosul
before sweeping through parts of the country’s Sunni Arab heartland.
Iraqi soldiers, police units, Kurdish forces, Shia volunteers and Sunni tribesmen
are engaged in joint operations to drive
back the terrorists from the areas they
have under control.
(Source: Press TV)
2
Iran wraps
up naval
drills, tests
‘strategic’
weapon
TEHRAN — Iran
Political Desk on Friday successfully test-ﬁred “strategic”
weapon on the last day of the Payambar Azam 9 (the Great Prophet 9)
naval drills, attended by the Islamic
Revolution Guard Corps’ naval, land,
and airborne forces.
On the sidelines of the drills that
kicked oﬀ on Wednesday, Rear
Admiral Ali Fadavi, the IRGC naval
commander, said the new weapon
would be critical in any future naval
war against enemies.
“The new weapon will have a
very decisive role in adding our naval
power in confronting threats, particularly by the Great Satan,” he told the
guard’s website, sepahanews.com, in
a reference to the country’s enemies.
Fadavi told state TV that details
of weapon will possibly be made
public in the coming years.
The exercises were held near the
Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which about a ﬁfth of
the world’s oil passes.
On Thursday and on the second
day of the exercises, the IRGC forces
also tested some recently developed
equipment and weapons such as the
Jamarat, which works like a cruise missile and has a range of 14 kilometers
and the RPH reconnaissance drone
equipped with powerful cameras.
NEWS
Italian
lawmakers urge
recognition of
Palestinian state
Italian lawmakers on Friday backed
a non-binding resolution that encourages the government to recognize Palestine as a state, a move
that underlines European frustration over stalled Middle East peace
negotiations.
European countries have become increasingly critical of Israel,
which since the collapse of the latest U.S.-sponsored talks last April
has pressed on with building settlements on territory the Palestinians
want for their state.
Italy’s Chamber of Deputies voted by 300 to 45 to pass the motion
presented by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD).
While most developing countries recognize Palestine as a state,
most Western European governments do not, supporting the Israeli
and U.S. position that an independent Palestinian state should emerge
from negotiations with Israel.
Friday’s symbolic vote does not
change the position of the Italian
government which, like other European countries, still supports a negotiated two-state solution.
Ireland, Britain and France held
similar votes in parliament toward
the end of last year. Sweden went
further, oﬃcially recognizing Palestine.
The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank and
Gaza, with its capital in east Jerusalem (al-Quds).
While Gaza’s boundaries are
clearly deﬁned, the precise territory
of what would constitute Palestine
in the West Bank and east Jerusalem will only be determined via
negotiations with Israel on a twostate solution.
Contd. on P. 11
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I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
MEDIA MONITOR
TEHRAN – An Iranian helicopter
crashed into the mountainous
Emamzadeh Ebrahim area in Darband, northern Tehran on Thursday, leaving all three onboard dead,
the Azad News Agency reported.
The Iranian Helicopter Renovation and Logistics Company (PANHA) Managing Director Brigadier
General Mohammad Ali AhmadAbadi announced on Friday that
the helicopter belonged to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
Early reports had claimed that
the aircraft belonged to Iran’s
armed forces.
Iranian
Navy’s 33rd
Fleet docks
in Jakarta
TEHRAN — The Iranian Navy’s 33rd Fleet of warships
berthed at Tanjung Priok, a
sub-district of North Jakarta,
Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday,
the Fars news agency reported.
The ﬂeet consists of the Bandar
Abbas, a logistic watercraft, and
the Naqdi, a warship.
Members of the Iranian Embassy in Indonesia and a number of Indonesian military oﬃcials greeted
the Iranian ﬂeet upon arrival.
The ﬂeet departed Iran in January
with the missions of protecting maritime transportation routes and educating a class of Imam Khomeini Marine Sciences University students.
The ﬂeet also berthed in Colombo Harbour, Sri Lanka, for a 3-day
stay on February 9, during which
the students visited some marine
science centers in Sri Lanka.
This was the ﬁrst visit to Jakarta
by an Iranian ﬂeet in 25 years.
Brahimi:
ISIL son
to alQaida, born
after U.S.
invasion of
Iraq
T
I
O
N
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
TEHRAN — Prominent ulema
or religious scholars of Qom
have urged Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani to pay special
attention to public welfare,
Tabnak reported.
Rouhani, who visited Qom
on Wednesday as part of his provincial visits, met prominent religious
scholars of the city, where they expressed optimistic views over the
Rouhani administration’s policies in
diﬀerent sections.
They nonetheless demanded
special attention to economy,
healthcare, social welfare, and employment in particular.
Ayatollahs Abdul-Karim Mousavi
Ardabili, Nasser Makarem Shirazi,
Vahid Khorasani, and Jafar Sobhani
were among the religious scholars
the president visited.
TEHRAN — Former United Nations and Arab League envoy to
Syria says the real cause behind
the formation of the so-called
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was the U.S. invasion
of Iraq in the 2000s, according
to Keyhan newspaper.
“ISIL is son to the al-Qaida, to
which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi used
to be the leader,” Lakhdar Brahimi
stated, adding, “The real cause for
ISIL to appear in Iraq was the U.S.
invasion of the country.”
The U.S. paved the ground for ISIL’s
appearance in Iraq, Brahimi reiterated,
denouncing the U.S. invasion as a
“great mistake” and the cause of possible disintegration of the Arab country.
The UN diplomat also criticized
the UN Security Council for internal disagreements on the current
situations in Syria.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / p o l i t i c s
Leader: Iran’s scientific advancements
blessings of ‘jihad and martyrdom’
TEHRAN — Supreme Leader of the Islamic
Po l i t i c a l D e s k Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has
said that Iran’s scientiﬁc advancements are the blessings of “jihad and martyrdom on God’s path.”
The Leader made the remarks on February 2, during a meeting with members of headquarters tasked with commemorating
martyrs of educational, academic, and art centers, which were
made public on Thursday.
During the gathering, the Leader stated that the course of
progress in a society enriched with the culture of martyrdom and
altruism would not be stopped or moved backward.
Failure will have no sense in a society where “remembrance
of martyrs” and “issue of martyrdom” are an “everlasting truth”
within the community, he stated.
“Although hegemonic powers have gained more dominance
over the oppressed ones by their tools, an identity named the Islamic Revolution is standing against the hegemonic powers bravely
with reliance on divine and moral principles,” the Leader noted.
Leader says ‘culture of martyrdom’ is opposite of Western
‘culture of individualism’
The Leader also said that “culture of martyrdom” means the
“culture of altruism,” which is the opposite of the “Western culture of individualism”.
FARS
IRNA
TEHRAN — Iranian Minister of
Cooperative, Labor, and Social
Welfare has said that the government has prepared diﬀerent scenarios for oil revenues based on an oil
price of 40 to 75 dollars per barrel.
The government has even prepared programs for a post-sanctions
era, Ali Rabiei said at a meeting in
Shirgah, Mazandaran Province on
Thursday, IRNA reported.
He pointed to economic growth
rates achieved by the Rouhani administration and added, “For the
next year, we will follow a 5-percent
economic growth.”
“The government is determined
to pursue the ﬁght against poverty
in health, food, and educational
spheres,” Rabiei asserted.
“The 11th administration underlines the interests of every individual
in the society,” he asserted, adding
that in the past few months, 8 million people have been covered by
the health insurance plans.
TABNAK
Ulema urge
Rouhani
to pay due
attention
to public
welfare
A
Zarif and Kerry to meet in Switzerland on March 5
By staﬀ and agencies
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at
a press conference on Thursday that U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry will travel to Montreux, Switzerland, to met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif next week as part of the ongoing EU-coordinated talks between Iran and the 5+1
group (the ﬁve permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) nuclear negotiations.
She said, “Secretary Kerry will travel to Geneva,
Switzerland, on March 2nd to address the high-level
segment of the 28th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. While in Geneva, the Secretary will
also meet with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to discuss Ukraine and regional issues of common interest.”
She also stated that a nuclear deal with Iran is not
just about the U.S. national security interests, adding
that it is about the security of the global community.
The European Union also announced on Friday
that senior oﬃcials from Iran and six powers will
hold more talks in Switzerland on March 5.
The talks between political directors will be preceded by a series of bilateral meetings, EU spokeswoman Catherine Ray told reporters.
“The EU continues to make all possible eﬀorts to
facilitate these negotiations so that they end in success,” she said.
Negotiators from Iran and the 5+1 group hope to
meet a self-imposed March 31 deadline for an initial
political deal.
Removal of all sanctions is a ‘precondition’ for final Iran nuclear deal: Larijani
TEHRAN — Iranian
Po l i t i c a l D e s k Parliament Speak-
er Ali Larijani has described the removal of all sanctions against Iran as
a “precondition” for a comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and
the 5+1 group of world powers.
“Iranian nation is determined to
strongly deal with the bullying of
the Western states in nuclear issue,”
Larijani said on Thursday, underlining Iran’s firm stance throughout the
ongoing nuclear talks with the world
powers.
The world powers seek to hamper
Iran’s progress in the nuclear science,
he said, adding, “The country will not
back down an iota from its rights.”
Larijani said Iran has gained access
to nuclear science through endeavors of its youth, and the country is
not to give it up under any circumstances.
He also criticized the efforts of
the Western countries, and the U.S.
in particular, for depriving Iran from
its legitimate rights in making use of
Disintegration of Yemen benefits no
one, Iran says
TEHRAN — Disin-
Po l i t i c a l D e s k tegration of Yemen
will beneﬁt no one in the Mideast region,
the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for
Arab and African Aﬀairs has stated.
Making the comment on Friday, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also
termed as a “strategic” mistake efforts by certain sides in Yemen to
wage a civil war in the country.
He also noted that Iran will support
Yemen’s “national unity” and integration.
Yemen has been in a state of political crisis since 2011.
In January 2015, Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi
resigned. He, however, rescinded
his resignation on 21 February and
declared he was still the legitimate
president in Aden.
peaceful nuclear energy.
Iran stands against those who
seek to deprive the country from nuclear science, he said.
Those who fought with us during the 1980-1988 Iraqi imposed war
have put their strength to hurdle the
country’s scientific developments in
nuclear sciences, he said.
Leader twits message on books about
Russia’s October Revolution
TEHRAN
—
Su-
Po l i t i c a l D e s k preme Leader of
the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah
Seyed Ali Khamenei has twitted a
message on book written about the
October Revolution in Russia.
“I’ve read so much on Oct.
Rev.;#Sholokhov’s “The Quiet Don”
is good but #Tolstoi’s “The Ordeal”
is better in depicting a #revolution,”
Ayatollah Khamenei said in his twitter message.
The October Revolution, oﬃcially
known as the Great October Socialist
Revolution, and commonly referred
to as Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution,
was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917.
Mogherini says an accord could transform ties with Tehran: WSJ
By staﬀ and agencies
Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief,
says a nuclear agreement between Iran and 5+1
group fo world powers could transform ties between Tehran and the EU, the Wall Street Journal
reported on Thursday.
She said an agreement “could open the way for a normal diplomatic relation.” Tehran is one of the relatively
few capitals where the EU does not have a mission.
She said a deal could also allow a regional framework to emerge with Iran that could tackle the Middle East’s many crises.
Italian FM due to meet Zarif
KEYHAN
Gov’t has
prepared
scenarios
for $40-75
oil revenues
ANA
Chopper
crash in
northern
Tehran kills
three
N
TEHRAN — Italian
Po l i t i c a l D e s k Foreign Minister Pao-
lo Gentiloni was scheduled to arrive in
Tehran on Saturday and meet with Iranian
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
as well as a number of Iranian oﬃcials.
The Italian foreign minister’s trip
is within the framework of boosting bilateral ties and examining the
international developments, ISNA
reported.
During his two-day stay in the Iranian capital, Gentiloni and Zarif will have
bilateral talks to reinvigorate mutual
cooperation in diﬀerent areas, and will
also discuss regional and international
developments, according to the Fars
new agency.
Gentiloni also plans to meet Iran’s
President Hassan Rouhani.
The trip was to take place while Iran
and the 5+1 group of world powers (the
United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, and Germany) are scheduled to meet
at ministerial and deputy ministerial level
in Montreux, Switzerland next week.
“If out of a series of crises in the Middle East …
and the Iranian nuclear talks, we manage to get the
opportunity for shaping a diﬀerent regional framework in the Middle East, this would be a major gamechanger for our security and the stability of our region,” she said.
Asked if she believed the two sides were coming close
to a deal, Mogherini said, “Yes, we are getting close.”
The nuclear talks between Iran and the 5+1 group
(the ﬁve permanent members of the UN Security
Council plus Germany) are getting close to agreement, she noted.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
UNESCO outraged over terrorist attack
against Mosul Museum
T
tural heritage and adopts legally-binding measures to counter illicit traﬃcking of antiquities and cultural objects
from Iraq and Syria.
“This is why I have immediately
seized the President of the Security Council to ask him to convene an
emergency meeting of the Security
Council on the protection of Iraq’s cultural heritage as an integral element
for the country’s security,” Bokova
stressed.
Large statues from the UNESCO
world Heritage site of Hatra, as well
Israeli attorney general orders probe
into Netanyahu residence spending
Israeli Attorney General Yehuda
Weinstein said he had ordered a preliminary investigation into alleged
ﬁscal misconduct at the private and
state residences of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.
The announcement follows a
scathing report by the State Comptroller national watchdog report, but
noted the probe will begin only after
the March 17 elections, and stressed
that Netanyahu himself is not suspected of involvement in the misdemeanours.
The ﬁndings, dealing with the ofﬁcial Jerusalem residence and Netanyahu’s private Caesarea home, as
well as the testimonies of a former
employee at the residence, raised
only mild suspicions, a statement
from Weinstein’s oﬃce read.
“But the state attorney’s oﬃce
believes that the variety of aﬀairs justiﬁes a probe, at the end of which it
3
Kurdish fighters advance
on ISIL-held Syrian town
Syrian activists and Kurdish representatives said Kurdish
ﬁghters have captured dozens of villages following days
of clashes with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) terrorist group in
northeastern Syria.
The Kurdish ﬁghters,
known as the People’s
Protection Units or YPG,
have been making territorial gains since capturing
the Syrian border town of
Kobani (Ayn Al-Arab) last
month following a severalmonth struggle.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights says Kurdish ﬁghters, supported by Arab
militias and airstrikes from
the U.S.-backed coalition, on Friday captured the eastern
and southeastern approaches to the town of Tel Hamees
in Hassakeh province.
Nawaf Khalil, a YPG spokesman, says Kurdish forces
have actually entered the ISIL-held town.
The Observatory says ground battles and air strikes
around Tel Hamees have killed at least 175 ISIL ﬁghters in
the past several days.
(Source: AP)
By staﬀ & agencies
he United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) expressed outrage over
terrorist attack against Mosul Museum. The head of the United Nations
agency mandated to protect heritage
sites said that she is “deeply shocked”
by the footage depicting the destruction of statues and other artifacts at
the Mosul Museum in Iraq, The UN
News Center reported.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) terrorist group has released a video showing its ﬁghters using sledgehammers to smash ancient
artifacts in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul.
The ﬁve-minute video shows a
group of bearded men in a museum
using hammers and drills to destroy
several large statues, including one
depicting a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to 9th
century BC.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization DirectorGeneral, Irina Bokova, condemned the
“deliberate attack against Iraq’s millennial history and culture”, calling
it an inﬂammatory incitement to violence and hatred.
“This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy – this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conﬂict in Iraq,” Bokova
said.
She emphasized that the attack
was in direct violation to the most recent Security Council Resolution 2199
that condemns the destruction of cul-
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
will be decided whether to launch a
criminal investigation,” it said.
The alleged misconduct at the
residences of Netanyahu, who is campaigning for re-election next month,
included mishandling of funds from
recycled bottles by Netanyahu’s wife
Sarah, as well as the purchase of garden furniture for the weekend residence in Caesarea.
The report also insinuated public fund misconduct in the employment of an electrician for the Caesarea home on weekends and holidays.
Weinstein noted the importance
of cautious conduct in the weeks
leading up to elections.
“One must note that in the material accumulated to this point, there is
no evidence that raises the suspicion
of involvement of the prime minister
himself in the said deeds,” the statement read.
(Source: AFP)
as unique artifacts from the archaeological sites of the governorate of Nineveh have been destroyed or defaced
in the Mosul Museum, among many
other pieces.
“The systematic destruction of
iconic components of Iraq’s rich and
diverse heritage that we have been
witnessing over the past months is
intolerable and it must stop immediately,” said the Director-General, reiterating her numerous previous statements on this matter.
ISIL has destroyed a number of
shrines, including Muslim holy sites,
in order to eliminate what it views as
heresy.
The group is also widely reported
to have sold ancient artifacts on the
black market in order to ﬁnance their
bloody campaign across the region.
The video, which bore the logo of
ISIL’s media arm, was posted on social
media accounts aﬃliated with ISIL.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city
and the surrounding Nineveh province
fell to ISIL in June, after Iraqi security
forces melted away.
Eight Spanish combatants arrested
after returning from Ukraine
Police on Friday arrested eight Spaniards who they said had returned from
ﬁghting alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine, sources close to the investigation said.
Oﬃcers detained the eight suspects
in six regions across Spain, the interior
ministry said in a statement. A source
described them as “pro-Russian” and
far-left in ideology.
“Eight Spanish combatants have
been arrested who had returned
from Ukraine after taking part in the
conﬂict in the Donbass region, in which
they are accused of various crimes”,
the government statement said.
The source close to the investigation said the charges could include possession of weapons of war, complicity
in homicide and violating Spain’s neutrality in the Ukraine conﬂict.
Separatists in the eastern Donbass
region are battling those of the Ukrainian government, which is backed by
the West. The conﬂict has killed at least
5,800 people since April.
The conﬂict has raised tensions
between the West and Moscow to
heights reminiscent of the Cold War.
The source said the Spanish suspects
were inspired by the International Brigades, the multinational volunteer forces
that fought against Francisco Franco’s
uprising during the Spanish Civil War.
The source said the combatants had
posted online pictures of weapons and
messages about their commitment to
ﬁghting in Ukraine.
In one web post dated August 2014,
a Spanish left-wing group, invoking the
example of the International Brigades,
called on supporters to go to eastern
Ukraine to ﬁght against “the cancer of
fascism” that it said was spreading in
Ukraine.
Police were continuing searches,
the interior ministry said.
(Source: AFP)
Obama to blame for ISIL rise, kill them like Nazis: Palin
In an emotional speech before Republican activists, former GOP VP (Republican Vice Presidential Candidate) nominee Sarah Palin blamed
the Obama administration for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist
group in the Middle East.
The former Alaska governor was invited to
the Conservative Political Action Conference,
an annual Republican meeting, to speak about
American war veterans and the challenges they
face, but seized the opportunity to mount a
scalding critique of President Barack Obama.
The U.S. president, Palin told her audience in
National Harbor, Maryland, has failed to crack
down on ISIL terrorists in Iraq and stop their
growth into the force they are now because
he failed to keep a residual force of American
troops there.
“The rise of ISIL is the direct result of this administration’s refusal to heed that warning,” Palin said. “The Middle East is a tinderbox and it’s
coming apart at the seams...ISIL expands, it
takes back land we just spilled blood to secure.”
“Did we actually win in Iraq and Afghanistan
before we waved that white flag? The jury is still
out. But when evil terrorists are on the march
screaming from Syria to Iraq to Libya and Yemen and the streets of Paris, well it doesn’t look
like victory,” she added.
Palin went on to blast Obama’s comments on
religions calling not to equate Islam with terrorism.
“Lecturing Christians to get off our high horse
about radicalism won’t stop the extremists from
killing Christians,” Palin said. ”Stop blaming the
victim and wake up, Mr. President. While Christians bow our heads to pray for you, radical Islamists want to cut off your head.”
The Republican politician then took issue with
recent comments by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, who said that the U.S. could
not beat the extremists simply by killing them.
“They say we can’t kill our way out of
war,” Palin said. “Really? Tell that to the Nazis.
Oh wait, you can’t because they’re dead. We
killed them.”
(Source: RT)
Suspected suicide bomber detained near U.S. consulate in Istanbul
Turkish police have arrested a suspected suicide
bomber who threatened to detonate a bomb near
the United States Consulate General in Istanbul, according to local media.
The police received a tipoﬀ that the suspect had
parked his vehicle, containing explosives, near the U.S.
Consulate General in the Sariyer district of Istanbul.
The attacker, described as a man in his thirties, shouted
that he would detonate the bomb. Turkey’s Dogan
News Agency reported that he claimed there were ex-
plosives in his vehicle.
Turkish Special Forces managed to apprehend
the man, according to the Hurriyet Daily News, who
was described as being mentally ill. He was taken for
medical treatment.
Initial reports said that he was not carrying a
bomb.
Photos and videos claiming to show the would-be
suicide bomber have been posted on social media.
They depict a man wearing a black jacket with his
hand in his pocket.
Following the incident, Turkish police sealed oﬀ
the street near the consulate, a witness told Reuters.
Earlier, a U.S. diplomat said that the consulate
had taken all necessary precautionary measures after the alert.
In January, a suicide bomber attacked a police
station in Istanbul’s tourist Sultanahmet district,
leaving one oﬃcer dead and one injured.
(Source: RT)
German MPs approve
Greece bailout extension
Germany’s parliament has approved a four-month extension of Greece’s ﬁnancial bailout, despite unease over the
new government in Athens.
Greece was granted the extension by its European
creditors on Friday in exchange for a commitment to
budget reforms.
“This is not about new billions for Greece, not about
changing this program,” Finance Minister Wolfgang
Schaeuble assured parliament ahead of the vote.
“It’s about providing additional time to complete this
program successfully,” the ﬁnance minister said.
Lawmakers voted 542-32 to back the bailout extension. There were 13 abstentions.
Germany is among the countries that needed to approve the deal in its national parliament.
Comments by Greek oﬃcials casting doubt on their
promise to privatization deals and raising the possibility
of further debt relief had irked some in Germany in the
run-up to the vote.
(Source: AP)
Third man arrested over
Copenhagen attacks
Danish police said they have arrested a third man suspected
of assisting a gunman who killed two people in attacks in
the Danish capital, Copenhagen earlier this month.
Police declined to comment further on Friday’s arrest,
other than saying the “young man” would face a custody
hearing on Saturday, the AP news agency reported. The suspect was not named.
A Copenhagen court on Thursday allowed authorities to
continue holding two other men accused of helping Omar
El-Hussein, who used an assault riﬂe to kill a Danish ﬁlmmaker attending a free speech event on February 14 in Copenhagen.
Hours later, El-Hussein killed a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue with a handgun. Five police oﬃcers also
were wounded in both episodes. El-Hussein was killed in a
police shootout later that day.
(Source: AP)
Former Israeli Mossad
chief slams Netanyahu on
Iran handling
A former chief of Israel’s Mossad spy agency is slamming
the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling
of the Iranian nuclear isuue.
Ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious speech to
the U.S. Congress, Meir Dagan said “the person who
has caused the greatest strategic damage to Israel on
the Iranian issue is the prime
minister.” The comments
were published on Friday in
the Yediot Ahronot daily.
Dagan has been a ﬁerce
critic of Netanyahu’s approach to Iran, emerging as
a key opponent of a potential Israeli military attack
against its nuclear facilities.
He said Netanyahu’s trip to
Washington, over White
House objections, is pointless and counterproductive.
Dagan directed the Mossad from 2002 to 2010, a period when it reportedly carried out covert attacks against
Iranian nuclear scientists and unleashed cyber-attacks
that delayed Iran’s progression in its nuclear drive.
(Source: AP)
4
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
E C O N O M Y
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m y
Oil sector successful, Iran says
NEWS
Producer Price Index in
Iran rises 15.3%
TEHRAN — The Producer Price Index
Economic Desk (PPI) in Iran rose by 15.3 percent in
the 12-month period ending the last day of the eleventh
calendar month of Bahman (February 19), compared to the
same period of last year, the Central Bank of Iran reported.
This is a change of 11.4 percent in the month of Bahman
compared to same month in the previous year.
Industry and service indices rose by 6.6 percent and
22.4 percent respectively compared to the previous year’s
indices.
PPI measures the average change in selling prices
received by domestic producers of goods and services over
time. PPI in Iran is measured based on prices of 708 items
of goods and services categorized into eight groups of
agriculture, forestation, and ﬁshery; industry; transportation
and warehousing; hotels and restaurants; information and
telecommunication; education; health and social welfare;
and other public and private services.
The core PPI can serve multiple roles in improving
investment-making decisions because it can serve as a
leading indicator for Consumer Price Index (CPI), which the
most frequently cited measure of inﬂation.
Greek economy contracts by
0.4 percent in 4Q
ATHENS (AFP) — Greece’s troubled economy contracted
by 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 instead of the
0.2-percent ﬁgure given earlier this month, the state statistics
agency said on Friday.
“Available seasonally adjusted data indicate that in
the fourth quarter of 2014 the gross domestic product
in volume terms decreased by 0.4 percent compared
with the third quarter of 2014 against the decrease of 0.2
percent that was calculated for the ﬂash estimate,” the
agency said.
The correction also aﬀected the economy’s performance
over the year, with slim annual growth trimmed to 0.7
percent compared to 0.8 percent in the previous estimate,
according to AFP calculations.
The quarter-on-quarter contraction was the ﬁrst since
Greece in exited a six-year recession last year.
Economic reforms under Greece’s 240-billion-euro
($270-billion) bailout slowed after a government reshuﬄe
in June and in the last weeks of the year, with the country
beset political uncertainty over eﬀorts to elect a new
president.
The failure to elect a president triggered early elections
in January that saw the anti-austerity Syriza come to power
and is currently locked in tense negotiations with the EU
and IMF to reverse many reforms but also lower taxes and
increase social spending to boost growth.
TEHRAN (UPI) — Most sectors of the Iranian
economy are performing well, with the oil sector
in particular performing as expected, the country’s
deputy oil minister said.
Iranian budgetary planners said they’re taking the
steps necessary to reduce the leverage of oil revenue
in the nation’s economy. Deputy Oil Minister Mansour
Moazzami told the Oil Ministry’s oﬃcial news website,
Shana, “positive” developments were emerging
in most sectors of the Iranian economy.
“Our ministry successfully fulﬁlled its tasks related to
increasing production capacity of oil and gas and could
provide feedstock and fuel needs of large industries of
the country without interruption,” he said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week claimed
an economic “miracle” when announcing inﬂation
was down from 40 percent under the administration
of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to around 16 percent.
Three years ago, oil revenue accounted for half of
the Iranian budget. Members of a planning commission
said they envision oil accounting for about a quarter of
the budget for the next Iranian year, which begins midMarch.
China under pressure as money
floods out of the country
For years, China has kept its
currency from strengthening too
much against the dollar. Now, it
might need to arrest a slide in the
value of the yuan to prevent strain
in the country’s ﬁnancial system.
A sharp depreciation could send
more money ﬂeeing the country,
aﬀecting domestic property and
debt markets. It could also make
it harder for Chinese businesses to
repay U.S. dollar debt.
The yuan -- or renminbi -- has lost
nearly 1% against the dollar in the
last two months, after falling 2.5%
last year, and investors are losing
faith in a rebound.
Worried
investors
initially
pulled money out of China over
poor economic growth prospects,
leading to currency depreciation.
But the two trends are linked,
according to RBS economist
Tiﬀany Qiu, who said that “massive
currency
depreciation
again
may have caused further capital
outﬂow.”
Experts say currency volatility
and capital ﬂight are among many
risks that China faces as it reforms
its ﬁnancial system and integrates
into the global economy.
Giving markets a greater role
makes it harder to maintain strict
controls on money coming in and
out of the country. And promoting
the yuan as a global currency means
the government needs to get used
to more ﬂuctuations in its value.
All eyes will be on the
government next week, when it will
announce its economic agenda.
Historically, China has kept tight
control of the yuan. Favorable
exchange rates have helped to
boost exports and manufacturing,
and drawn accusations from the
U.S. that the currency has been
kept artiﬁcially low.
But Beijing has begun to loosen
its grip -- last March, the central
bank doubled the permitted trading
range for the yuan.
Since then, the currency has
largely moved down as concerns
about slowing economic growth
have spread.
(Source: CNN)
PICTURE OF THE DAY
UK business investment
slips as oil prices fall
Crude price shock sends Canadian
oil service companies into whirlwind
The crude oil price collapse has
forced some Canadian oil service
companies to cut their workforces,
budgets, and salaries, as their
energy-producing customers have
been struggling with their own
budget cuts and market uncertainty.
Calfrac Well Services Ltd. and
Trican Well Service Ltd., both based
out of Calgary, are two of the most
recent examples of companies
showing signs of a struggle amid a
slowdown in drilling activity across
North America.
Oilﬁeld services and hydraulic
fracturing
company
Calfrac
announced on Wednesday that it
will cut over $25 million from its
general and administrative costs,
as it released its fourth quarter
revenue report.
The ﬁrm will be slashing executive
salaries by around 10 percent and
directors’ pay by 20 percent starting
in April. Calfrac was also forced
to shut down its operations in
Colombia.
“As a result of the decline in crude
oil prices, the company’s customers
Sweden’s
Ericsson sues
Apple in patent
dispute
By Shana
LONDON (Reuters) — Investment by businesses in Britain
fell at its sharpest rate in nearly six years in the last quarter
of 2014, hit by lower investment in the petroleum sector as
global oil prices fell.
As estimated in a preliminary reading, British gross
domestic product between October and December grew
by a quarterly 0.5 percent, slowing from 0.7 percent in
the third quarter, the Oﬃce for National Statistics said on
Thursday.
That was the slowest quarterly growth rate in a year.
In year-on-year terms, growth was 2.7 percent, also
unchanged from last month’s preliminary estimate by the
ONS.
Online registration for 20th
Iran Oil Show started
MAJOR CURRENCIES
Currency
To U.S.
Dollars
To IR.
Rial*
To U.S.
Dollars
Currency
To IR.
Rial*
US dollar
1
34330
UAE dirham
0.272
9430
British Pound
1.544
53410
EURO
1.123
39300
*The free market rates
(Sources: Mehrnews.com & xe.com)
MAJOR COMMODITIES
Light Crude $ / barrel
48.17
Silver $ / troy ounce
Gold $ / troy ounce
1,210.10 Platinum $ / troy ounce
Copper $ / pound
2.71
Wheat ¢ / bushel
16.58
1,173.60
500.5
Source: cnnmoney.com
The first sample of Iranian-made aqueous solution, which is highly used in gas sweetening process, was unveiled on Wednesday. Amine gas treating
solutions, also known as gas sweetening and acid gas removal solutions, are used in refineries, and are also used in petrochemical plants, natural gas
processing plants, and other industries.
Ukraine pays
Gazprom
$15m for 24
hours worth of
gas
NEWS IN BRIEF
TEHRAN — Online registration for the 20th International Oil,
Gas, Reﬁning and Petrochemical Exhibition of Iran (Iran Oil
Show) starts at 10:00 today and will end at 10:00 on Sunday.
The timing for ﬁnal registration will be announced later
with the goal of allocating space to participants, the public
relations department of the National Iranian Oil Company
reported.
Applicants can refer to www.iran-oilshow.ir for further
information.
The 20th Iran Oil Show will be held on May 6-9, 2015 at the
Tehran Permanent International Fairgrounds.
Ukraine’s Naftogaz
has paid Gazprom $15
million for gas delivery.
At current levels, the
prepayment covers one
day’s gas consumption
and will be spent by
Tuesday, Gazprom
spokesperson Sergey
Kupriyanov said.
“If Naftogaz paid for
another 24 hours, it
means the resources
would last through
Monday till Tuesday,” he
said. The relatively small
prepayment suggests
Kiev is buying time before
trilateral talks in Brussels
on March 2nd.
Germany’s
Bundestag
okays
Greece’s
bailout
extension
in Canada and the United States have
lowered their 2015 capital budgets in
the order of 20 to 40 percent from
2014,” Calfrac’s president and chief
executive, Fernando Aguilar, told
analysts.
The biggest concern is how
cheaper
crude
will
impact
equipment utilization and pricing
in 2015. “Customers are taking a
cautious approach until there is
more certainty as to when oil prices
will recover,” Aguilar added.
One
of
Calfrac’s
biggest
competitors, Trican, announced
similar cuts – including slashing
salaries and costs – after cutting
600 positions. All Canadian and US
employees will receive a 10 percent
cut in average compensation,
according to the ﬁrm’s press release.
Oil prices have plummeted by at
least 50 percent since the summer.
The situation was made worse when
the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) opted
not to cut its daily output levels in
November.
(Source: RT)
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel also
supported the extension,
but many members of her
own Christian Democratic
party (CDU) were critical
of further extensions to
the Greek bailout in the
last weeks. The main
opposition party, the
Green, had seconded the
motion too. Other EU
countries will also vote
on the plan approved by
the European Commission
on Tuesday, but the vote
of Germany , Greece’s
main creditor, makes the
overall approval almost
certain.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Wireless
equipment maker Ericsson is
suing Apple for alleged patent
infringement.
The Swedish company said Friday
it has filed two complaints with the
International Trade Commission and
seven complaints with a federal
court in the Eastern District of Texas.
The complaints center on 41
patents for technology used in Apple
devices such as iPhones and iPads.
The move comes after Apple last
month declined to renew a licensing
agreement for Ericsson’s mobile
technology. Apple says Ericsson
is asking for too much money for
patents that according to Apple are
not essential to industry standards.
Ericsson›s
chief
intellectual
property officer, Kasim Alfalahi, said
common smartphone features like
livestreaming TV shows or accessing
apps “rely on the technology we
have developed.”
U.S. won’t
overtake
Saudi Arabia
as biggest oil
exporter
Despite being the biggest
crude oil producer, the
United States won’t be able
to export more than the
current world leader Saudi
Arabia, says the new head
of the International Energy
Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol.
“The United States will
never be a major oil
exporter. Their import
needs are getting less but
the U.S. is not becoming
Saudi Arabia,” Birol told
The Telegraph’s Middle East
Congress.
“Their production growth
is good to diversify the
market but it will not solve
the world’s oil problems,”
he added.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
HISTORY & HERITAGE
Iran is land of peace, hospitality with
great people: German adventurer
INTERVIEW
By Setareh Behroozi
Josh Cahill is a 28-year-old German adventurer. Iran is one of 65 countries he
has visited up to now. He hitchhiked to
Iran, ﬁrst time in 2009 and then he travelled the country in 2011 for a short visit.
However, he believes that “there is
still more to discover”. Josh shared his
experiences on his website gotravelyourway.com.
“I’m not on a mission to visit every
country in the world but I wouldn’t mind
if I got to see at least 100 before I stop
hitting the road,” he added.
He was only 22 when he travelled to
Iran for the ﬁrst time. “Everything was
really interesting, and many things were
new to me [in Iran],” he said.
Pack the backpack to experience
real face of Iran
“Iran is a place full of history unlike
any other place in the world. There is
something unique about the former
Persian Empire, and all the Iranian people I’ve met in Germany were incredibly
nice,” he told in an interview to the Tehran Times.
“I had heard so much about Iranian
hospitality and that the cities of Tehran,
Tabriz, Yazd and especially Isfahan were
incredible places to explore.
“I think all those things deﬁnitely
encouraged me to travel to Iran. It
sounded like a great adventure to me,
so I packed my backpack and oﬀ I went.
I wanted to experience the real face of
Iran,” he said.
Iranian hospitality is outstanding!
He called Iranians “amongst the
most amazing people” he has encountered while travelling.
He said that Iranians “wanted to
share the best of themselves and their
country with the rest of the world.”
“Their hospitality is outstanding and
what they did for me while I was there
has always left me speechless.
“I’ve published a great story called
‘The day I got lost in Iran’ on my blog,
which is really popular with my readers
and has also been published on many
other websites around the world. It
pretty much describes how amazing the
Iranians are,” he added.
“You certainly get a lot of attention
since many Iranians don’t encounter a
lot of tourists. They seem to be super
curious and really keen to help with anything, and even have you over for dinner,” he said.
“Getting to know people and getting
to experience a completely diﬀerent
culture was something amazing and a
great learning experience,” he said.
“I really enjoyed it [the Iranian cuisine]. I tried a few dishes but unfortunately I can’t remember the names of
most of them. I just know I would eat
them again for sure!,” he explained.
Isfahan, Yazd, Tehran: go-to destinations
He named Isfahan and “the vibrant
city” of Tehran, Yazd as the places he
loved the most in Iran.
“Isfahan is deﬁnitely a must-see. Its
beautiful city center is a magical place
and I could have just sat there and
watched the world pass by all day long,”
he described.
“I’m a huge fan of architecture and Iran
is full of great buildings. Isfahan is probably a great example for a historical site.
“The Naqsh-e Jahan square is probably one of the most amazing vestiges of
Persian culture. It is an incredible place
which is a UNESCO World Heritage site,”
he added.
He named Tehran’s Milad Tower
(Tehran TV Tower) and Azadi Tower as
two amazing monuments in the capital.
“Tehran was also a great place, a busy
and very modern capital. Check out the
former American Embassy, sometimes if
you are lucky they will let you go inside.
“Try and visit the Tehran Grand Bazaar, the Golestan Palace, and the Azadi
Tower or go for a little hike up Mount
Tochal from where you can enjoy a great
view over Tehran,” he added.
Yazd is a nice and interesting place with
some really nice architectural highlights.
“Yazd was a place I felt that was kept
in a very traditional way. Iran has so
much to oﬀer and I really like when ‘old’
meets ‘new’,” he added.
A trip advice for those who want
to travel Iran
He said: “Try to spend as much time
Josh
poses for
a picture
at the
Naqsh-e
Jahan
Square in
Isfahan
in an
undated
photo
(creditede
by Josh
Cahill)
as you can with locals, go and engage
with them and see what they are all
about.
“Absolutely, the Iran that is portrayed in Western media has nothing to
do with what you are going to experience in the country itself, it might not
even exist.
“There is nothing more beautiful
than to understand their vast culture
and to spend time with Iranian people,”
he added.
“Iran is a very modern country, with
very liberal people.
“I liked to have political debates
and even the Iranians I met never had
any extremely negative opinion about
America and Europe, which really
A photo of Ankgkor (credited by National Geographic)
jungle for hundreds of years.
Though Angkor Wat is packed with tourists, it’s still
breathtaking to see. And the temple regions to the north and
south see far fewer tourists than the main temple group.
Petra
Carved into a canyon in Arabah, Jordan, Petra was
made famous by the third Indiana Jones ﬁlm when he
went to ﬁnd the Holy Grail.
Since then, everyone goes to look for it. It was “discovered” in 1812 by a Swiss explorer who followed
some local tribesmen there. Prior to that, it had been
forgotten to the Western world.
Stonehenge
Located near Salisbury, England, this megalithic
structure is over 3,000 years old, and its stones come all
the way from Wales.
Scholars still are not sure how the builders got the
stones from Wales, and have tried to replicate the feat
with dismal results.
Colosseum/Forum
The Colosseum and the Forum are right next to each
The ﬁndings, published Thursday in
the journal Science, suggest that Stone
Age hunter-gatherers weren’t always
displaced suddenly by farmers, but
that the two societies co-existed for
lengthy periods of time.
Researchers say the study shows
that other archaeological assumptions
based on bones or fossil study could
also be called into question by a thorough analysis of microscopic genetic
C L O S E - U P
Persian folktale: Amu
Noruz & Naneh Sarma
Noruz, the Iranian New Year Celebra-
made me think about Western media
and their ways to create a situation
that wasn’t completely real or accurate,” he said.
He suggested not being afraid of
“what you hear from the media because
it is nothing like it”.
“Iran is a very peaceful country
and I never had any safety issues.
Make sure you sort out your visa beforehand.
“It is very easy to do it online and pick
it up somewhere along the way if you
are not ﬂying straight there.
“Learn a little bit about the customs
of the country and Islam in general to
understand what the “no go’s” are,” he
concluded.
other in Rome, so we included them together.
Remnants of a civilization that once controlled the
“known” world, these sites are breathtaking not only
for their beauty but also for their history and age.
You’re standing in the spot Caesar walked and gazing
into the arena where gladiators battled to the death. The
Colosseum has slowly crumbled throughout the ages
and much of it is restricted now, especially the ﬂoor and
basement where everything was organized.
Parthenon
Though currently getting a face-lift (and seemingly has been forever), the Parthenon is still amazing and breathtaking.
The ancient temple to Athena stands as a symbol
of the power of Athens and a testament to Greek
civilization. Moreover, it provides a great view of
Athens and nearby ruins.
Easter Island
Located out in the Paciﬁc Ocean and a special territory of Chile, Easter Island holds Moai statues that are
the only thing left of a culture that once lived here.
These gigantic and amazingly carved heads are just
another reminder that primitive people are not really all
that primitive.
Taj Mahal
Built in the 1600s, this building is a testament to undying love. Located in Agra, India, this white marble
tomb built for Emperor Shah Jahan’s deceased wife is a
must-see for everyone.
In 1983, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage
site. The Taj sees between two and four million tourists annually.
The world has many amazing historical sites and even
if you don’t make it to these, there are plenty more out
there worth seeing. The more you know about the past,
the more you can understand why people act the way
they do in the present.
(Source: nomadicmatt.com)
Ancient wheat points to Stone Age trading links
BERLIN (AP) — Britons may have
discovered a taste for bread thousands of years earlier than previously
thought, thanks to trade with more
advanced neighbors on the European
continent.
That’s the conclusion scientists have
drawn after discovering that samples
from a now-submerged prehistoric
camp in southern England contained
traces of ancient wheat DNA.
5
Heritage D e s k tion, is one of the most ancient Iranian
Top ten historical sites in the world
The world is ﬁlled with amazing things to see – both natural and man-made. There are so many great historical sites
built by ancient civilizations it is sometimes hard to just
narrow it down to a few.
These are places so great that ﬂocks of people ﬂy from
all corners of the world to see them each year. Yes you
might have to put up with crowds but the story these ruins tell is part of our humanities story and that is why I love
them the best:
Machu Picchu
Located in southern Peru, this fascinating city lies on
top of a mountain that’s only accessible by train or 4-day
trek. It was an important cultural center for the Inca civilization, but was abandoned when the Spanish came.
It is famously referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas.” The location was made a UNESCO World Heritage
site in 1983. It was also named one of the New Seven
Wonders of the World in 2007.
Tikal, Guatemala
This Mayan city-state is one of the largest and bestpreserved ruins of the civilization, and was a dominant
force in the Mayan world.
Located in Guatemala, this place lets you experience
your inner-Indy early in the morning or late at night when
the tourists go home and it’s just you and the jungle. It was
very serene and one of the best travel memories I have.
The Pyramids at Giza
Over 3,000 years old, and we still don’t have a good
idea as to how they were built or how the Egyptians got
them so precise.
The Pyramids align to the stars and the solstices and
contain vast chambers we still haven’t opened. They are
truly a marvel of human engineering that was ﬁt for kings.
Angkor Wat
This ancient city in Cambodia was the center of the
Khmer empire that once ruled most of Southeast Asia.
This empire went extinct, but not before building amazing temples and buildings that were reclaimed by the
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
material hitherto overlooked.
It’s known that the practice of planting and harvesting cereals arose about
12,000 years ago in the region where
Europe meets Asia, and slowly spread
across Europe. Britons didn’t adopt agriculture until 6,000 years ago, though
— something many archaeologists have
put down to the rising sea levels that
ﬁlled what is now the English Channel.
This natural barrier was believed to
have explained the delayed end of the
Mesolithic — or Middle Stone Age —
and the start of the Neolithic period
when farmers replaced hunter-gatherers in Britain.
But researchers analyzing sediment
samples from the Bouldnor Cliﬀ underwater site oﬀ the Isle of Wight found
the presence of wheat there 8,000
years ago — two millennia before any
cereals were planted in Britain.
traditions. There are some folk tales associated with this
event including the love story of Amoo Noruz and Naneh
Sarma.
Amoo Noruz, which literally means “Uncle New Year”, is
a kind old man who is the
messenger of the New Year
and spring. He brings children gifts and tells them the
old story of Noruz.
Naneh Sarma, which
means “Lady of the Cold
Spells” or “Grandma Frost”,
is another character representing winter.
Each year, on the ﬁrst
day of spring, Naneh Sarma
cleans her home, dresses
up and sets up her haft-sin,
waiting for Amoo Noruz.
But she falls asleep Amu Noruz and Naneh Sarma
while Amoo Noruz shows pose for a photo during Chaharup. He drinks some tea Shanbeh Suri Celebration at the
and leaves her a marigold Richmond Green, England in 2011
ﬂower and disappears (credited by Ali Khademi)
without waking her up.
So she should wait one more year until next spring to
see him again.
Some people believe that if these two meet each other, an apocalypse will happen.
A CLOSER LOOK
Some of the most
surprising numbers in
history
The world of numbers and statistics is an extraordinary one,
and the stories behind the ﬁgures oﬀer incredible insights
into the culture, battles, disasters and triumphs of the past.
In her new book, “A History of the World in Numbers”,
Emma Marriott brings together a wealth of fascinating,
and sometimes shocking, facts, to tell mankind’s story
through 10,000 years of numbers.
700 pictographic symbols: The earliest forms of written language
The ﬁrst known system of writing was developed in Sumer, the earliest civilization of southern Mesopotamia.
Each Sumerian city had its own temple precinct that acted both as a place of worship and as an administrative center
from which the trade of raw materials, like tin from Afghanistan and copper from Cyprus, could be controlled.
To manage and record this system of trade, the Sumerians developed a form of writing made up of more than 700 pictographic
symbols, which was probably in use well before 3,300 BC.
2.5 million: Stone blocks of the Great Pyramid
Of the three pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians at
Giza, the Great Pyramid stands the tallest at 146 meters.
Having taken around 20 years to build, the conundrum
has always been how these immensely heavy stone blocks
were moved in a region where the wheel, crane and pulley were unknown.
Recent investigations of the Great Pyramid have revealed
that the blocks may have been hauled up ramps that spiralled up inside the pyramid. It remains an incredibly large
number that puzzles even today.
40 percent: The portion of the land in Sparta owned
by women
Women in ancient Sparta enjoyed a power and status unrecognized in the rest of the ancient world. Aristotle tells us that
women owned 40 per cent of the land – a remarkable ﬁgure.
Spartan women could inherit property and expect to receive half the share of what a son would receive.
C.E. 0: the date that never was
The C.E. years of the Christian calendar are counted from
the year of Jesus Christ’s birth, and, as the number zero was
then unknown to the west, Dionysius began his new Christian era as C.E. 1, not C.E. 0.
While it is now the consensus that Jesus was probably
born between 7 and 3 BC, Dionysius’s new calendar is now
the most widely used in the world, while C.E. 0 is one of
the most interesting numbers never to have seen the light
of day.
29.5302 days: The incomprehensible skill of the Mayans
One of the greatest achievements of the Mayans – members of a 2,000-year civilization based in an area now made
up of the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala and Belize – is their
amazingly complex calendar system.
Using just the naked eye, Mayan astronomers reckoned the
length of the lunar cycle as 29.5302 days – just a few seconds
short of the 27.53059 days calculated by modern astronomers.
1 in 200 men: A fact to give millions of people something in common
American research has shown that 8 percent of men in Asia
in a region stretching from the Paciﬁc to the Caspian Sea share
a Y-chromosomal lineage that looks to have originated from a
single male.
The genetic pattern of variation suggests that it originated in Mongolia less than 1,000 years ago. This equates to
about 16 million individuals, which is equivalent to 1 in 200
men living on the planet today.
Researchers have concluded that the likely progenitor was
none other than Genghis Khan, who, along with his descendants,
had a great many children with his wives and with other women.
His male descendants continued to rule large chunks of his former empire for centuries, and they too sired many children.
(Source: historyextra.com)
6
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
A N A LY S I S
INTERNATIONAL
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
Libya’s forgotten human rights crisis
The EU is in thrall to
a historical myth of
European unity
Post Gaddafi, the country is an object lesson in the importance of bolstering rights
in order to maintain order and build the legitimacy of governing institutions
As Britain prepares to renegotiate its
relationship with the European Union,
historians must speak out against the
false vision of ‘inevitable’ unification
F
“We are, by the suﬀerance
of God, King of England; and
the Kings of England in times
past never had any superior
but God.” Henry VIII’s comments to Cardinal Wolsey
could not be repeated today, for nearly four hundred
years the Kings and Queens
of this island have answered
not only to God, but to Parliament also. Our ancient
institutions – our monarchy,
system of law, our parliament – have survived more
or less uninterrupted, while
those of our European neighbors have had to be rebuilt time
and again. This has given Britain a unique identity, distinct
from a continent whose divided history has been characterized by revolutions and written constitutions. The ancient
contrast between Britain and its continental neighbors today
takes a new form as we wonder about our relationship with
the European Union.
To make sense of the current debates surrounding Britain’s EU membership and David Cameron’s plan to renegotiate its terms, we must understand the historical perspective. We must go beyond recent events in the EU and
examine the centuries-old relationship between Britain and
Europe. To understand who we are today, we must ﬁrst
understand who we have been. That is why I, and several
of my colleagues in universities and beyond, have founded
Historians for Britain, in the belief that our negotiations with
the EU must be informed by an understanding of our past.
Britain’s relationship with Europe changed signiﬁcantly
when the United Kingdom acceded to the European Community in 1973, having previously been a member of the
much looser European Free Trade Association. Given the
ability of politicians such as Harold Wilson to mouth platitudes without thinking through their potential meaning,
it is hard to be sure whether those who led Britain into
what was then generally called the Common Market had
much grasp of what the ‘European project’ was supposed
to achieve, or whether they really believed the EEC would
develop along the lines that it has.
Contd. on P. 11
By Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski and Victor Peskin
our years ago this month, the world
came together to stop Muammar
Gaddaﬁ as his security forces massacred peaceful demonstrators during
the Arab Spring. The United Nations
Security Council sanctioned Libya and
referred the violence to the International Criminal Court. Within weeks,
the Security Council, with the blessing
of the Arab League, authorized any
means necessary to protect Libyan
civilians, and NATO and its Arab allies
began an air war to stop Gaddaﬁ’s advance on the city of Benghazi.
One senior U.S. official had
warned that if Gaddafi took Benghazi, the ensuing massacre would
be “Srebrenica on steroids”, an ominous reference to the UN’s failure to
stop the 1995 massacre of thousands
of Muslim men and boys in eastern
Bosnia by Serb forces.
By contrast, in Libya, the world
actually acted on its oft-repeated
pledge of “never again”. The intervention culminated with rebels
killing Gaddafi as he tried to flee in
October 2011.
That unified international response reflected a rare alignment of
geopolitics with humanitarian concerns and a rare triumph for the principle of human rights trumping state
sovereignty. Four years later, Libya
is a broken country. The decisive intervention of 2011 was premised on
the idea of protecting Libyans’ human rights, but the failure to follow
through on that idea has arguably
left Libyans more vulnerable than
they were under Gaddafi.
Reporting on Libya has focused
on the chaos that has ruptured the
country into two rival governments
and on their militia surrogates that
battle for control over resources and
power. Now attention has turned to
the Libyan affiliate of ISIL, which,
acting with impunity amid the chaos,
kidnapped and beheaded 21 Egyptian
workers.
Other atrocities
But there are other atrocities and
abuses as well and they rarely capture
headlines. Since 2011, thousands of
people deemed Gaddaﬁ sympathizers
have been languishing in extrajudicial
detention.
Journalists, judges, police oﬃcers
and civil society activists are kidnapped
and assassinated almost daily with virtually no follow-up investigations or arrests by Libyan authorities.
An estimated 400,000 Libyans are
internally displaced by the ﬁghting. Libya has become the transit ground for
smuggling illegal migrants, thousands
of whom have died trying to cross the
Mediterranean to Europe.
Human Rights Watch recently reported that 2014 was the worst year for
human rights in Libya since Gaddaﬁ’s
downfall.
Even after the rapprochement
with Gaddaﬁ that began in the early
2000s, human rights were not a central concern for the West. Instead of
using their leverage to press Gaddaﬁ
to improve his atrocious human rights
record, Western governments concentrated on removing his chemical
weapons, getting his cooperation on
counter-terrorism and securing access
to Libya’s oil resources.
After the fall of Gaddaﬁ, the West
enjoyed a reservoir of goodwill among
Libyans that gave it clout to press the
new government on human rights.
However, the West’s pragmatism
made it reticent to pursue a rights
agenda once again. The government
was weak, under threat from the militias responsible for the ongoing abuses. Western governments feared that
pressing authorities on human rights
could weaken the fragile government
further.
Human Rights Watch recently reported
that 2014 was the worst year for human rights
in Libya since Gaddafi’s downfall.
The International Criminal Court
After the attacks on the U.S.
mission in Benghazi in September 2012, in which Ambassador
J. Christopher Stevens and three
other Americans were killed,
Washington’s attention turned to
counter-terrorism and bringing
the perpetrators to justice.
As for the International Criminal
Court, it has so far failed to bring any
charges against members of antiGaddaﬁ rebel militias implicated in serious crimes.
Now most Western non-government organizations, embassies and
the UN have closed their operations in
Libya, leaving the outside world unable
to eﬀectively monitor and document
human rights abuses. Because of this
and the fact that the media’s attention
is focused on ISIL in Syria and Iraq, the
deeper Libya human rights crisis has
been largely forgotten.
Human rights is not only about morality, it is also about enforcing the rule
of law and building a strong state that
respects liberty and protects its own
people.
Rampant human rights abuses have
been both a cause and symptom of the
instability and chaos that have made
Libya ungovernable. Post-Gaddaﬁ Libya is an object lesson in the importance
of bolstering human rights in order to
maintain order and build the legitimacy
of governing institutions.
The international community
faces human rights crises the world
over; it can never devote enough attention and resources to all of them.
But seen from the vantage point of
February and March 2011, when the
world came together to protect Libyans, the global neglect of the situation in Libya stands out not just as a
moral failure, but a failure to advance
Western interests, stability and human rights on the southern shores of
the Mediterranean.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
INTERNATIONAL
The DNA of German foreign policy
A commitment to a resilient global order is in the basic interests of Europe’s biggest economy
7
COMMENT
Daesh threat can’t be
fixed quickly
By Walter Pincus
I
By Frank-Walter Steinmeier
T
he harsh reality of the past year has created
unprecedented challenges for Germany and
its foreign policy. The crisis in Ukraine spiraled out
of control, with Russia’s annexation of Crimea,
followed by military escalation in the eastern
Donbas region, calling into question the post-1945
European order. And, though the measures agreed
in Minsk earlier this month oﬀer an opportunity to
enter into a political process, other crises — for
example, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and
the advance of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant) — have presented
new, urgent challenges.
Whether Germany should assume greater
responsibility for seeking to resolve such issues is
a hotly debated question, both inside and outside
the country. During a year-long ‘Review 2014’,
experts, oﬃcials, and the wider public discussed
challenges, priorities, and instruments of German
foreign policy, and tried to deﬁne Germany’s role
in the world. At the end of the day, outcomes are
always concrete. In some areas, we have been
successful over the last year; in others, we can and
want to do better.
Germany is widely appreciated for its
commitment to promoting peaceful conﬂict
resolution, the rule of law, and a sustainable
economic model. Yet it is abundantly clear from
the Review that our partners expect a more active
— and even more robust — German foreign policy
in the future. Expectations are high — perhaps
too high at times. So it is up to Germany’s people
to answer the diﬃcult questions: Where do our
interests lie? How far do our responsibilities
extend? What, in short, is the ‘DNA’ of German
foreign policy?
The basic tenets of Germany’s foreign policy
— close partnership with France within a united
Europe and a strong transatlantic alliance in terms
of both security and economic cooperation —
have withstood the test of time, and will remain
a cornerstone of our approach. But now we must
address three key challenges: crisis management,
the changing global order, and our position within
Europe.
For starters, we must face the fact that
globalization has made crises the rule, not the
exception. Though globalization and digitization
are driving rapid economic growth, they are also
putting pressure on governments worldwide to
meet citizens’ rising expectations — even as they
constrain in unprecedented ways governments’
ability to act.
In our globalised world, many people feel a
growing desire for the clear answers and timeless
validity oﬀered by straightforward and clear-cut
identities. When these identities take the form
of nationalism or rigidly deﬁned religious or
ethnic categories, the consequence, all too often,
is brutal and unrestrained violence, whether
through terrorism or civil war.
In confronting crises, German foreign policy
must strengthen its focus on reconciliation,
mediation, and prevention — or risk being left with
no other option but damage control. Germany
is willing to do more in this area internationally.
We want to act sooner, more decisively, and in a
more substantial manner — not just when crises
become acute, but also by focusing on conﬂict
prevention and post-conﬂict management. This
requires that we hone our tools and develop new
ones, ranging from early-warning mechanisms to
enhanced means of international cooperation.
We will review how we can help the United
Nations more signiﬁcantly in safeguarding and
building peace. We must address, with restraint
and prudence — rather than with a reﬂexive
“nein” — the diﬃcult question of whether
military means are necessary to safeguard political
solutions. We do not know when and where the
next crisis will erupt, but we do know that it will
— and that we must be better prepared when it
does.
But foreign policy must not focus exclusively on
crises. It must also prepare for future scenarios.
And, because Germany is connected to the rest of
the world like few other countries, a commitment
to a just, peaceful, and resilient international order
is a fundamental interest of our foreign policy.
That means adjusting to the long-term changes in
the existing order’s parameters — changes that
have been wrought, above all, by China’s rapid
rise.
As the tectonic plates of world politics shift,
Germany must be more precise in deﬁning its own
contributions to maintaining existing structures
of international order and establishing new
ones. We must think more deeply about ways to
safeguard valuable public goods: the seas, space,
and the internet.
As a result, we must strike the right balance
between reinforcing indispensable structures
and organizations like the UN and developing
new norms and institutional means of minimizing
long-term risks. The key challenge is to develop
a proactive foreign policy that invests in order,
international institutions, and the intelligent
strengthening of international law.
Then there is Europe, which remains the
foundation of Germany’s foreign policy. But
here, too, new challenges require new answers.
Above all, we must prevent a strategic dilemma
in which Germany felt forced to decide between
its competitiveness in a globalised world and
European integration. Europe should beneﬁt
from Germany’s strength, just as we beneﬁt from
Europe’s. As Europe’s largest economy, we must
invest in integration. That is the source of our
strength.
At the same time, we must withstand the
temptations that come with Germany’s current
stature. In very diﬀerent ways, the U.S., Russia,
and China are oﬀering Germany a privileged
relationship. But, though we want to maintain
and strengthen bilateral ties with important
partner countries, when it comes to shaping
global development, Germany is capable of
acting eﬀectively only within a solid European
framework.
We have no reason to Within any
shrink from these challenges.
Even under the pressures of a effective
globalised world, democratic peace strategy
systems that champion the rule for the twentyof law are more resilient than
the illiberal regimes that many first century,
— including some in Europe foreign
— are praising nowadays. But
this does not mean that we policy must
can defuse any crisis by means simultaneously
of preventive action or clever focus on crisis
intervention. Now more than
ever, understanding the limits of prevention and
one’s capabilities is an essential diplomacy, and
part of a viable foreign policy.
This
does
not
mean bolster efforts
embracing moral relativism. Our that support
foreign policy must retain its transformation.
hopefulness and ability to act
responsibly. Yet holding ﬁrm to
our moral precepts must go hand in hand with
a realistic assessment of constraints. Germany’s
global inter-connectedness, which has long been
vital for our prosperity and security, does not
allow us to pretend that we are either an island or
a world historical force.
Within any eﬀective peace strategy for
the twenty-ﬁrst century, foreign policy must
simultaneously focus on crisis prevention and
diplomacy, and bolster eﬀorts that support
transformation. For Germany, all of these
objectives must be pursued within the framework
of a strong and integrated European Union in
which we assume our leadership responsibilities
for global peace and prosperity. Germany has
much to oﬀer to the world, and we will do so with
self-conﬁdence and humility.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier is German foreign
minister.
(Source: Project Syndicate)
Shinzo Abe’s vision for a more proactive Japan
ISIL’s brutal murder of two Japanese hostages has reinforced Shinzo Abe’s popularity and resolve
By Richard Javad Heydarian
F
ar from tarnishing his image of tough
leadership, ISIL’s brutal murder of
two Japanese hostages (Kenji Goto
and Haruna Yukawa) has reinforced the
popularity and resolve of Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe, who has vowed to
increase Japan’s contribution to battling
extremism in the Middle East.
Confronting the tragic conclusion of
the 12-day hostage crisis, which shocked
Japanese society to its core, Abe has
vowed “to make the terrorists pay the
price”.
It was a remarkably strong diplomatic
language from the leader of a country that
has long been known for its paciﬁst, nonviolent foreign policy doctrine. After all, as
Kunihiko Miyake, a foreign policy adviser
to Abe, puts it, the horriﬁc demise of the
Japanese hostages represented Japan’s
own version of “9/11”, eviscerating the
age-old perception that “noble intentions
would be enough to shield it from the
dangerous world out there…”
As the Japanese people mourned
the horriﬁc death of their compatriots
at the hands of ISIL, Abe doubled down
on his eﬀorts to reduce constitutional
restrictions on Japan’s ability to project
military power and more proactively
participate in the international system.
Neighbor criticize
But as Asia marks the 70th anniversary
of the end of World War II, Japan’s
estranged neighbors - particularly China
and South Korea, which suﬀered terribly
as a result of Imperial Japan’s aggression
- have stepped up their criticism of the
Abe administration’s perceived attempts
to supposedly make Tokyo once again a
military powerhouse. Beijing is expected
to take the unprecedented decision to
mark the 70th anniversary of the Allies’
victory over Japan with a big military
parade.
Intent on revamping Japan’s postWorld War II foreign and defense policy,
Abe, in his state of the union address
to the Japanese parliament (Diet) on
February 12, called for the revision of the
Japanese paciﬁst constitution, which bars
the Asian powerhouse from developing a
standing army and an oﬀensive military
posture.
Abe has described the amendment
of Japan’s highest legal document,
imposed under U.S. occupation, as the
“biggest reform since the end of the
war”.
In an impassioned address before
Japanese parliamentarians, Abe called
upon his compatriots to revisit their
deeply paciﬁst instincts, a legacy of World
War II, and reimagine a more globally
proactive Japan.
In his most emotional speech yet,
Abe declared: “People of Japan, be
conﬁdent... Isn’t it time to hold deep
debate about revising the constitution?
For the future of Japan, shouldn’t we
accomplish in this parliament the biggest
reform since the end of the war?”
So far, there is limited sign that he will
be able to secure the two-thirds majorities
in both the upper and lower houses of
the Japanese parliament to amend warrenouncing provisions (ie, Article 9) of
the constitution. Key parliamentary allies
such as the New Komeito party, as well
as certain members of the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party, have continuously
opposed any overt revision of the
constitution.
Contd.on P. 11
n today’s bitter, politically partisan America, when a foreign policy problem such as the threat from Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has no quick ﬁx, you can
bet administration critics will focus on attacking President
Barack Obama for some irrelevant, lesser issue.
Here’s an example: picking a ﬁght over semantics. Last
Wednesday, the eve of the White House Conference on
Countering Violent Extremism, the president explained why
he has avoided using phrases such as “radical Islamic jihadists.” Groups such as ISIL (Daesh) and Al Qaeda, he said, “try
to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in
defense of Islam.”
Such groups also “propagate the notion that America,
and the West generally, is at war with Islam,” Obama continued. “That’s how they recruit. That’s how they try to radicalize young people, somehow represent Islam, because that
is a falsehood that embraces the terrorists’ narrative.”
He has stated those ideas before, but they are willfully
ignored.
“To call it violent extremism and not to call it radical Islamic jihadists [extremists] goes to show the president is
underestimating our enemies,” was the way Republican
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas put it on CNN hours after
the president spoke.
How is a president who is bombing Daesh forces in Iraq
and Syria, sending military advisers to prepare local forces
for ﬁghting in both countries, and has authorized counterintelligence operations against terrorists around the world be
considered to be “underestimating” our enemies?
Representative Michael McCaul, Republican, Texas, the
chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee,
went further on CNN on Sunday.
“I think we are at war with radical Islamists. And I think
it’s important to deﬁne the enemy to defeat the enemy,”
he said.
The president, McCaul said, was trying to be “politically correct and not say what it is. If you ask ISIL [Daesh] if
they’re at war with us, they’ll tell you they are. And they’ll
tell you they’re doing it for religious reasons.”
Obama tried again. Last Thursday he explained in his
speech to the White House conference that “there is a
complicated history between the Middle East, the West,
and none of us, I think, should be immune from criticism in
terms of speciﬁc policies, but the notion that the West is at
war with Islam is an ugly lie. And all of us, regardless of our
faith, have a responsibility to reject it.”
He added, “Muslim communities, including scholars and
clerics, therefore have a responsibility to push back not just
on twisted interpretations of Islam, but also on the lie that
we are somehow engaged in a clash of civilizations; that
America and the West are somehow at war with Islam or
seek to suppress Muslims, or that we are the cause of every
ill in the Middle East.”
Perhaps the Republicans would be happy with the words
used by Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, who attended the White House conference. Appearing last Thursday night on Charlie Rose’s television program, Shoukry said
there was a need for a more comprehensive approach to
terrorists, not only Daesh in Iraq but all terrorist groups promoting “radical fundamentalist ideology.”
Note that like Obama, Shoukry avoided using “Islamic”
in describing the enemy.
During his CNN interview, McCaul described the White
House conference as “a bit of a psychotherapy session without any substance or any solutions.”
He agreed that ﬁghting Daesh needed “a multifaceted
solution, but the military is certainly a component of this.
And all they [the administration] talked about was how we
have to have better education and economic assistance,
without dealing with these barbarians as they truly are, and
that we need to defeat and destroy them.”
In fact, on Thursday, Obama began his talk pointing out
what the U.S. and coalition allies, including several Arab
countries, were doing.
He talked about the bombing in Iraq and Syria against
Daesh and increasing information-sharing to make it harder for ﬁghters to travel in and out of the countries. He discussed Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. is working “with
partners to help them build up their security forces, so that
they can prevent ungoverned spaces where terrorists ﬁnd
safe haven.”
Did McCaul or his staﬀ miss those remarks? Did the American public? Here’s the reality: There is no quick ﬁx to the
Middle East terrorist problem.
There is plenty of easy talk by U.S. politicians about putting American boots on the ground as part of a solution —
even to some in the U.S. military.
On Monday at Camp Arian, Kuwait, Defense Secretary
Ashton Carter was asked by a U.S. oﬃcer, “What would
it take, sir, for you to recommend to the president of the
United States U.S. military boots on the ground in the direct
combat role against Daesh?”
Carter, ﬁve days on the job and in the Middle East to get
ﬁrst-hand information, gave the correct answer: “I think we
need to be convinced that any use of our forces is necessary, is going to be suﬃcient, that we’ve thought through
not just the ﬁrst step, but the second step and the third
step.”
The hard lesson we should know by now is that it is the
local forces that must defeat Daesh and prevent its return
over the long term.
U.S. boots on the ground, even in a supporting role,
would be just a ﬁrst step. The second step would be: Once
that enemy is defeated, what ﬁlls the local governmental vacuum? And the third step: How do U.S. forces leave?
We’re still trying to ﬁgure out that third step after more
than 13 years in Afghanistan.
Just think how long it would take to again leave Iraq.
Now consider Syria — where the problems are more diﬃcult.
(Source: Washington Post)
8
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
NEWS IN BRIEF
What can a massive black
hole tell us about the early
universe?
Space exploration continues to evolve and we, on Earth,
continue to be amazed at what astronomers and engineers continue to ﬁnd. A recent discover, for example,
from Chinese astronomers will confound both the brightest scientists and all the rest of us alike.
Chinese astronomers have found a quasar with the
mass 12 billion times that of our yellow sun.
A university of Arizona report describes, the “existence of such massive black holes in the early universe
posts signiﬁcant challenges to the theory of black hole
growth and its relation to galaxy evolution.”
Lead study researcher Xue-Bing Wu of Peking University in Beijing, adds, “Our discovery presents a serious
challenge to theories about the black hole growth in the
early universe.”
Wu goes on to say, “It may require either very special
ways to grow the black hole within a very short time or
the existence of a huge seed black hole when the ﬁrst
generation stars and galaxies formed. Both are diﬃcult
to be explained by the current theories.”
(Source: Pioneer News)
Oversleeping may increase
your risk of stroke
Oversleeping might be the activity of choice for college
students, but sleeping more than eight hours a day could
have signiﬁcant health risks.
A new study published in the journal Neurology found
that people who regularly sleep for longer than eight
hours a day are at a higher risk for stroke than people
who sleep six to eight hours daily.
The researchers studied almost 10,000 people aged 42
to 81 for nearly 10 years, recording how long they slept
each night and if they had any strokes. The participants
who slept the most had a risk of stroke 46 percent higher
than average, and their stroke risk was double that of
those who slept six to eight hours a night.
For now, the study authors note that more research is
needed, since the study only proves correlation, not causation, between the two. But the researchers also note
that oversleeping may be a sign of other health problems,
such as depression, cancer, or neurological deterioration.
(Source: The Week Magazine)
Glaciers in Antarctica
melting at an
accelerating pace
Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where
it hits the oceans. As the ice sheets slowly thaw, water
pours into the sea — 130 billion tons of ice (118 billion
metric tons) per year for the past decade, according to
NASA satellite calculations. That’s the weight of more
than 356,000 Empire State Buildings, enough ice melt to
ﬁll more than 1.3 million Olympic swimming pools. And
the melting is accelerating.
In the worst case scenario, Antarctica’s melt could
push sea levels up 10 feet (3 meters) worldwide in a century or two, recurving heavily populated coastlines.
Parts of Antarctica are melting so rapidly it has become “ground zero of global climate change without a
doubt,” said Harvard geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica.
(Source: Fox News)
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M E D
&
S C I
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
Meet the Italian doctor who wants to
perform human head transplants
By Tim Rose
A
n Italian doctor says human head transplants can
be completed within two years, but acknowledges the profound ethical issues of such an operation
would entail.
Dr. Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced
Neuromodulation Group, has dedicated much of his
career exploring the possibility.
His plan would see a human head transplanted
onto a dead body, with the
Previous head
spinal cord and complex
nerve endings fused totransplant
operations have gether.
“I don’t believe the
been attempted word ‘impossible’,” Dr. Canavero said.
on dogs and
“I’ve been working at
monkeys, with
this project for the last 30
years.
the animals
“I’ve been working
briefly able to
through all possible stumbreathe before
bling blocks … I made the
announcement when I was
dying within
sure that it can be
days when their pretty
carried out right now.”
An Italian neurosurgeon
bodies rejected
says
he will be able to atthe new head.
tach a living person’s head
to a frozen body, fusing together the spine and
nerves.
The procedure could be used for patients with severe muscle degeneration or advanced cancer.
Previous head transplant operations have been
attempted on dogs and monkeys, with the animals
brieﬂy able to breathe before dying within days
when their bodies rejected the new head.
Dr. Sergio
Canavero
says human
head
transplants
are a very
real medical
possibility.
Dr. Canavero’s research has divided the medical
community and he said he understood the moral
quandaries the proposal raises.
Slippery slope of operation
Metaphysical notions of humanity vary between
cultures, while concerns have been voiced about the
slippery slope the operation could trigger.
The procedure would see a human head from a
living person transplanted onto the body of a dead
donor.
Patients could potentially want to swap bodies
for cosmetic or personal, non-medical reasons.
The “real stumbling block is the ethics,” he told
New Scientist magazine.
“Should this surgery be done at all? There are obviously going to be many people who disagree with it.”
He said ﬁnding a country that would be comfortable performing animal trials would be virtually impossible, but called for debate on the topic.
“This is why I ﬁrst spoke about the idea two years
ago, to get people talking about it,” he said.
“If society doesn’t want it, I won’t do it.
“But if people don’t want it in the U.S. or Europe,
that doesn’t mean it won’t be done somewhere else.
“I’m trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you.”
(Source: 9news.com.au)
Study confirms carbon dioxide is
warming the Earth
Bariatric surgery may help reduce
complications during pregnancy
Researchers using spectrometers
to measure carbon dioxide levels in
Earth’s atmosphere between 2000
and 2010 have conﬁrmed that levels
of the greenhouse gas are increasing
worldwide.
Led by Dan Feldman of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in
California, a team of scientists measured the amount of infrared radiation
absorbed by atmospheric gases, speciﬁcally carbon dioxide.
Increasing levels of atmospheric
carbon dioxide are warming the
Earth’s surface through a phenomenon known as the greenhouse eﬀect.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as methane, absorb
infrared radiation that would ordinarily
be sent into space, in a manner similar
to the way a greenhouse traps heat,
warming temperatures inside it. This
phenomenon, known as radiative forcing, occurs when more energy enters
the greenhouse–or in this case, the
planet–than leaves it.
Feldman and his team measured
radiative forcing at two research locations, one in Oklahoma, and the other
above the Arctic Circle near Barrow,
Alaska. Both sites are owned by the
U.S. Department of Energy.
By Muhammad Ashan
Using spectrometers
Using spectrometers set for accuracy
by the United States Oﬃce of Weights
and Measures, the researchers followed
infared radiation arriving on Earth’s
surface. That infrared radiation is both
absorbed and scattered by greenhouse
gases in the planet’s atmosphere.
Spectrometers can pinpoint and
identify carbon dioxide because like all
molecules, it emits and absorbs energy
at very speciﬁc wavelengths.
At both research sites, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by 22
parts per million from 2000 to 2010.
The concept of parts per million refers to the volume of carbon dioxide
molecules within a million air molecules.
Levels of infared energy directed
down to the Earth’s surface also increased at both sites during this period
due to being scattered by carbon dioxide.
Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulted in more infrared
energy being reﬂected back to Earth instead of being emitted into space.
Warming from other sources such as
clouds, water vapor, weather, or even
faulty instruments was ruled out by the
researchers.
(Source: Space Reporter)
T
here are both positive as well
as negative effects of bariatric
surgery with regard to complications amid pregnancy and delivery.
It was revealed in a new study from
the Karolinska Institute located in
Sweden.
In 2013 there were around eight
thousand bariatric operations performed in Sweden and eighty percent out of them were women. A
sharp increase was also seen in the
number of women getting pregnant
after bariatric surgery.
The “eﬀects of bariatric surgery
on health results such as diabetes
and cardiovascular disease have
been mulled over, yet less is known
about the eﬀects on pregnancy
and prenatal results,” the Swedish
study’s lead author, Kari Johansson,
said in an announcement.
Johansson along with her colleagues needed to explore if bariatric surgery in any capacity had any
impact on the risk of preterm birth,
still birth, gestational diabetes, neonatal death, congenital malformations of if the child would be large or
small for its gestational age.
Specialists examined around 596
pregnancies in which women gave
birth after bariatric surgery around
2006 and 2011 and then they compared them with 2,356 expectant
women who didn’t have bariatric
surgeries.
But both groups of women had
almost the same body mass index
before surgery.
They found that the women who
underwent surgery were less prone
to develop gestational diabetes
and also gave birth to larger babies.
Around 22 % of women who had the
surgery gave birth to babies who
were large for their gestational age.
Johansson said that pregnancies in
women who had bariatric surgery
may viewed as risk pregnancies.
Women having surgery were more
liable to deliver babies small for their
gestational age. Pregnancies were
also of shorter duration.
“They should be given special care
from maternal health services, for
example, extra ultrasound scans to
screen fetal growth, and deﬁnite dietary guidance that includes checking
the intake of the necessary post-surgery supplements,” Johansson said.
(Source: SMN Weekly)
More mysterious craters found in Siberia, scientist says ‘urgent’ investigation needed
By Tanya Lewis
L
ast summer, the discovery of several new giant
craters in Siberia drew worldwide interest, launching wild speculation that meteorites, or even aliens,
caused the gaping crevasses. And now, scientists have
found even more of them.
In July 2014, reindeer herders discovered a 260-feetwide (80 meters) crater in northern Russia’s Yamal
Peninsula. Later that month, two more craters were
discovered in the Tazovsky district and Taymyr Peninsula (also spelled Taimyr), respectively.
Now, satellite images have revealed at least four
more craters, and at least one is surrounded by as
many as 20 mini craters, The Siberian Times reported.
“We know now of seven craters in the Arctic area,”
Vasily Bogoyavlensky, a scientist at the Moscow-based
Oil and Gas Research Institute, told The Siberian Times.
“Five are directly on the Yamal Peninsula, one in Yamal
autonomous district, and one is on the north of the
Krasnoyarsk region, near the Taimyr Peninsula.”
Now, two of the craters have turned into lakes,
satellite images reveal. A crater called B2, located 6.2
miles (10 kilometers) south of Bovanenkovo, a major
gas ﬁeld in the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district, is
now a large lake ringed by more than 20 smaller waterﬁlled craters.
Prevent possible disasters
But Bogoyavlensky thinks there may be many more. He
called for further investigation of the craters, out of safety
concerns for the region. “We must research this phenomenon urgently, to prevent possible disasters,” he said.
Although the origin of these craters remains somewhat mysterious, many scientists think they were created by explosions of high-pressure gas released from
melting permafrost, or frozen soil, due to the warming
of the climate. “In my opinion, it deﬁnitely relates to
warming and permafrost,” said Vladimir Romanovsky,a
geophysicist who studies permafrost at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks.
Romanovsky thinks he knows how this occurs: Pressurized gas — mostly methane, but possibly carbon dioxide as well — exists beneath the permafrost. Since warming temperatures thaw the permafrost from the bottom
up, an underground cavity forms, Romanovsky said. As
the gas gets close to the surface, it deforms the ground
above, creating a small hill. Finally, the pressurized gas
erupts through the surface, forming a crater, he said.
In November 2014, scientists went on an expedition
to study the Yamal crater, snapping some stunning
photos. Vladimir Pushkarev, director of the Russian
Centre of Arctic Exploration, actually climbed down
into the crater on a rope to observe it from the inside.
“You can see from the photographs a very diﬀerent
structure,” where most of the hole is caved in, but only
the upper 16 to 23 feet (5 to 7 m) looks like a crater,
Romanovsky told Live Science. “Only the upper several
meters of ground was thrown away, but most of the
hole was actually there before the eruption.”
The erupting methane
The erupting methane may have even caught ﬁre.
Residents near the crater in the town of Antipayuta reported seeing a bright ﬂash in the distance, according
to The Siberian Times.
“Probably the gas ignited,” Bogoyavlensky told The
Siberian Times. Investigating the craters will be dangerous, because scientists don’t know when the gas emissions will occur, he added.
How the methane would have caught ﬁre is somewhat of a mystery, Romanovsky said. “It seems like it
happened during wintertime, so there should be no
thunderstorms, no lightning,” he said. He thinks the
methane probably erupted without igniting, just due
to high pressure.
These craters should only form when the temperature is warm enough to melt the permafrost. “If the
warming continues, we will see more and more of this
phenomenon,” Romanovsky said. It could happen anywhere there are enough sources of natural gas, including parts of Alaska and northwestern Canada, he added.
(Source: Live Science)
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s p o r t s
S
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
P
O
R
T
S
Iran, Chile friendly on March 26 in Austria
Iran football team is to
which has been slated for March 26 in
Austria.
The friendly will take place at the NV Arena in St P?lten on Thursday, March 26.
Iran will also meet Sweden in Stockholm’s
Friends Arena on FIFA matchday March 31.
Iran and Chile match was supposed to be
held at the Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg,
Sweden on March 25, but Swedish FA cancelled that for commercial reasons and in
order to maximize the sales of match tickets.
Team Iran has played La Roja twice previously in friendlies, losing a 1972 meeting 2-1
before drawing 1-1 in a match played in Hong
Kong in 1998.
Three days later, la Roja will play South
American rival Brazil - who knocked it out of
last summer's World Cup in one of the ties of
the tournament - at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in London.
Chile will host this summer’s Copa America and has been drawn in Group A alongside
Mexico, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Iran coach Carlos Queiroz on
QPR radar
Carlos
Queiroz
major contender to be QPR's next
permanent manager.
Chris Ramsey is currently acting as the
caretaker at Loftus Road for the remainder of the season, but former Manchester United assistant has now emerged
on the radar of chairman Fernandes.
Fernandes had claimed on Twitter he had found his 'dream manager', Daily Mirror wrote.
Queiroz has been at the helm of
the Team Iran since 2011.
The 61-year- old Portuguese
coach led Iran to the 2014 World
Cup but the team was knocked out
in the group stages.
Sardar Azmoun joins
FC Rostov
Iranian international
S p o r t D e s k Sardar Azmoun has
joined FC Rostov from Robin Kazan for
the rest of the Russian premier league.
Rostov, which is currently at
the bottom of the Russian Premier
League and facing relegation, has
won the Russian Cup last season.
The 21-year old striker has reunited
with his former coach Kurban Berdyev
in Rostov to avoid relegation.
In late 2012, it was Rubin Kazan coach
at the time, Berdyev, who convinced
Azmoun to move to Russian league.
Azmoun produced solid performances in the 2015 AFC Asian Cup,
where he scored two goals against
Qatar and Iraq.
Sergio Busquets signs new contract with Barcelona
Barcelona have announced that midﬁelder Sergio
Busquets has signed a new contract with the club.
Busquets, 26, came through Barca’s famed La Masia
academy and is now tied to the Catalan club until June 2019.
The midﬁelder made his debut for the ﬁrst team in
9
FOOTBALL
Robin van Persie ruled out
of FA Cup clash against
Arsenal
S p o r t D e s k play Chile in a friendly
S p o r t D e s k has emerged as a
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
2008 and has won 16 trophies with Barca, including
four La Liga titles and two Champions Leagues.
Barcelona conﬁrmed the extension on their oﬃcial website. Sport claims the 26-year-old's release
clause has been set at €175 million (£127m), although
Arsene Wenger reveals Jack Wilshere
has had minor ankle surgery
Mundo Deportivo says it stays at €150m.
Busquets will oﬃcially sign the deal on Friday. The
terms of the contract also give Barca the option to
extend the deal by another year until 2020.
(Source: Eurosport)
Fernando Alonso: I'm completely
fine after crash
Manchester United striker Robin van Persie is set for
a lengthy lay-oﬀ because of an ankle injury, manager
Louis van Gaal has revealed.
Van Persie, who has scored 10 goals for United this
season, turned his right ankle in the closing stages of
the 2-1 defeat to Swansea last Saturday and left
the Liberty Stadium on
crutches.
Scans have shown the
injury is "not heavy", according to Van Gaal, but
he still expects a relatively
long spell out for the former Arsenal man.
The United boss said:
"He is injured. He is the
only injured player I have
so we change (Michael)
Carrick for Van Persie.
"He has an ankle problem. But I don't think it's very heavy but an ankle problem takes a long time. It's not one week or two weeks
but we have to wait and see."
Even a two-week recovery would mean Van Persie returning to ﬁtness on March 13 but United face his former
club Arsenal in the FA Cup quarter-ﬁnals on March 9.
Dutch striker Van Persie has struggled for ﬁtness and
form this season, scoring 10 goals in 24 appearances,
and his latest setback could see Radamel Falcao handed an extended period in the starting XI.
However, the Colombian, who joined United on a
season-long loan from AS Monaco for £6 million, has
failed to live up to expectations, scoring just four goals
in 19 appearances.
United have the option of paying around £43 million
to make Falcao's move permanent at the end season,
but Van Gaal did little to boost the 29-year-old's conﬁdence when asked if he would start against Sunderland
on Saturday.
"The possibility is higher (that Falcao will play) of
course because when a striker is away another has to
play," he said. "We will have to wait and see."
United could climb above Arsenal into third in the
Premier League table if they beat Sunderland at Old
Traﬀord as the Gunners host Everton on Sunday.
Van Gaal admitted it was "a rat race between ﬁve
clubs" to ﬁnish in the top four and said it would be a
"big disappointment" if United failed to qualify for the
Champions League.
"Our process is continuing and always we are going
better," the Dutchman said. "In spite of the many injuries we have had in the ﬁrst half of the season and also
in spite of the criticism of our defence, we are there.
"We are still in the FA Cup so I am pleased with the results, but not with a lot of the performances of my team.
"When you see our matches we are mostly the better team, but the better team is not always winning."
(Source: PA Sport)
Thierry Henry: I want to be
Arsenal manager
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger
has revealed midfielder Jack
Wilshere has had minor ankle
surgery.
The England midfielder, who
has featured just nine times for the
Gunners in the Premier League this
season, has been troubled with an
ankle problem of late and Arsenal
boss Arsene Wenger has confirmed
the surgery was to stop discomfort.
Wenger confirmed he expected
Wilshere's absence to be short,
the midfielder having only just
recently returned to the squad after ankle surgery following injury
against Manchester United on
November 22.
"Jack Wilshere had a little
surgery to take his two buttons
(studs) off his ankle because they
were irritating him, but it's a very
minor procedure. He'll be out for
a few days," the Arsenal boss said.
"It was irritating his ankle and
they had to take it off."
Asked if this was a setback for
the 23-year-old, who has had a
string of fitness problems, Wenger
said: "No, it was planned to be
done at the end of the season, but
because he had an irritation with it,
we decided to do it now. It is a few
days."
(Source: Eurosport)
McLaren's Fernando Alonso assured his
fans that he was fine on Friday in his first
public comments since crashing heavily in
Formula One testing last weekend.
"As you can see, I am completely
ﬁne," the Spaniard, recovering at his
home, said in a video message posted
on YouTube.
"I would like to be at the test this week
in Barcelona but the doctors' recommendations are to wait a little bit, a couple of
days," added the double world champion
and former Ferrari driver.
"I will rest this weekend and keep
you updated next week with progress."
Alonso spent three nights in hospital
after the crash before being released on
Wednesday. Denmark's Kevin Magnus-
sen has replaced him for the ﬁnal preseason test at the Circuit de Catalunya.
McLaren, who have had a diﬃcult
pre-season with new engine partners
Honda, blamed gusting winds for the
accident but have not given exact details about the G-forces the driver sustained or how fast he was going.
The season starts in Australia on March
15, with McLaren group head Ron Dennis
telling reporters that he saw no reason
why Alonso would not sail through the
necessary fitness tests before then.
"But it's not for me to determine.
It's not for me to say yes or no,"
added the Briton in remarks that left
some uncertainty.
(Source: Reuters)
World's top players blocked from 'All-Star' match
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Diego Costa and Sergio
Ageuro are among the players who have been denied a
$1m (£650,000) windfall as clubs have vetoed the idea of
a football 'All-Star' game.
The Daily Mail reports that the one-oﬀ match - modelled closely on the NBA basketball equivalent - had been
all but conﬁrmed until some of Europe's biggest clubs
pulled the plug on the idea at the last minute.
"The plans were advanced enough for there to be conﬁdence last Christmas that the top-secret project would go
ahead," the paper's sports business reporter Charles Sale writes.
The clash was meant to involve a Europe v Rest of the
World match-up, with Chinese sponsorship money apparently
to ensure players the huge one-oﬀ payday for taking part in the
game - which would have been held at the Amsterdam Arena.
The teams were to have been managed by national
team bosses, and with all manner of power brokers on
board with the project - including 'super-agent' Jorge
Mendes, who represents Cristiano Ronaldo, Radamel Falcao and Sergio Aguero among others - the way seemed
clear for the game to go ahead.
But the sticking point was apparently ﬁnding time in
the footballing calendar - something which the clubs decided was just too diﬃcult during the latest meeting of the
European Clubs Association a few weeks ago.
(Source: Eurosport)
Thierry Henry admitted that he signed for Arsenal partially because he liked the kit - but now wants to be the
club's manager.
Henry was being interviewed by Jonathan Ross for a show
to be broadcast this weekend on ITV, and admitted that his
"dream" is to take charge of the Gunners one day - and .
"I don't know what Arsene wants to do and how long he
wants to stay," Henry said, adding that he will take steps to
bolster his coaching CV - despite having recently signed a
multi-million pound deal to become a pundit for Sky.
"I just want to be equipped... to be in the position,
maybe one day to be a manager.
"Being the manager of Arsenal FC would be a dream.
I need to learn ﬁrst. That is the most important thing."
He explained that "London is home for me. It goes with
my mentality and the way I see things," and added that if the
club were to approach him he would jump at the chance.
"I could not say 'no' to Arsenal," he said. "So I would
say 'yes'. It should be great."
Henry admitted that he will need to change his approach to dealing with players, having been famously
vociferous in his playing days.
"When I was playing I was a pain the neck as I was
demanding of myself and of others," he added.
"When you are coaching you can't scream and shout.
You don't want to scare your players.
"I came in the game to perform and to try ﬁnd out
how far could I go. We all have our limits."
The French superstar also admitted that he had a
very odd reason for joining Arsenal in the ﬁrst place:
the distinctive red and white shirt.
"I chose to play for Arsenal because of Arsene, Ian
Wright and the football kit. When you are young some
things stay in your mind like the kit."
Henry also spoke about what he misses from the
game - including the unique atmosphere of a dressing
room full of players after a match.
" I do miss the day of a big game though and the feeling you have in your body when you know you have to
play a big game," he said.
"I miss that smell. Men can hug. We hug each other,
I like it. It's the camaraderie. It's alright. The dressing
room smell, I am used to it."
(Source: Eurosport)
10
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
S O C I E T Y
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s o c i e t y
Does being a parent really make
you happier?
What the studies actually reveal about moms and, especially, dads
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes
your rose so important.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
LEARN ENGLISH
Developing a Healthy Mind
Lorelai: I just ﬁnished reading a book about how to get
the most out of life. Starting today, I’m going to live life
to its fullest.
Luke: Oh no, not another one of your fads. Weren’t
you eating only blue- and red-colored foods a couple of
months ago?
Lorelai: This is not a fad! I’m changing my lifestyle so
I’ll be able to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
Luke: And didn’t you go through a phase where you
spoke only to animals?
Lorelai: I’m not listening to you, and I’m not dwelling
on the past. I’m living in the moment and enjoying everything around me. I’m ignoring your negativity and concentrating on appreciating the moment.
Luke: What are you doing now?
Lorelai: I’m practicing mindfulness. I’m repeating my
mantra and calming my mind. You should try meditation.
It may help you with your problems.
Luke: What problems?
Lorelai: We could start with your judgmental attitude
and your close-mindedness. How’s that?
Luke: Forget it! Nothing can get me to buy your latest
hocus pocus!
(Source: eslpod.com)
Words & Phrases
get the most out of life: to enjoy life as much as possible.
live life to its fullest: something similar to getting the
most out of life (to enjoy life as much as possible).
fad: an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived; a craze.
lifestyle: the way in which a person lives.
fulfilling: satisfying, happy and complete.
go through a phase: to experience a certain period in your
life when you become very interested in a certain thing.
dwell on: to spend a lot of time thinking or talking about
something unpleasant.
live in the moment: to enjoy the present time and not
worry about the future.
negativity: the attitude of someone who always sees the
bad aspects of a situation.
appreciate: to recognize the goodness in something, to
value something.
mindfulness: a mental state achieved by focusing one’s
awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and
bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.
mantra: (originally in Hinduism and Buddhism) a word or
sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation.
judgmental: tending to judge people too quickly and critically.
close-mindedness: not tolerant of the beliefs or opinions
of others.
buy: believe.
hocus pocus: (in this dialogue) it means ideas that are impossible or false, or silly.
Research published in January 2013 issue of Psychological Science appeared
to demonstrate for the ﬁrst time in a
long time that parenting really is associated with more happiness and meaning
in life. The researchers conducted two
studies that explored whether parents
were happier than childless peers. One
aimed at determining whether parents
were more satisﬁed during daily activities than non-parents. The second
looked at whether parents experience
more positive feelings while taking care
of their children than during their other
daily activities.
The researchers reported that parents are happier when taking care of
their children than while doing other
daily activities—and that fathers in particular expressed greater levels of happiness, positive emotion and meaning
in life than their childless peers, and
that older and married parents tend to
be signiﬁcantly happier than their agematched non-parent peers.
The authors admit that it remains an
open question whether the pleasures
of parenthood might be oﬀset by the
surge in responsibility and housework
that accompanies the role—and they
are right about that.
When we look closer at the study
methodology, it becomes clear that it
doesn’t really show that parents in general are happier than non-parents.
One of the study’s main ﬁndings
was that men gain in happiness from
being parents.
No big surprise there: Societal expectations for mothers and fathers
remain rooted ﬁrmly in the traditional.
Accordingly, the majority of fathers
don’t partake in the tasks associated
with parenting to nearly the same
extent as mothers. It’s still often considered “the mother’s job” to ensure
that the children thrive, get fed, arrive
at activities on time, and get to their
annual checkups.
No wonder fathers ﬁnd parenting
awesome; a lot of things seem awesome when you don’t need to do the
work, like owning a house if you have
staﬀ doing the yard work, cleaning and
maintenance. Being the president of an
association is awesome, too, if all you
have to do to maintain the fancy title in
your email signature is to deliver an address at an annual meeting, while vicechairs and secretaries put together the
program, ﬁnd a space and direct the
caterers.
Another study of how much life satisfaction parenting adds to people’s
lives, conducted from 1994 to 2010 by
German sociologist Matthias PollmannSchult, reported similar results. On the
basis of the ﬁndings, published in the
April 2014 Issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Pollmann-Schult argued that “parenthood by itself has a
substantial and enduring positive eﬀect
on life satisfaction.”
This conclusion, however, cannot be
taken at face value.
The reported data revealed that nonsingle parents and non-parents reported
similar levels of life satisfaction throughout the observation period, whereas single parents reported less life satisfaction
than non-parents. The conclusion of the
study, then, is based on a fairly common
way of controlling for various factors
before reporting the results of data collection. Speciﬁcally, Pollmann-Schult
controlled for the cost and time it takes
to rear a child. Basically, the conclusion
amounts to this: If it didn’t cost anything
and take any extra time to raise children,
then raising children would add signiﬁcantly to people’s life satisfaction.
It is not clear, however, that controlling for these factors gives us any insight
into the life satisfaction of parents. If
being a parent didn’t cost anything
and wasn’t accompanied by signiﬁcant
chores, then it is not clear that we are
talking about parenting as opposed to
simply being a parent.
Consider the teen sitcom Jessie,
about a small-town Texas girl who becomes a nanny to a high-proﬁle, highpowered Manhattan couple’s four
multi-cultural children. The mother, a
business magnate, and the father, a
movie director, are both on the road
during almost every episode. Clearly,
if you have enough money to hire a
24/7 caretaker like Jessie, being the parent of four children may add signiﬁcantly to your life-satisfaction.
But in such extreme cases we are not
really evaluating parenting but rather
the role of being a parent. The reality is
that for almost everyone else, parenting costs a lot of money and involves
a considerable number of unpleasant
chores. If you control for the cost and
time it takes to rear a child, the results
you end up with do not reﬂect the life
satisfaction of parenting but rather the
life satisfaction of parents who have
other people caring for their children.
So the conclusion here too is that the
additional burden that comes with parenting a child takes away from the positive experience of parenting.
This suggests that parents with
young children and parents who are the
primary caregivers should score signiﬁcantly lower on life-satisfaction measures—and that is indeed the case.
Young parents and people with
young children are particularly unhappy,
whereas fathers and parents whose children have left home score fairly high on
life satisfaction measures. This indicates
that it’s primarily the extra chores and
additional ﬁnancial stress that come
with being a parent that makes the lives
of parents less satisfying than the lives
of their childless peers.
(Source: Psychology Today)
Water rationing ‘possible’ in Tehran
TEHRAN — Tehran’s Governor
S o c i a l D e s k Isa Farhadi says there is a possibility of water rationing in the city of Tehran in the next
Iranian calendar year (March 2015-March 2016) if proper measures are not taken in the water and wastewater
section, the Mehr news agency reported on Thursday.
Farhadi said there has been 25 percent decrease in
precipitations, and considering the current problems
in water and wastewater section, Tehran is 49 percent short of the essential water level.
The Tehran’s governor added that in some coun-
IN FOCUS
tries wastewater is turned into potable water. So, a
similar policy must be adopted to treat 850 million
cubic meters of wastewater in Tehran to use it at
least in agriculture.
The report did not give the period during which
the 850 million cubic meters has been produced.
He added that the Ministry of Agriculture and the
Water and Wastewater Organization should buckle
down to ﬁnd ways for the treatment of wastewater in order to deal with [water shortage] problems in the coming year.
By Mohsen Rezaei / Mehr
W O R D O F T H E D AY
captious
\KAP-shuss\
Definition
(adjective)
1 : marked by an often ill-natured inclination to stress
faults and raise objections
2 : calculated to confuse, entrap, or entangle in argument
EXAMPLES
Befuddled by the captious question, the suspect
broke down and confessed to the crime.
“During the past 15 years Mr. Maxwell has established
himself as one of the few sui generis voices in experimental theater, and like all truly original talents, he has been
subject to varied and captious interpretations.”
(Source: merriam-webster.com)
N A M E T H AT T H I N G
persimmon
an edible fruit that resembles a large
e
tomato and has very sweet ﬂesh
The 8th Iranian
traditional food
festival was held in
Tehran on Friday.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
TEHRAN — Iranian
Ministry
spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham has
condemned a Thursday terrorist
attack near the Iranian Embassy in
Kabul, saying no Iranian diplomatic
staff members have been harmed
in the attack, ISNA reported on
Thursday.
“All colleagues in the embassy are
in full health and our country’s embassy was not damaged as a result of the
terrorist act,” she stated.
Aham also highlighted the necessity of countering terrorist operations
without any double standards and regardless of what individual or group is
behind it.
A bomb explodes on Thursday
near the Iranian Embassy in the
Political Desk Foreign
FEBRUARY 28, 2015
WORLD IN FOCUS
diplomatic quarter in the center
of the Afghan capital, when a terrorist detonated his explosive-ridden vehicle, damaging a Turkish
diplomatic vehicle belonging to
the NATO mission. The Turkish
Embassy is adjacent to the Iranian
mission.
Police added that the attack killed
two people, including a Turkish national and an Afghan passer-by.
Following the blast, the Taliban
militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a message to
media.
The militants said an assailant
had blown himself up “targeting a
foreign convoy in central Kabul, a
number of foreigners were killed
in the attack.”
Iran condemns
terrorist act near
Iranian Embassy
in Kabul
British spies face questions about failure to stop ‘Jihadi John’
British spy agencies are facing questions
about how a young Londoner who was
on their radar as part of terrorist investigations was able to travel to Syria and
become the knife-wielding masked terrorist known as “Jihadi John.”
Oﬃcials have identiﬁed the man
shown in hostage-beheading videos
as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born
computer science graduate raised and
educated in Britain.
Emwazi, now in his mid-20s, was
known to the British intelligence services since 2009, in connection with investigations into terrorism in Somalia
and elsewhere.
Prime Minister David Cameron on
Friday defended the security services,
saying they are doing an “incredibly impressive” job keeping the country safe.
“All of the time, they are having to
make incredibly diﬃcult judgments and
I think basically they make very good
judgments on our behalf,” he said in
Wales.
He did not mention Emwazi by
name but said it was his top priority
“to ﬁnd these people and put them out
of action.” He said anyone who commits “appalling and heinous” crimes
against British citizens anywhere in
the world will be tracked down.
The failure to prevent Emwazi
from traveling to Syria to join extremists has highlighted the challenge that intelligence agencies
across Europe face as the number of
would-be extremists grow.
Emwazi is one of a number of men
from West London believed to have
traveled to Syria in 2012. Several are now
dead.
Chris Phillips, former head of Britain’s National Counterterrorism Security Oﬃce, said on Friday that the case
showed that police and intelligence
agencies lacked the resources to monitor a growing number of suspects. He
said the current control systems are
not working and the number of people being radicalized via the Internet is
increasing.
The widow of a British aid worker killed by the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group
said on Friday that she would like to
see “Jihadi John” captured and put
on trial.
Dragana Haines told The Associated Press in a phone interview from
her home in Croatia that “I really hope
he will be caught, I think it would be a
good lesson for all.”
(Source: AP)
ISIL’s ‘Jihadi John’, a Kuwaiti-born Londoner named Mohammed Emwazi
For months he taunted, knife in hand, his voice
slightly muﬄed behind the mask that became the
grim symbol of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) barbarism.
But when the identity of the killer known as “Jihadi John” was revealed on Thursday, the proﬁle that
emerged was disturbingly familiar: a young man whose
parents’ decision to immigrate to the West aﬀorded
him a comfortable life and an education, but who ultimately found identity and succor in extremist ideology.
His name is Mohammed Emwazi. And despite
friends’ descriptions of a polite and quiet man not
capable of violence, Emwazi’s links to extremist
groups appear to have been long-standing, and he
was well known to counterterrorism oﬃcials in London before he went to Syria.
He has become infamous there in the past six
months as the unidentiﬁed man who has beheaded
American, British and Japanese hostages. The Washington Post revealed Emwazi’s name and details of
his life on its Web site on Thursday morning, based
on information from two close friends and others familiar with his case.
The BBC on Thursday posted an excerpt of what it
said were 2011 court papers in which the British government described Emwazi, now 26, as a member of “a
network of United Kingdom and East African based extremists which is involved in the provision of fund and
equipment to Somalia for terrorism-related purposes.”
Raﬀaello Pantucci, a security analyst with the Royal United Services Institute, said Emwazi was probably part of an informal gang of young Arab men from
West London who became ﬁxated on traveling to
Somalia to ﬁght alongside extremist militants there.
Many had criminal records and were involved in
petty crime and drugs. One member of the group,
a Lebanese-born, British-educated man named Bilal
al-Berjawi, ultimately became a senior ﬁgure in the
Somalia-based al-Qaeda aﬃliate al-Shabab. He was
killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2012. A close friend
of Berjawi’s, Mohammed Sakr, who grew up in the
same West London neighborhood, was killed in a
drone attack a month later.
Emwazi, in the end, made his way to Syria, where
20,000 foreign ﬁghters from 90 countries have
ﬂocked, according to U.S. ﬁgures.
British security oﬃcials would not comment about
Emwazi on Thursday and would not conﬁrm that he is
Jihadi John. They cited an active police investigation.
Cmdr. Richard Walton, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said no public details of the ongoing probe of Emwazi will be released.
“We are not going to conﬁrm the identity of anyone at this stage or give an update on the progress
of this live counterterrorism investigation,” Walton
said in a statement.
U.S. President Barack Obama was asked about Jihadi John during an interview on Thursday with the
Seattle television station KOMO. “I’m not going to
comment on this particular case, but we have been
consistent and we are patient,” Obama said. “And
eventually, if you hurt an American, you’re going to
be brought to justice in some fashion.”
The Kuwaiti-born Emwazi appears to have left little
trail on social media; his invisibility is so striking it appears
his online presence may have been deliberately erased.
Those who knew him in London say he had a penchant for
wearing stylish clothes while adhering to the tenets of his
Islamic faith. He had a beard and avoided eye contact with
women, friends said. He was raised in a middle-class neighborhood in West London; he graduated from the University
of Westminster in 2009 with a degree in computer science.
“If these allegations are true, we are shocked and
sickened by the news,” said a statement from the
University of Westminster. “Our thoughts are with
the victims and their families.”
On Thursday, reporters descended on the West
London address where Emwazi grew up, a well-todo area with pockets of deprivation. One neighbor
popped his head out the door and shouted expletives at the gathering of about 40 journalists. None
of the other neighbors answered their doors. It was
not immediately clear whether any of Emwazi’s relatives live at the address.
Worshipers at a mosque about 100 yards away expressed shock that the man known as Jihadi John,
once lived around the corner.
Two close friends of Emwazi’s, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of
the investigation, said they believe he started to radicalize after what Emwazi described at the time as a
planned safari in Tanzania following his graduation.
Emwazi and two friends — a German convert to
Islam named Omar and another man, Abu Talib —
never made it on the trip. Once they landed in Dar es
Salaam, in May 2009, they were detained by police
and held overnight. It is unclear whether the reason
for the detention was made clear to the three, but
they were quickly deported.
Emwazi ﬂew to Amsterdam, where he claimed
that an oﬃcer from MI5, Britain’s domestic security
agency, accused him of trying to reach Somalia, according to e-mails that he later sent to Asim Qureshi,
research director at the rights group Cage.
Emwazi denied the accusation and claimed that
MI5 representatives had tried to recruit him. But a
former ISIL hostage said that Jihadi John was obsessed with Somalia and made his captives watch
videos about the militant group al-Shabab.
The Tanzania trip, experts said, was probably a
ruse to obscure plans to link up with al-Shabab.
“It doesn’t ring true,” said Nick Lowles, chief
executive of the anti-extremism group Hope Not
Hate. “It’s a bit like the jihadis (extremists) who
say they’re going on a package tour to Turkey,
then, once they’re there, shoot over the border to
Syria.”
Berjawi and Sakr also had traveled to Kenya in
February 2009 after telling relatives they planned
to go on “a safari.” But they were deported back to
Britain after a Kenyan hotel manager became suspicious. They returned to East Africa months later and
ultimately made their way into Somalia.
Emwazi and his friends were allowed to return to
Britain, where he met with Qureshi in the fall of 2009
to discuss what had happened. “Mohammed was
quite incensed by his treatment, that he had been
very unfairly treated,” Qureshi said.
Shortly afterward, Emwazi decided to move to his
birthplace, Kuwait, where he landed a job working
for a computer company, according to the e-mails
he wrote to Qureshi. He came back to London twice,
the second time to ﬁnalize his wedding plans to a
woman in Kuwait.
In June 2010, however, counterterrorism oﬃcials in
Britain detained him again — this time ﬁngerprinting
him and searching his belongings. When he tried to ﬂy
back to Kuwait the next day, he was prevented from
doing so.
“I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get
started,” he wrote in a June 2010 e-mail to Qureshi.
But now “I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in
London. A person imprisoned & controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life
in my birthplace & country, Kuwait.”
In an interview, Qureshi said he last heard from
Emwazi in January 2012, when Emwazi sent him an
e-mail seeking advice.
“This is a young man who was ready to exhaust
every single kind of avenue within the machinery
of the state to bring a change for his personal situation,” Qureshi said. In the end, Emwazi felt “actions
were taken to criminalize him and he had no way to
do something against these actions.”
Close friends of Emwazi’s also said his situation in
London had made him desperate to leave the country.
It is unclear exactly when he reached Syria or how.
One friend said he believed Emwazi wanted to travel
to Saudi Arabia in 2012 to teach English but was unsuccessful. Soon afterward, the friend said, he was gone.
“He was upset and wanted to start a life elsewhere,” another friend said. “He at some stage
reached the point where he was really just trying to
ﬁnd another way to get out.”
Once in Syria, Emwazi contacted his family. It is
unclear what he told them about his activities there.
A former hostage who was debriefed by oﬃcials
upon release said that Jihadi John was part of a
team guarding Western captives at a prison in Idlib,
Syria, in 2013. The hostages nicknamed the facility
“the box.” Emwazi was joined by two other men
with British accents, including one who was dubbed
“George.” A former hostage said Emwazi participated in the waterboarding of four Western hostages.
Former hostages described George as the leader
of the trio. Jihadi John, they said, was quiet and intelligent. “He was the most deliberate,” a former hostage, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said
in an interview. Beginning in early 2014, the hostages were
moved to a prison in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the ISIL’s de
facto capital, where they were visited often by the trio. They
appeared to have taken on more powerful roles within the
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant terrorist group.
About the same time, Qureshi said, he sent an
e-mail to Emwazi.
“I was wondering if you could send me your number,” he wrote. “Inshallah [God willing] it will be
good to catch up.”
There was no response.
(Source: The Washington Post)
Italian lawmakers urge recognition of Palestinian state
Contd. from P. 1
As of 30 October 2014, 135
(69.9%) of the 193 member states
of the United Nations have recognized the State of Palestine. Many
of the countries that do not recognize the State of Palestine nevertheless recognize the PLO (Pal-
estine Liberation Organization) as
the “representative of the Palestinian people”. On 29 November 2012,
the UN General Assembly passed a
motion changing Palestine’s “entity” status to “non-member observer state” by a vote of 138 to 9, with
41 abstentions.
Israel and a number of other
countries do not recognize Palestine, taking the position that the
establishment of this state can
only be determined through direct
negotiations between Israel and
Palestine. The main issues currently obstructing an agreement are
borders, security, water rights,
the status of Jerusalem (al-Quds)
and freedom of access to religious
sites, ongoing Israeli settlement
expansion, and legalities concerning Palestinian refugees including
their right of return.
(Source: agencies)
I N T E R NAT I O NALDAI LY
11
JUMP
The EU is in thrall to
a historical myth of
European unity
Contd. from P. 6
The notion of political union was far from most people’s minds when they voted in the 1975 referendum.
In the forty years since we joined, those who have promoted European integration have recognized the power
of a historical narrative to achieve what they want. For
many years there has been a concerted eﬀort to use history to justify the need for an “ever closer union”. The
myth of a common European identity has begun to prevail in historical debate, and it is used to explain the “inevitability” of the European Union.
Material produced by the EU often presents the history of Europe as a common enterprise. We are told that
we are all members of a European demos, or people, yet
there is little to no historical evidence that such demos
actually exist or has ever done so.
Yet, for the proponents of the European project, there
is very little room for disagreement. Historical objections
are frequently brushed aside. Dangerously, it is often argued that to oppose the path of integration is to be on
the “wrong side” of history.
As the distinguished historian of both France and
England, Robert Tombs, has insisted, historians should
always challenge the use of historical determinism as a
justiﬁcation for bypassing democratic wishes.
After all, it was this belief in the inevitability of European
Union that justiﬁed the imposition of greater constraints on
national governments through the Lisbon Treaty and the
ridiculously-named euro. We can see the consequences of
such dangerous thinking in the misery the Single Currency
has created across the Mediterranean.
The events of the last few months have exposed serious shortcomings in the idea of a European demos. The
current unwillingness of German creditors and Greek
debtors to see eye to eye exposes the lack of solidarity
at the heart of Europe. Far from making integration inevitable, the decisions of European leaders have pulled
Europeans further apart.
It is time to admit that a sense of “Europeanness” cannot be traced far back in time. Europe is not one myth
but many myths, myths rooted in an idealization of the
classical past and in fantasies about ﬁgures such as Charlemagne. Attempts to create an artiﬁcial notion of “Europe” distract from the reality of the situation and make
it harder to rectify the many problems that exist within
the EU’s institutions.
In a few years, the British public may be called upon
once again to make a historic choice over our relationship with Europe. Substantial changes will be needed to
justify Britain’s continued membership of the Union, but
I am sure that, with both tenacity and skill, such changes can be secured. These changes must include not just
changes in Britain’s terms of membership of the EU but
fundamental reform of the EU itself. Just as many people
will look to businesses to help them form their opinions
on this issue, I hope that when that time comes, they will
also look to historians to answer their questions about
who we are and what Europe has been and might become.
(Source: The Telegraph)
Ansarullah accuses Saudis
of fueling unrest to divide
Yemen
Contd. from P. 1
There are also concerns that the power vacuum will beneﬁt al-Qaeda’s powerful local aﬃliate, which has been adept
at seizing on political chaos in the capital to capture territory.
As the conﬂict in Yemen has accelerated, nearly all
Western and regional countries, including the United
States and Saudi Arabia, have shut down their embassies
in the capital, adding to the international pressure on the
Ansarullah to reconcile with their enemies.
Like in Libya, regional powers have been accused of
playing a provocative role in Yemen’s latest feuds, by
supporting opposing armed factions.
In his speech on Thursday, the Ansarullah leader, Abdel Malik al-Houthi, abandoned earlier conciliatory language and reacted angrily to reports that the Saudis, as
well as Qatar, had sent their ambassadors to Aden in a
show of support for Hadi. Houthi complained about the
expulsion of Yemeni workers from Saudi Arabia and accused its monarchy of trying to “exploit” Hadi’s move
to Aden while attempting to “to introduce the Libyan
model and impose it on Yemen.” He also asserted that
the Saudis were supporting anti-Houthi tribes in Marib
(Ma’rib), a province (Governorate) east of the capital.
After the events of the last week, Yemen appeared to
be facing “civil wars and economic collapse,” said Nabil
Subyae, a Yemeni journalist and political analyst. If the
Ansarullah movement did not pursue compromise and
back down from their positions, “there will likely be a
ruptured Yemen,” he added.
The current crisis began in September, when the Ansarullah moved from their base in the northern Saada
(?a’da) region and seized the capital, declaring that Hadi’s government was both ineﬀective and corrupt.
The Ansarullah movement quickly advanced beyond Sana’a, sparking a violent reaction from the al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), their longtime foes. Since then,
Yemenis and foreign diplomats have watched with alarm
as al-Qaeda has steadily gained allies among tribes that oppose the Ansarullah (Houthis). In January, the Ansarullah
movement put Hadi under house arrest, forcing his resignation and toppling the government. Hadi remained under Ansarullah guard until last week, when, in a confusing
turn of events, he was either released or escaped.
(Source: The New York Times)
b
Poem of the day
I N T E R N AT I O N A L D A I L Y
That, that is not the ﬂame of Love’s true ﬁre
Which makes the torchlight shadows dance in rings.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/culture
SINCE 1979
No. 18, Bimeh Lane, Nejatollahi St., Tehran, Iran
P.o. Box: 14155-4843
Zip Code: 1599814713
NEWS IN BRIEF
Doha to host
Iranian, Qatari
children’s
friendship
festival
Encyclopedia
Islamica
Foundation
offers German
courses
New director
of Iranian
Young
Cinema
Society
appointed
A festival of Iranian and
Qatari children’s friendship will
be held in Doha from March 1
to 5, Iran’s Islamic Culture and
Relations Organization (ICRO)
announced on Wednesday.
Iranian ambassador to Qatar
Mohammad-Javad
Asayesh,
Qatari Minister of Culture,
Arts and Heritage Hamad
bin Abdul Aziz al-Kuwari,
and some oﬃcials from the
Qatari Supreme Council of
Education have been invited
to the opening ceremony of
the festival, which has been
organized by ICRO.
Over 120 children from both
nations and students from
international schools working
in Doha are scheduled to attend
the festival.
Iran’s Encyclopedia Islamica
Foundation is adding German
courses to its current curriculum
for foreign-language lessons.
Classes at diﬀerent levels are
scheduled to start in early April
under the supervision of Dr.
Saeid Saraii, a professor at the
University of Oldenburg.
The Tehran-based foundation
is a nonproﬁt organization that
was established in 1983 with a
mission to compile the Great
Encyclopedia of the Islamic
World.
Farid Farkhondekish has
been appointed as the new
managing director of the Iranian
Young Cinema Society (IYCS).
The
appointment
was
announced by the director of
the Cinema Organization of Iran,
Hojjatolah Ayyubi, in a press
release on Friday.
In its new mission, the IYCS,
which is aﬃliated with the
Cinema Organization of Iran, is
tasked with providing facilities
for the new generation of
Iranian ﬁlmmakers.
WHAT’S IN ART GALLERIES
Drawing
Maryam Yegani is displaying a collection of her latest
drawings in an exhibition at Naqsh-e Jahan Gallery.
The exhibit runs until March 4 at the gallery, which
can be found at 9 Ayatollah Mahmudi St. in the Niavaran
neighborhood.
Installation
An exhibition of Sara Ruhi’s installation works
highlighting connections between children’s dreams and
what they see on TV is currently underway at Tarrahan-e
Azad Gallery.
The exhibition will continue until March 4 at the gallery
located at 41 Salmas Square, oﬀ Fatemi St.
Painting
Paintings by Molud Azimi are currently on display in
an exhibition at Idea Gallery.
The exhibit runs until March 5 at the gallery located
at No. 26, 18th St., oﬀ North Kheradmand Ave. near
Karimkhan Bridge.
Zhiwahre Gallery is playing host to an exhibition of
paintings on the theme ancient Iranian myths.
The exhibition, which runs until March 1, showcases
43 works by Leila Tutunchi, Sanaz Hamzei, Hurieh Hadi,
Jahanbakhsh Rostamian, Ahmad Moqaddasi and Hadi
Bahrani.
The gallery can be found at 14 Banafsheh Alley,
Aqazadehfard St. oﬀ Zafar St.
Miniaturist Luisa Afshanfar is showcasing her latest
collection in an exhibition at Shokuh Gallery.
The exhibition runs until March 4 at the gallery, which
can be found at 19 Amir Nuri Alley, North Salimi St. near
Andarzgu Blvd.
An exhibition of paintings by Saghar Masudi is
currently underway at Mohsen Gallery.
The exhibit entitled “The Invasion of Kindness” will
run until March 5 at the gallery located on Naji St., near
Farzan St., oﬀ East Mina Blvd. in the Zafar neighborhood.
Part of the money raised by the exhibition will go
charity at the Mehrafarin Charity Society, which is
dedicated to children deprived of education.
Paintings by Rahim Molaian are currently on display
in an exhibition Seyhun Gallery.
The exhibition run until March 11 at the gallery located
at No. 11, 4th Alley oﬀ Vozara St.
Sculpture
Puya-Andish Atelier is hosting an exhibition of
sculptures of bonsai trees made of wire by Habibollah
Ehsani.
The exhibition will continue until March 4 at No. 120,
3rd Golestan St. oﬀ Pasdaran Ave.
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Prayer Times
Noon:12:17
Hafez
Printed at: Kayhan - ISSN: 1017-94
Evening: 18:16
Dawn: 5:12 (tomorrow)
Sunrise: 6:35 (tomorrow)
New gallery opens
with display of
works by great
Iranian artists
Art
TEHRAN — A new
D e s k gallery opened on
Friday with an exhibition of works
by great Iranian artists.
Hojjat Shakiba, a painter who
mostly is famous for his recreations
of works by the Qajar era painter
Kamalolmolk, is the founder of the
gallery, which was named after
him.
Works by master miniaturist
Mahmud Farshchian, calligraphers
Ali Shirazi, Jalil Rasuli and Esrafil
Shirchi as well as painter Nasser
Ovissi and Shakiba himself went on
display at Shakiba Gallery.
Mohammad
Ghaffari
(18471940), known as Kamalolmolk,
served as a court painter during the
reign of Nasser ad-Din Shah.
A graduate of the Academy
of Fine Arts at the University of
Tehran, Shakiba is famous for
Hyperrealism, a genre of painting
and sculpture resembling a highresolution photograph. Shakiba
mostly centers on the history of
Iran in his paintings.
Sahkiba had a close relationship
with filmmaker Ali Hatami (19441996) who needed a painter
skilled in the Hyperrealism style
of artworks. As a result, Shakiba
was introduced to him to recreate
paintings for Hatami in his
productions.
The painting of the city of
Mashhad in Hatami’s historical
TV series “Hezar-Dastan”, and
all the paintings in the TV series
of “Kamalolmolk” have been
recreated by Shakiba.
Shakiba Gallery is located at 44
Taheri St., off Africa Ave.
A painting
by Hajjat
Shakiba
“1000 Kilometers of Watercolors” connects Tehran to Shiraz
Art
TEHRAN
—
An
D e s k exhibition entitled
“1000 Kilometers of Watercolors”,
which displays a watercolor collection
that Iranian artist Nasser Sani created
during his bike tour from Tehran to
Shiraz, opened at Tehran’s Shangarf
Gallery on Thursday.
Sani created the collection during
his stops in diﬀerent towns on his way
to Shiraz.
Works in the collections depict
historical monuments, scenes from
old districts and beautiful landscapes
of each region.
Sani held 20 exhibits of his works in
several towns during the tour, which
began in March 2013.
Mobarakeh,
Naiin,
Natanaz,
Kashan, Safashar and Abadeh were
among the towns where he displayed
his works.
“It began simply. A journey and a
bike, and I gave my heart to the road;
free, easy and very sudden,” Sani
wrote in a catalogue for the exhibtion.
“I had not seen Persepolis and I was
ashamed. Where else had I not seen…
All of us postpone our journeys, until
the ﬁnal journey arrives and gives us
PICTURE OF THE DAY
no more chances.
“It was because of this fear that I
did not hesitate. Exactly on the ﬁrst
day of Farvardin (March 21) 2013, I
started early in the morning, thinking
to myself that perhaps this would be
my last Farvardin.
“Dates and tea were my ﬁrst
breakfast. With a heavy load on my
bike, great excitement, and a strange
desire, I wondered, will I arrive at the
destination?
“Amongs all those junk, there were
also several paintbrushes and boxes
of watercolors and several pieces of
By Maryam Kamyab/Mehr
white paper.
“How good it would be if I could
also paint! And what is better than the
mysterious Hoze Soltan Salt Lake for
the ﬁrst painting.
“With the ﬁrst painting, a
sensational and unique story began. A
story full of unseen discoveries, and on
the way wherever I had the chance to
rest, I opened the paper and began to
record the beauty and the attraction
of nature.”
The exhibit will be running until
March 8 at the gallery located at 2
Sattari Alley, Jolfa St., oﬀ Shariati Ave.
Iranian films
line up for
Hong Kong
festival
Art
Iranian thespians hold pictures of Bahram Reihani during his funeral in the courtyard of Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on February 26, 2015. The 36-year-old
mime artist died of liver cancer last week on Tuesday.
TEHRAN
—
A
D e s k number of Iranian
movies will be screened at the 39th
Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), which will be held from
March 23 to April 6.
Reza Mirkarimi’s acclaimed drama
“Today”, which delicately illustrates
modern-day empathy, as well as Rakhshan Banietemad’s social drama
“Tales”, will compete in the festival.
The lineup also includes “Atomic Heart Mother” directed by Ali
Ahmadzadeh,
“Borderless”
by
Amir-Hossein Asgari and Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi”.
Last year a retrospective of the
Oscar-winning filmmaker Asghar
Farhadi including “Dancing in Dust”,
“Beautiful City”, “Fireworks Wednesday”, “About Elly” and “A Separation” was screened at the previous
edition of the event.
The festival is organized annually
by the Hong Kong International Film
Festival Society (HKIFFS).
Film producer betting musical of “Finding Neverland” will fly on Broadway
NEW YORK (Reuters) — “Finding
Neverland”, Hollywood ﬁlm producer
Harvey Weinstein’s ﬁrst hands-on foray
into musical theater and which follows
the British family that inspired Scottish
playwright J.M. Barrie’s classic children
tale “Peter Pan”, has staked its place
on Broadway.
After the reworking of the 2012
version that played in England and a
dispute over publicity in New York,
the musical will begin performances in
March and open on April 15 at the Lunt-
Fontanne Theatre.
“Finding Neverland”, with music
and lyrics by Gary Barlow of British pop
group Take That, chronicles Barrie’s
friendship with the widow Sylvia
Llewelyn Davies and her young sons.
Barrie, a playwright, is in the midst
of a career slump and suﬀering from
writer’s block when he meets and
befriends the family in a London park.
They help him ﬁnd joy again in his life
and the imagination and courage to
write his tale about the boy who can ﬂy
and who never grows up.
“At the end of the day, this is about
the power of imagination, and what
better place to explore that than in the
theater,” said Matthew Morrison, the
Broadway veteran and star of the hit TV
series “Glee”, who plays Barrie in the
musical.
“Finding Neverland” marks a return
to Broadway for Morrison after a sevenyear absence. The musical also stars
“Frasier” actor Kelsey Grammer in the
dual roles of Captain Hook and Barrie’s
theatrical producer Charles Frohman.
“Finding Neverland” is based on
Weinstein’s 2004 ﬁlm of the same
name, starring Johnny Depp as
Barrie and Kate Winslet as Llewelyn
Davies. Although Weinstein has been
involved in other Broadway shows,
this collaboration with Tony-winning
director Diane Paulus (“Pippin”) is
close to his heart.
“The alchemy is mine and Diane has
been the leader ever since and it has
been great,” Weinstein told Reuters.